Smackdown: bear meets squid

Now, I have truly seen everything. We all know the inspiring images from nature shows of majestic bears whacking big salmon out of the water as they make their grueling and intrepid homing migrations upstream (the salmon, that is). But squid? Unlike the photo of the shark in the streets of Puerto Rico (mea culpa) this is one appears to be the real McCoy. A graphic and somewhat bizarre sign of how much ecosystems are changing in these crazy modern times.

According to the caption supplied by Wayne Barnes, the photographer:

“This is unlikely – a black bear taking a Humboldt squid. In fact this may be the very first documented case of these two species interacting.”

In case you hadn’t heard, the Humboldt squid is a big, very fast-growing squid native to ocean waters off South America, which has arrived in recent years off the west coast of the US and appears to be taking over, creating some nervousness there.

Hat tip to @jebyrnes via @miriamgoldste (I think) and, ultimately, @Browntideguy.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 23rd, 2011 at 3:31 pm. It is filed under Blog, Environment and tagged with shifting baselines, weird creatures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.