Scientists photograph giant squid for first time
\nTOKYO -- When a nearly 20-foot long tentacle was hauled aboard his research ship, Tsunemi Kubodera, a researcher with Japan's National Science Museum, knew he had something big. Then it began sucking on his hands. But what came next excited him most -- hundreds of photos of a purplish-red sea monster doing battle 3,000 feet deep.\nIt was a rare giant squid, a creature that until then had eluded observation in the wild.\nKubodera's team captured photos of the 26-foot-long beast attacking its bait, then struggling for more than four hours to get free. \nFor centuries, giant squids, formally called Architeuthis, have been the stuff of legends, but they had never been seen in their natural habitat.\nAlthough filmed in September of last year, the results were not announced until this week, when they were published in Wednesday's issue of the British journal, the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
Gorillas observed using simple tools in wild
\nFor the first time, biologists have documented gorillas in the wild using simple tools, such as poking a stick in a swampy pool of water to check its depth.\nUntil now, scientists had seen gorillas use tools only in captivity. Among the great apes, tool use in the wild was thought to be a survival skill reserved for smaller chimpanzees and orangutans. \nThe research in the Republic of Congo's rainforests was led by Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, which released details of his study. \nThe first instance was observed last October when a female gorilla attempted to wade through a pool of water created by elephants, but found herself waist deep after only a few steps. Climbing out of the pool, she retrieved a branch from a dead tree and used the stick to test the depth of the water.\nIn November, a second female gorilla used a detached tree trunk to support herself with one hand while digging for herbs with the other hand. She also used the tree trunk as a bridge to cross a muddy patch of ground.\nVideo of the gorillas will be broadcast Saturday on the PBS program "Wild Chronicles"
