What's with the octopus monster?

1896165438+1On October 30th, a huge marine animal remains was found on the beach of Anastasia Island in Florida, USA. Because this animal is very heavy, when Coles and Colette found it, its body was actually deeply immersed in the sand. Although they didn't measure it, they immediately realized that this animal was the biggest one they had never heard of.

The next day, Dr. Devit Weber (the founder of the Historical Society of St. Augustine and the Institute of Science) went to the scene with several assistants. The team concluded that the animal weighed about 5 tons and seemed to run aground on the beach just a few days ago. Its visible part is 23 feet long and 4 feet high, and its widest back is 18 feet. Its skin is slightly pink, but it looks almost pure white with silver molting. Webber doesn't think it's a whale. It can only be an octopus of some kind, and its size is unprecedented.

In the next few days, as long as time and weather permit, Weber and his assistant will go to the beach to take pictures, because the animal carcasses are beginning to rot and damage. According to an assistant who went to the scene alone, he found a large antenna while digging beside the body. According to the report of American natural scientists in April, 1897: "An antenna is located in the west of the corpse, 23 feet long, and the rest of an antenna is also located in the west of the corpse, about 4 feet long. Three antennas are located in the south of the corpse. The longest antenna connected to the corpse is 32 feet, and the others are about 3 to 5 feet shorter than the longest antenna. " The animal seems to have been attacked and its body was partially torn before it was washed ashore.

Soon after, there was a storm, and the body was washed back to the sea, and then washed back to the shore 2 kilometers away from the original discovery.

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Weber began to write letters to scientists he thought might be interested in this discovery. Among them, Verhille, a zoologist at Yale University, received a letter written in1February 8, 896. Verhille has done a lot of pioneering work, studying the rumors (now confirmed) of giant whales or deep-sea craken tentacles, and is famous for it. Verhille disagreed with Weber's view that the discovered animal was an octopus, because the longest known octopus specimen was only 25 feet long. He thought that the stranded animal was a giant whale, and briefly published his opinion in the April issue of American Journal of Science, 1897. But with the further increase of information, he accepted the judgment of the giant octopus.

By comparing the animal antenna on the beach with the known octopus antenna specimen, Verhille came to a strange conclusion: its antenna is at least 5 feet long! If measured from the top of the antenna at one end to the top of the antenna at the other end, this incredibly large octopus is 200 feet long. Although Webb played the most important role in the process from the first discovery to the attention of the scientific community, Verhille named the octopus "Verhille the Giant Octopus".

At the same time, the local stormy weather caused the octopus's body to be washed away by the sea. When it was found in the third place, a part of its body was missing. But even so, the body is too heavy to move. Later, in June 1897 65438+ 10/7, Webb wrote to Dole, the curator in charge of mollusks at the National Museum of Washington, and told how he used four horses to get the octopus out with planks and park it on a plank 40 feet away from the beach so that it wouldn't be washed away by the sea.

In a letter to Dole, Webb described the octopus specimen like this:

"The whole part of the octopus's coat or head is connected with the slender part of the body ... and then the body is opened 2 1 foot long ... this slender part of the body has no internal organs. The rest of the organs are not big, and the octopus doesn't look like it has been dead for a long time ... The complete muscle epidermis belongs to invertebrates, about two or three inches to six inches thick. "

He didn't see that octopus has tail fins and other fins, "leaving no tail fins, head and eyes" and "no traces of feathers and any bone structure" (here "feathers" refers to the feathered tubular cartilage found in all whales).

Although Webb urged Dole and Verhille to visit in person, neither of them went. They asked Webb to continue his efforts and send them any new news. In fact, they didn't pay attention to the message sent by Weber. For example, Dole has always called the animals he found "squid" (a cephalopod mollusk, similar to whales and octopus, but with 65,438+00 tentacles and a hard shell inside).

On February 23rd, Webb sent Verhille some "octopus" specimens. On the same day, Verhille said in letters to Science and The New York Herald that this animal is probably "the upper part of the head and nose of a sperm whale". Frederick augustus Lucas of the National Museum, after studying other specimens of this animal, thinks that "they are blubber, so there is nothing to make a fuss about". He also criticized Weber for being "too imaginative" and lacking in training. Other cephalopod experts seem to basically agree with Lucas' explanation. Weber wrote a strong protest, but none of his letters got a reply. Finally, the body of "Verhille the Giant Octopus" slowly rotted, which was not mentioned again in the next 60 years.

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1957, forest Wood, Jr., director of Marieland research laboratory in Florida, USA, saw an old newspaper clipping about the Anastacia monster. Although Wood himself is an expert on octopus, he has never heard of it.

He was very interested, so he launched an investigation and finally learned that the Smithsonian Institution of the United States still kept specimens of this animal. This specimen was sent to Joseph Genaro Jr, an octopus expert at the University of Florida, for dissection. Ginaro concluded: "There is no doubt that the St. Augustine sea monster is actually an octopus."

Wood and Genaro wrote their findings in three articles, all of which were published in the journal Natural History in March 197 1, but the development of marine biology was not very advanced at that time. The editor of the magazine added so many strange and stupid comments to three articles that some readers thought the whole thing was a scam. Wood and Ginaro found that the magazine's practice was intentional, so Wood angrily wrote a letter of complaint to Natural History, but the magazine refused to publish the contents of the letter. To make matters worse, the index of Ocean Citation magazine (which published abstracts of articles published in the magazine) claimed that they thought the animals they found were sperm whales. Wood and Genaro later discovered that this misreporting was not accidental.

In the mid-1980s, from 65438 to 2009, Roy mccall, a biologist at the University of Chicago, studied these specimens again. He thinks that thing is actually a connected biological tissue, not "blubber". He said, "I agree and support Weber and Verhille's authentication of the corpse. This giant cephalopod may be an octopus, but it is different from any known species. "

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1960 The body found on the northwest coast of Tasmania, Australia in August may be similar to that found in Florida. However, the investigation was not smooth. A farmer and two cowboys who worked for him found the body, but the news didn't reach Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, until several months later. First, an aerial search was conducted to locate the body, and then a four-member scientific team led by Bruce Mollison, a zoologist at CSIRO, arrived at the scene in March. 1962. After examining the body, Mollison said: "People are always willing to seek an explanation, so you will try to connect everything, but in this case, nothing makes sense."

This animal is very strange. It has no eyes, no head and no bones. Its skin is smooth and delicate, elastic and furry.

In the following week and a half, "Glaub" in Tasmania (invented by zoologist Ivan Sanderson) became the front page news of major newspapers and magazines in the world, and the Australian government was flooded with problems. Faced with so many problems, the Australian government has no choice but to send a team of zoologists from Hobart to prepare for a comprehensive investigation. But the working group returned to Hobart the next day.

According to the official report, because there was a long time between the time when the body was washed ashore and the time when the working group inspected it, "at present, from our investigation, it is not clear what the body is." But zoologists still believe that this corpse is like "a part of a huge rotting marine animal", not something like blubber.

But strangely, just after Senator Wang Yuanyuan (Australian Federal Minister) received the report that day, he told the media: "The monster you asked is a lot of rotten whale fat, which may have been torn off from whales."

This conclusion made Morrison very angry. He claimed that the specimens he collected "could not be identified as anything". University of tasmania zoologist Clark also said: "Obviously, it is not a whale." Gordon's words also angered Jack Bout, who was the first cowboy to find this monster. He thinks the government is trying to cover up the de facto delay. "They have to say this to cover up their neglect to do their best to investigate the matter," he insisted. "What I see is not a whale, nor is it a part of a whale."

Whether the report supporting or denying that the monster is a whale has never been published, the whole incident ended in neglect and confusion.

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1970, another "Glaub" was washed up on the beach in the northwest of Tasmania, and this time it should have come to the bottom. The discoverer this time is a farmer named Ben Fenton. He still remembers the trouble he experienced after he first discovered the monster ten years ago, so he was not happy about this discovery. He told a local reporter: "Be careful not to call me a monster. I don't know what it is and I haven't made any guesses. " But this time, no scientists came here to investigate.

1965 In March, a "Glaub" appeared at the seaside of Muriwei on the east coast of North Island, New Zealand. According to the news media, it is 30 feet long and 8 feet high, and it is "furry". Morton, a zoologist at the University of Auckland, said, "I can't think of anything like it." 1988 in may, another "Glaub" was washed up in mangrove bay in Bermuda. Scientists have collected specimens of this animal, but the test results have not been made public so far.

Richard Greenwell of the International Cryptography Society summed up all the cases and said, "The descriptions and photos in all the cases are very similar. All the bodies are described as hard, difficult to cut, usually odorless and fibrous, so they are often called' furry'. " And strangely, almost all the bodies have not been finally identified by experts.

No one is sure that the monsters in Globo and St. Augustine are animals, and no one is sure that they are giant octopus, but it is a possibility after all.

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If there are giant octopus, it is not often seen because it is a deep-sea animal. However, cases in which they are glimpsed appear from time to time. Bahamian fishermen once claimed to have seen "giant octopus", which was confirmed by forest Wood, a cephalopod zoologist.

1989 65438+ In late February, the news media reported the terrible Christmas Eve off the coast of Monte Carlo in the southern Philippines. People in a boat plan to transport the body of a baby to a nearby island for burial. Suddenly, they were horrified to see an octopus's tentacles banging against the side of the boat. Eleetro Sarino, the owner, said: "The thickest part of the antenna is as big as a strong man's upper arm, and there are protrusions along the antenna, one of which is hooked on the ship's side." Another passenger, Jerry Alvarez, said, "I saw huge tentacles underwater. Although I turned on the flashlight, the light was still dim, but I'm sure I saw a big-eyed head underwater. " He also said that the tentacles were about 8 feet long.

The ship began to sway from side to side and then capsized. The passengers on board trudged back to the shore 200 yards away.

With the deepening of scientific research, marine biologists gradually pay attention to those unknown special animals living in the depths of the ocean. I believe there will be a breakthrough in the near future.