Life

Rare giant squid spotted in Japanese harbor

It's a Christmas squid.

A rare sighting of a giant squid — also known as an Architeuthis squid — was caught on camera in Toyama Bay, Japan, on Christmas Eve. This video was uploaded to YouTube by the Daily Mail.

This is only the third giant squid to be caught on video (the first was filmed in 2012). The squid was estimated to be just above 12 feet long — considerably shorter than the longest specimen measured, which measured 43 feet long.

The video above was filmed by a submersible camera. A local dive shop owner even jumped into the water with the animal, eventually guiding it back out to open water.

"This squid was not damaged and looked lively, spurting ink and trying to entangle his tentacles around me," Akinobu Kimura, owner of Diving Shop Kaiyu, told CNN. "I guided the squid toward to (sic) the ocean, several hundred meters from the area it was found in, and it disappeared into the deep sea."

Read the full story at CNN.