Colossal squid has the biggest eyes in world: study

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Marine scientists studying the carcass of a rare colossal squid said Wednesday they had measured its eye at 27 centimeters (10.8 inches) across _ larger than a dinner plate and the biggest animal eye on earth.
One of the quid's two eyes, with a lens as big as an orange, was found intact as the scientists examined the creature while it was slowly defrosted at New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa. It has been preserved there since being caught in the Ross Sea off Antarctica's northern coast last year.
This is the only intact eye (of a colossal squid) that's ever been found. It's spectacular," said Auckland University of Technology squid specialist Kat Bolstad, one of a team of international scientists brought in to examine the creature.
It's the largest known eye in the animal kingdom," Bolstad told The Associated Press.
The squid is the biggest specimen ever caught of the rare and mysterious deep-water species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, or colossal squid. It is 8 meters (26-foot) long and weighs almost 500 kilograms (1,089-pound), but scientists believe the species may grow up to 14 meters (46 feet) long.
I think they will be entirely visual predators with eyes like that, and the lens was truly phenomenal," said another scientists, Steve O'Shea.
This is the largest eye ever recorded in history and studied," said Swedish professor Eric Warrant of the University of Lund, who specializes in vision in invertebrates. It has a huge lens the size of an orange and captures an awful lot of light in the dark depths in which it hunts."
They can descend to 2 kilometers (6,500 feet) and are known to be aggressive hunters.
While scientists have yet to confirm the squid's gender, Bolstad said it was probably a female, females grow larger than the male, we believe."
It is thought to have enormous strength, with swiveling hooks mounted at its tentacle ends to snare prey. Further up the tentacles, fixed hooks with three razor points help it hold onto large prey as they are sliced into thumb-sized pieces for swallowing.
The colossal squid's chief predator is believed to be the sperm whale.
Another squid specialist, Japanese scientist Tsunemi Kubodera of Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science, said he had tasted a piece of colossal squid from a smaller specimen. He said it was edible but the flesh contained ammonia and tasted bitter.
The plan is eventually to put the squid on public display in a 7,000-liter (1,800-gallon) tank of formaldehyde.
Bolstad said the creature would be preserved in formalin solution later Wednesday a process that would take two weeks.
Te Papa museum communications manager Jane Keig said its Web site had 100,000 hits Tuesday as the carcass study was broadcast on the Internet, and 1,800 people on average were watching the event at any time.