European squid propulsion. The posterior border is slightly concave. The head is relatively small and has large eyes which are covered with a transparent membrane. Like almost all squid, this species has ten limbs surrounding the mouth and beak: eight are relatively short arms, and two, which form the tentacles, are long, as they are used to catch prey. The fourth left arm of males is a hectocotylus. The European squid can grow up to 30–40 cm in the mantle length, but more usually they are 15–25 cm long. The males are generally bigger than the females and exhibit more rapid rates
Giant squid painstaking process to preserve the body. It was transported to England on ice aboard the trawler; then it was defrosted, which took about four days. The major difficulty was that thawing the thick mantle took much longer than the tentacles. To prevent the tentacles from rotting, scientists covered them in ice packs, and bathed the mantle in water. Then they injected the squid with a formol-saline solution to prevent rotting. The creature is now on show in a glass tank at the Darwin Centre of the Natural History Museum. In December 2005, the Melbourne Aquarium in Australia paid A$100,000 for