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Foot-Long Sea Insect Pulled Up From The Deep

February 3, 2012 / freak!, it's kinda making me feel icky to be honest, mystery, seafood, sealife, ugly, we're gonna need a bigger bbq, what were you doing all the way down there?!, who do you think would win in a battle to the death this or a squirrel? (no weapons), wtf am i looking at?

giant-ocean-insect.jpg

This shrimpy looking beast was dragged up from the ocean floor 4-miles down off the coast of New Zealand. But it's not a shrimp, it's an amphipod, a group of insect-like organisms that rarely grow larger than a sea-monkey. And speaking of sea-monkeys-- "They go bananas for buried treasure?" You. Ruin. Everything.

...These tiny animals don't often grow more than 1cm in length, except the Supergiant viariety of course, which can exceed 11 inches head to tail. "They actually don't feel real," Alan Jamieson, University of Aberdeen lecturer and expedition leader, told OurAmazingPlanet of the November 2011 find. "They feel like plastic toys. They have a waxy texture to them."


The creature, along with other specimens, was captured in a deep-water trap located four miles down in the Kermadec Trench, one of the deepest on Earth. "We pulled up the trap, and lying among the fish were these absolutely massive amphipods, and there was no inkling whatsoever that these things should be there," said Jamieson.

No kidding, Alan. Didn't you ever stop to think that maybe you didn't expect them to be there because they SHOULDN'T have been there? Know what I'm saying? I'm saying they belong on my plate! Now, somebody run to Costco for cocktail sauce, I'll call Old Bay and see if we can't get a 55-gallon drum.

What the Hell Did Researchers Pull from the Depths of New Zealand's Seas? [gizmodo]

Thanks to b-side, not as popular as the chart-topper on side A, but still okay in my book.

There are Comments

  • Don't let the Japanese find out. They'll grind it up into some sort of penis pill. 

  • Coruptin

    Coast of New Zealand? Just another way to say Australia right?

  • Stephen George

    I'd still throw it in the skillet and fry it up.

  • I bet it would be awesome battered and fried.

  • but does it TASTE like shrimp?

  • luxlucetintenebris

    Anytime those poor things try to evolve they get caught in a trap and posted all over the internet!

  • NES__still_the_best

    Fookin' prawns

  • Yep, we're all gonna die.

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