Giant squid doesn't know how to use 2.5m sex organ

Scientists used to think that the most chaotic love lives on the planet were lived by certain marsupials, supermodels and English footballers. Not any more.

Research has shown that when it comes to an eventful sex life, nothing can compare with a giant squid.

Until recently, little was known of these elusive animals, which live up to 1.5km down in the pitch-black depths.

But a series of strandings on the Atlantic beaches of Spain have brought five squid to the surface and, with them, revelations about sexual shenanigans. Be warned: the marine biologists' findings are not for the squeamish.

Consider these circumstances, courtesy of the team's article in the magazine of the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas: The courting couple, both up to 18m long, each have eight legs and two tentacles.

In the red corner, the female is one-third larger than the male and often distinctly resistant to his advances.

In the blue corner, the eager lad is ready to deploy a penis 2.5m long.

This is no ordinary 2.5m-long penis. It is hypodermic, able to pierce the female's arm and impregnate her.

But, says the Institute of Marine Research in Vigo, Spain, the male is unable to distinguish between the arm of a female, that of a passing male, or even its own limbs.

Hence, among the five carcasses was a male that had been inseminated, presumably by himself.

He could, of course, have been mistaken by another male for a female.

The report is nothing if not explicit: "The male's sexual organ is a bit like a high-pressure fire hose and is nearly as long as his body, excluding legs and head.

"But having such a big penis does have one drawback: co-ordinating eight legs, two feeding tentacles and a huge penis, whilst fending off an irate female, is a bit too much to ask, and one of the two males stranded had accidentally injected himself with sperm in the legs and body."

The report came as Japanese scientists captured the first film of giant squid in the deep. Until now, the 600 or so observed over the past 400 years have been washed up, dead or dying.

But two experts, from the National Science Museum and the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association, both in Japan, took 550 pictures of squid at 900m as the cephalopods went for bait dangling beneath a camera.

The images show the squid grabbing the bait and coiling their tentacles round it, contradicting previous theories that they were scavengers.

Despite their size, giant squid are not top of the ocean food chain. In some parts of the world, they make up between 30 and 40 per cent of a sperm whale's diet.

Perhaps they mate so ardently to ensure their survival.

- INDEPENDENT