With all the talk and interest about T. Boone Pickens, I decided not to write about him. It was too obvious and too easy. Pickens…even his name says it would be easy to poke fun at him. I prefer more of a challenge. So, when magnapinnidae popped up on Google Hot Trends, I knew it was the topic for me.

Having said, that I have no idea what this is or why it here in Google Trends. Neither does anyone else. Check out the listing in Google Trends for this topic.

No news stories, no new blog posts, just a bunch of people wondering what’s going on. I tried my usual sources including the NY Times Crossword puzzle (a post that yielded the most visitors ever in a day for this blog). I also went the route that something new was discovered about these creatures as I did in my post about Giant Sea Spiders (the second most visitors for a post ever).

In keeping with the Giant Sea Spiders theme from the past, here’s the creepy picture to keep you up at night.

Their tentacles are 200 feet long (gratuitous use of bold). Actually, they’re only about 25 or 30 feet, but that didn’t sound as dramatic to me. However, you can rest assured that you will not come across these things while wading out at your local beach. They’re usually found around 2500 to 3000 meters deep (around 8-10,000 feet deep for all you Americans out there who, like myself, were deprived of learning the simple measurement system know as “Metric” in lieu of learning that a dram is 0.0625 ounces, 1 US gallon is 0.0158730159 hogshead, and my favorite, one mile is 5,280 feet. Who’s the maniac who came up with this nonsense?).

In any event, I can’t tell you why the world is searching for magnapinnidae. I can tell you this though: their classification, in case you need to find them on the animal family tree (and check if you’re related): Classification: Biota > Animalia (Kingdom) > Mollusca (Phylum) > Conchifera (Subphylum) > Cephalopoda (Class) > Coleoidea (Subclass) > Decapodiformes (Superorder) > Teuthida (Order) > Oegopsina (Suborder).

Who said the information found in this blog isn’t useful?

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Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Jonathan - Everyone But You
Filed under: Mystery, Science