Big Dead Squid

A potential new record holder for the largest giant squid washed ashore in western Tasmania. The individual came in at 550 lbs (250 kg) and stretched 26 ft (8 m) from head to the end of its severed tentacles. The specimen was extremely damaged and might measure longer. In the standard metric of body size of sea giants, the school bus (SB), this would measure about 0.9 SB. "It's a whopper," Genefor Walker-Smith, curator at the Tasmanian Museum, told the Reuters news service. Interestingly, giant squid rarely, if ever, was ashore on the western Tasmanian beaches being more common on the eastern side.