Watch a giant squid give birth in rare undersea footage

This rare video of a squid giving birth, 5,000 feet under the sea, is oddly, hauntingly beautiful.

Titled "Born in Stars", the footage shows a cluster of thousands of tiny lights floating through the sea - each one a minuscule baby squid.

Skip to about the two minute mark - three minutes if you're really impatient and don't want to see the majestic approach.

The video clip was actually recorded in 2002, and uploaded to Vimeo four years ago - but lay mostly unappreciated until last weekend, when it was chosen as Digg's video of the day.

Since then, it's clocked up 120,000 views.

The process of birth seen in the video is called "brooding," where the mother carries her eggs in her arms until they hatch, according to the 2006 research.

Despite reports in several online media outlets referring to the mother as a giant squid, it appears to be a much smaller gonatus onyx.