CATDOLL : CATDOLL: Giant cephalopod in the ocean - giant squid

The giant squid, also known as the king squid, is a type of squid that lives in the deep seas of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Its natural enemy is the sperm whale. It is the longest invertebrate in the world.

The giant squid is the longest mollusk in existence. Although there is still controversy over its weight, the giant squid has longer tentacles than the giant squid that lives in Antarctica.

Compared with the giant squid, the other extinct cephalopods, such as the Cretaceous Tost giant squid and the Ordovician hornstone, are already very large. However, some scientists have found traces of attacks by giant cephalopods on the fossils of ichthyosaurs and marine iguanas from the Jurassic period, and believe that there may be larger unknown cephalopods in ancient times, but no definite fossils have been found as evidence.

The size of the giant squid, especially total length, is often exaggerated. Reports of specimens reaching or even exceeding 20 meters are common, but few studies to date have documented the size of this species.

According to squid expert Steve O'Shea, this length may be due to the elastic extension of the squid's tentacles after death, because according to the remains and beaks of giant squid found in the stomach of sperm whales, the largest giant squid is only 14 meters long and weighs about 280 kilograms, and there are a large number of them. Like other cephalopods, female squids are much larger than males, with males reaching a maximum length of about 10 meters and weighing 150 kilograms.

Although it has been confirmed that the largest individual of Lymanthuria is 14 meters long, some people still believe that there may be even larger giant squids in the deep sea, which should be greater than 18 meters or even longer.

American paleontologist and geologist Mark McMenamin inferred the existence of large squids in ancient times based on some incomplete fossil evidence, and pointed out that some ichthyosaur or plesiosaur fossils showed "strange distortions", suspected to be caused by attacks by giant cephalopods. He believed that there might be giant squids with a body length of more than 14 meters, but they are difficult to be discovered because they live in the deep sea.

The largest individual discovered so far is a giant squid specimen found in Norway in the early 19th century, which is about 17.03 meters long and weighs nearly one ton. It is one of the largest and strongest soft-bodied creatures in the world.

The biggest controversy about size: Some scholars believe that the giant squid is not the largest invertebrate, because in recent years, a larger giant squid was discovered in the waters off Antarctica, with a length of 18 meters, but there are still some doubts about the actual size and measurement method of this individual.

The two fins at the rear end of the giant squid are fused together, slightly rounded, with pointed tips, an open cornea, very long arms, and especially long tentacles, about four times the length of the body. There are suction cups and barbs on the tentacles, which makes it much more dangerous than other giant squids of the same type.

The inner shell is feathery and keratinous. In order to maintain the buoyancy of the body, the squid will secrete some ammonia, which will emit a strange stench after being caught.

An imaginary picture of a giant squid fighting a sperm whale

Recent studies have shown that giant squids prey on large deep-sea fish and other cephalopods. They capture their prey with two long tentacles, clamping it at each end with serrated suckers. They then bring it to their mouth, located in the center of the tentacles, and chop it up with their beak-like bill before dropping it into their gullet.

Giant squid beak

A model of a giant squid, showing the location of its beak.

Current research evidence suggests that giant squids feed alone, because when they are caught in fishing nets, they are mostly single individuals. In addition, fishermen in Newfoundland, Norway and New Zealand have found giant squids that cannot escape because their beaks or suction cups are stuck in fishing nets or fish hooks. Strange hook marks can be seen on some of the giant fish caught, proving that giant squids are ferocious predators.

Giant squid and sperm whale fight imaginary model

New York Museum of Natural History

The only deadly natural enemy of an adult giant squid is the sperm whale, but the remains of giant squid are occasionally found inside larger predators such as pilot whales, Pacific sleeper sharks, and Antarctic sleeper sharks.

Sperm whales use sonar to locate giant squids in the deep sea. Scientists try to use them to observe and study giant squids, and the latest research results show that female sperm whales cannot prey on giant squids. Only male sperm whales use their huge bodies and sonar to prey on giant squids. Because giant squids have a strong sense of sound, sperm whales can make strong and powerful noises in the deep sea, enough to stun giant squids and swallow them. Although there are many articles and novels about giant squids fighting sperm whales, the relationship between the two is not an equal biological relationship but a predator and prey. So far, there is little direct evidence that giant squids can defeat sperm whales.

Sleeper sharks and deep-sea whales may not bother to disturb large giant squids, and Pacific sleeper sharks cannot prey on giant squids larger than themselves, so they only eat dead giant squids.

Scars on the skin of a sperm whale

Giant squid tentacles

Cannibalism is also a characteristic of giant squids: in mid-October 2016, a 9-meter giant squid washed up on the coast of Galicia, Spain. The squid was photographed by a tourist named Javier Andico shortly before its death, and its body was examined by the Coordinator of Marine Species Research and Conservation, indicating that it had been attacked and fatally injured by another giant squid, losing part of its fins, its gills were damaged, and one of its eyes was obviously swallowed. The intact nature of the specimen suggests that the squid slowly retreated to the shallows to avoid being preyed on by its own kind.

In addition, people in Spain and Australia have found traces of giant squids washed up on the coast. Alternatively, this squid attack may be the result of prey competition. Based on the fact that the American giant red squid, which also belongs to the giant cephalopod, also has the habit of preying on its own kind, scientists believe that cannibalism is a major characteristic of large deep-sea squids.

In the early 21st century, scientists concluded based on incomplete evidence that the giant squid lived in the deep sea and was a carnivore with a lifespan of only a few years and grew very fast. The maximum length was estimated to be 13 meters, but no one knew how big the largest individual was. Some scientists believed that if humans lived in the same area as the giant squid, the latter would eat them immediately.

Giant squids are mainly distributed in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. They live in waters 300-3100 meters deep. It is speculated that they are distributed in deep seas all over the world, and their numbers are huge. According to the description of fishermen in the Arctic and Russia, their whaling ships used to find giant squids with the help of huge trawl nets. The most common areas for catching giant squids are Newfoundland, Norway and New Zealand. Most of the giant squids caught in the Arctic Ocean and the North Pacific live in shallower waters.

Those caught in Tasmania are over ten meters long; giant squid corpses or remains are often found on the southeast coast of Australia and the Ogasawara Islands in Japan, but the individuals are relatively small; larger squid can be caught near New Zealand, but most of them are colossal squid; and some squid can also be caught in the waters of South Africa, but for some reasons, it is difficult to capture relatively complete specimens.

Some scientists use the location of the sea areas where the captures were made and the activities of local whales to infer that there will be giant squid nests in any major activity waters of sperm whales.

Giant squid in history

The legend of the giant squid has always existed, and there are related records in both Europe and China. However, in most cases, the giant squid appears as a giant sea monster, and because of the long time, most of the documents have been unverified. So far, it is difficult for the scientific community to prove whether the sea monster encountered by the sailors at that time was a giant squid. The most famous one is a giant turtle-like creature that can swallow an entire ship and spit out black ink. The Norwegian sea monster Kraken is also the most famous sea monster to date. It has many tentacles and can spit out black venom and pull ships into the seabed. However, because humans did not understand marine life at that time, the Norwegian sea monster appeared as a sea snake or whale-like creature for a long time, and was sometimes described as a giant crab or crustacean.

In the fourth century BC, Aristotle described a giant squid, which he called Teuthus, to distinguish it from other smaller squids (Teuthis). He once said: "Teuthus is much larger than Teuthis, because Teuthis is nearly five times smaller than Tenthus." No one knows what he meant by this statement, but some people speculate that Aristotle used the plural form of Teuthus to describe the giant squid and the ordinary squid, and also to represent the former's hugeness and terror, because cephalopods were usually portrayed as a terrifying underwater creature at the time.

In ancient Greece, sailors witnessed giant squid or cuttlefish-like creatures and named these unknown creatures "ruler squids."

Five hundred years later, Pliny the Elder, who lived in the first century AD, also described a giant squid in his book Natural History that was 9.1 meters long and weighed 320 kilograms.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, French naturalist Pierre Denys de Montfort drew a famous picture of the Norwegian sea monster: a huge octopus with a pair of big eyes entangled a sailing ship. This picture has become a classic picture widely circulated when people talk about the Norwegian sea monster. His inspiration came from an unidentified cephalopod tentacle about 8 meters long found in the stomach of a sperm whale in 1783, and he used it to confirm the existence of the large octopus.

In 1802, Pierre confirmed the existence of two giant octopuses in his encyclopedia of mollusks, "Natural History of Molluscs in General and Extraordinary Forms": the first, called kraken octopus, had already been described by Norwegian sailors and American whalers, as well as ancient writers such as Pliny the Elder. The second was given a scientific name, colossal octopus. The second was much larger, which was more in line with Pierre's research on large unknown cephalopods. He had heard of giant octopuses attacking cargo ships sailing from Saint-Malo off the coast of Angola.

De Montfort later proposed a more sensitive view: he said that 10 British warships mysteriously disappeared one night in 1782, so they must have been attacked and sunk by a giant octopus. Unfortunately, the British knew exactly what happened to those warships. De Montfort's reputation was greatly damaged because of this, and he never recovered. In 1820, he starved to death in Paris in poverty. It is worth mentioning that many of the sources of De Montfort's concept of the Kraken octopus were used by later scientists in their research on giant unknown cephalopods.

After the Industrial Revolution, science slowly began to gain the upper hand, and legends of sea monsters gradually faded. Danish biologist Jopertus Stintstrip wrote many papers on giant squids in the 1850s. He first used the term "Architeuthus" (his chosen spelling) in an 1857 article to describe an "unknown giant cephalopod."

Artwork: A giant squid captured by the French battleship Alecton in 1861. The event inspired novelist Jules Verne to write Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

The first real sighting of a giant squid was on November 30, 1861, when the French warship Alecton saw a squid-like creature about 6 meters long in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Captain Hierre later wrote: "I think it is the large squid-like creature that has caused a lot of controversy and many people think is fictional." Hierre and his crew harpooned it and tied a rope around its tail. But the monster waved its horns wildly, broke the harpoon and escaped. Only a piece of meat weighing about 40 pounds was left on the rope. The incident even alarmed the French Navy, so the scientific community resumed research on giant cephalopods.

From 1870 to 1880, many squid remains were found on the coast of Newfoundland. For example, the most complete specimen was found in Newfoundland on November 2, 1878. It was 6.1 meters long, with tentacles 10.7 meters long and an estimated weight of 1 ton. In 1873, there were several suspected attacks by giant squid in New Zealand. Most of the victims were strangled by the tentacles and had suction cup-like marks on their necks.

The first recorded incident of a giant squid attacking a person occurred in Newfoundland in 1873. In October, two fishermen and a twelve-year-old boy went fishing at sea, but they were attacked by a monster that looked very much like a squid in the middle of the sea. Later, the boy cut off a tentacle and the three escaped. The tentacle was six meters long. After studying it, a local priest believed that the creature should be more than 32 feet or 37 feet long. According to the description of the three people, the monster was similar to the Norwegian sea monster in both characteristics and behavior. Therefore, many people began to believe that the giant squid might really exist. Although the range of the giant squid's activities had not been speculated at the time, a large number of giant squid corpses were caught in Newfoundland, Norway and New Zealand, with a length of about 5 meters to 13 meters. Some scientists believe that giant squids have periodic reproduction like ordinary squids or cuttlefish, and die in large numbers after spawning. However, there were few reports of the discovery of a large number of giant squid corpses, and the size was less than 13 meters, and the specific reason was unknown.

During World War II, there were reports of giant unknown cephalopods in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The most famous was JD Starkey, a British soldier serving in the Maldives, who claimed to have seen a terrifying cephalopod up to 40 meters long. Both the U.S. and British navies claimed to have seen unknown cephalopods in uninhabited waters at night, some of which even attacked crew members. At the time, scientists' research on large cephalopods was limited to their incomplete corpses, and it was impossible to confirm whether the crew's statements were credible. But one thing that can be proven is that there are indeed unknown cephalopods in the deep sea, and large octopuses or squids do exist.

In 2004, a giant squid named "Archie" was found in the Falkland Islands. It was 8.62 meters long and was subsequently sent to the Natural History Museum in London for research and preservation. It was exhibited to the public on March 1, 2006. So far, few people have found complete giant squid specimens. Most of them are less than 10 meters long, and most of them have been bitten by other creatures.

Live giant squid research and tracking

The body of a giant squid is shown in the bathtub of American pastor Moes Harvey in 1873. The invention of the camera in the 19th century led to the recording of the bodies of giant squids.

Although the giant squid was discovered in the 19th century, it was still difficult for scientists to find living specimens in the wild until the early 21st century. Marine biologist Richard Ayers described it as "the most elusive creature in natural history."

In 1993, a photo of a "living giant squid" (Architeuthis dux) was published in the book "European Seashells". At that time, people thought it was the first photo of a living giant squid. However, after research, it was believed that the photo was not a giant squid at all, but another large deep-sea squid, and this one was dying before swimming to the shallow coast.

It wasn't until 2001 that scientists found photos of what were suspected to be giant squid fry in the deep sea.

It was not until 2006 that the first living photo of a giant squid was taken in the deep sea.

First photo of an adult giant squid

On January 15, 2002, a mature giant squid was photographed dying for the first time in the Seto Inland Sea of ​​Japan. The squid was tied to the dock, but because it stayed in shallow waters for a long time, it was dead when scientists fished it out.

First photo of giant squid found in deep sea

On September 30, 2004, the first giant squid photo was taken by Tsunemi Kubota of the National Science Museum of Japan and Kyoichi Mori (members of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association). After two years of searching, they found traces of giant squid in the Ogasawara Islands. So they used a 5-ton fishing boat and hired two crew members. Using the range of sperm whales, the natural enemy of giant squid, as a clue, they dropped a small squid and shrimp on the hook and sank it to 900 meters in water. At the same time, they also prepared a camera and flash.

After more than 20 fishing trips that day, a giant squid about 7.8 meters (23.4 feet) long attacked the bait. The two took photos when the squid's tentacles were hooked and unable to get out. The squid then broke off its tentacles and disappeared into the deep sea. Judging from the tentacles that were salvaged, the giant squid was less than 10 meters long. Later DNA tests confirmed that the animal was a giant squid.

Kubota Tsuneki

On September 27, 2005, Kubota and Mori released their photos to the world. These photos are also recognized by the world as the first "live photos of giant squids". According to Kubota, "We know that giant squids eat their own kind, but we don't know where this creature lives, so we plan to lure it out with bait." Kubota and Mori later described their observations in detail in the British journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society".

First video footage of a giant squid

In November 2006, American explorer and diver Scott Cassell and his expedition team went to the Gulf of California, mainly to observe the local Humboldt squid. At that time, in order to study these giant squids more deeply, they used a special shooting technique: a specially customized camera was mounted on the fleshy fin of a squid and then sent it back to the sea for observation. But when everyone observed the dynamics of the squid in front of the computer, they saw that it was being chased and bitten by a giant squid estimated to be 12 to 18 meters long. A year later, both "DISCOVERY" and "National Geographic" channels produced documentaries to explain this incident. But Cassell was reluctant to talk about the documentary afterwards because he thought that the creatures in the film did not look like known creatures such as giant squids.

In December 2007, Japanese scientists once again used a small squid as bait in the waters of the Ogasawara Islands to try to find a living giant squid. They successfully caught a living giant squid, but because it was out of the deep sea and it was caught during the day, the squid died soon after it was caught. The squid was an underage female, 7 meters in length and 3.5 meters in body length. This was also the first time that humans caught a living giant squid, and it was confirmed that the color of the giant squid was dark red.