Humboldt squid squid uses its barbed tentacle suckers to grab its prey and slices and tears the victim's flesh with its beak and radula. They often approach prey quickly with all 10 appendages extended forward in a cone-like shape. Upon reaching striking distance, they open their eight swimming and grasping arms, and extend two long tentacles covered in sharp 'teeth', grabbing their prey and pulling it back towards a parrot-like beak, which can easily cause serious lacerations to human flesh. These two longer tentacles can reach full length, grab prey, and retract so fast that almost the entire event happens in one
Magnoteuthis microlucens by NELHA operations manager Jan War, a reference to the fact that the specimen had only eight arms, like an octopus, rather than the eight arms and two tentacles of most squid. An examination of the specimen conducted by Richard Young of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, however, concluded that it is was an unnamed species of the genus "Mastigoteuthis". The specimen was likely missing its tentacles due to them being torn off during capture. It was formally described in 2008 as "Mastigoteuthis microlucens". Magnoteuthis microlucens Magnoteuthis microlucens is a species of squid; the most common species of "Mastigoteuthis"