Researchers determined found a number of "giant" marine species are not as large as we thought.
A research team analyzed the body sized of 25 marine species including whales and squids, and found humans appear to have a size bias for larger creatures, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center reported.
"Several years ago I noticed that people kept staying that giant squids reached 60 feet in length, which is amazingly long," said Craig McClain, the assistant director of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C., and the primary author of the paper. "When I started actually looking at the data, I found that that estimate was actually quite unrealistic."
The researchers noted muscle fibers in the squid stretch out during decomposition, which could help explain the miscalculations made on animals that washed up on shore in the 1800s. These new findings suggest longest scientifically verified squid was about 40 feet in length.
"What people think of as the biggest representatives aren't usually the most optimal," said Meghan Balk, a coauthor and Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Mexico. "It says a lot about what it means to be large. How beneficial is it to be the biggest in a big species?"
To make their findings the researchers looked at a large sample of marine species and also considered environmental factors that would cause a large size to be beneficial in an evolutionary sense. They highlighted the giant clam, which can reach up to 4.5 in length because it receives an exorbitant amount of nourishment from symbiotic bacteria. Larger Whale Sharks and Blue Whales are also less likely to suffer starvation if food runs out because they have the mass to compete a migration even while fasting.
"Metabolism is a function of size because it indicates how much oxygen and carbon an animal consumes," McClain said. "Knowing whether a whale shark is 10 tons, 15 tons, or 20 tons lets us know how many light bulbs worth of energy it uses every day."
The researchers hope their measurements will eventually replace past miscalculations published in academic papers, fishery databases, and textbooks.
"Precise, accurate, and quantified measurements matter at both a philosophical and pragmatic level," McClain said. "Saying something is approximately 'this big,' while holding your arms out won't cut it, nor will inflating how large some of these animals are."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal PeerJ.
