Cephalopod eight or ten. Decapods such as cuttlefish and squid have five pairs. The longer two, termed "tentacles", are actively involved in capturing prey; they can lengthen rapidly (in as little as 15 milliseconds). In giant squid they may reach a length of 8 metres. They may terminate in a broadened, sucker-coated club. The shorter four pairs are termed "arms", and are involved in holding and manipulating the captured organism. They too have suckers, on the side closest to the mouth; these help to hold onto the prey. Octopods only have four pairs of sucker-coated arms, as the name suggests, though
Colossal squid whales and sleeper sharks), while the other predators only eat juveniles or young adults. The species was first discovered in the form of two tentacles found in the stomach of a sperm whale in 1925. In 1981, a Russian trawler in the Ross Sea, off the coast of Antarctica, caught a large squid with a total length of over , which was later identified as an immature female of "M. hamiltoni". In 2003 a complete specimen of a subadult female was found near the surface with a total length of and a mantle length of . This specimen shows that