Giant Octopus

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Known varieties of octopus range in size from a circumference of a few inches to as large as 23 feet. There is some evidence that, deep in the sea, there lives an unknown species of octopus that can grow to over a hundred feet across and weigh 10 tons.

The octopus is a distant cousin of the squid and both belong to a group of animals called cephalopods. Both are invertebrates, that is they have no backbone, and each have multiple arms, lined with suckers, that allow the creatures to hold fast to prey or other objects. Both are fairly intelligent, with large dark eyes. Both are carnivorous.

Squid have ten arms, though, while the octopus has only eight. Squid are also thought to spend most of their time in the mid-waters while the octopus is a bottom dweller using it's arms to move from rock to rock. Finally, while the squid has a reputation for aggression, the octopus has a more shy and retiring disposition.

Not that octopi are entirely harmless. When angered they can be dangerous to both swimmers and divers. With their strong, long arms they can hold a man underwater until he drowns.

The giant squid is a known creature and they have been seen at sea. Several dead, or nearly dead, animals have been found in the shallows or beached. In contrast only one colossal octopus carcass has ever been found and it was, and still is, surrounded in controversy.

The story starts in November of 1896 when two boys cycling along the beach south of St. Augustine, Florida, came across the body of an enormous creature that had been washed up by the tide. Dr. DeWitt Webb, a local amateur naturalist and President of the St. Augustine Historical Society, took an interest in the remains. After an examination of the mutilated and decaying body he believed that he'd discovered the carcass of a huge octopus.

The portion of the creature that remained, the body minus the arms, was eighteen feet in length and ten feet wide. Parts of tentacles, unattached to the body, stretched as long as 36 feet with a diameter of 10 inches. Dr. Webb estimated weight at four or five tons.

Realizing this was an important find Webb wrote to Yale Professor Addison Verrill, a leading expert on cephalopods, about the creature:

"You may be interested to know of the body of an immense Octopus thrown ashore some miles south of this city. Nothing but the stump of the tentacles remains, as it had evidently been dead for some time before washed ashore."

Based on photographs sent by Webb, Verrill concluded that the creature was indeed a colossal octopus that might have had a diameter of one-hundred and fifty feet when living. Strangely enough, despite the importance of the find, Dr. Verrill, nor any other scientist, traveled to St. Augustine to view the carcass in person.

Webb finally sent Verrill a sample of the tissue of the creature preserved in formalin. Verrill was surprised to find it had the appearance of blubber and abruptly changed his mind stating that he now believed the creature was a whale and that the arms were not associated with the body.

The whole matter would have rested like that if it hadn't been for Forrest Wood, the director of Marine Studios (later Marineland) in Florida. Wood came across an old news story about the monster and discovered that Webb's sample was still stored at the Smithsonian Institution.

Wood persuaded the Smithsonian to let Dr. Joseph Gennaro, of the University of Florida, to take some of the samples for analysis. Gennaro immediately recognized that the material was not blubber and examination under a microscope showed the tissue was more similar to octopus than whale or squid. Further tests later confirmed this conclusion.

So it seems that Webb was right and Verrill changed his mind too quickly. Maybe. The scientific community has not yet accepted Gennaro's conclusions and it may take another beached carcass to settle the matter.

How come more colossal octopi haven't been found? Speculation is that as a bottom dweller the colossal octopus bodies, upon death, stay on the bottom and decay leaving few clues for scientists to find.

For hundreds of years, sailors from all over the world have regularly made reports of a mythical creature known as the giant octopus (sometimes called the gigantic octopus, in order to distinguish it from the several known species of very large octopuses, namely the giant octopuses that are part of the genus Enteroctopus). The science of cryptozoology divides giant octopus reports into at least two different species, since these animals have been sighted in both freshwater and saltwater locations.

However, there is enough variability in the reports to suggest more than two species, especially since these reports come from across the globe, and in nature it is rare for a single species to be so widespread. The sizes reported cover a wide range, from a bit bigger than twenty-five feet (the accepted longest length of any known octopus) to ship-sized.

Some of these reports, namely those from the ocean, could be mistaken reports of the giant squid. In folklore and mythology, the giant octopus and giant squid are almost hopelessly confused. Long ago, reports of large sea monsters with tentacles were generally lumped together under the label kraken. Sometimes the two proposed species of gigantic octopus are called the "kraken octopus" (for the smaller kind) and the "colossal octopus" (for the kind big enough to threaten ships). Unproven types of gigantic octopus have also received local names in the regions where they are reported, such as rogu-tomu for the gigantic octopus of Tahiti.

In many cases, local legends stretch back into the past for as far as anyone is able to research. In other words, if you consider these legends to be evidence, then the evidence has a long history. Some of these legends cast gigantic octopuses as natural creatures, with roles similar to the roles of ordinary animals. Other times, these legends cast giant octopuses as supernatural sea monsters, or as forms taken by shapeshifting vengeful sea gods.

The Bahamas Islands, off the southeast coast of Florida, are a hot spot for encounters between divers and a mythical gigantic octopus called the lusca. It is supposed to inhabit underwater caves, especially the large, nearly-vertical underwater caves that are commonly called "blue holes." Unlike other octopuses, the lusca is described as aggressive, with many actions that could be interpreted as threat displays, mock charges or even attacks on human beings. Reports of the lusca's size vary from 75 feet long to a staggering 200 feet long. Besides its giant size, one problem with the lusca's supposed existence is that the deeper parts of blue holes generally have no oxygen dissolved in the water, making it impossible for anything other than single-celled creatures to stay there for long (divers can enter because they have air tanks, but nothing with gills can stay there for long or it will die from asphyxiation).

The most convincing reason for believing in the gigantic octopus is the fact that some very large octopus carcasses have washed up on beaches. Unlike the recovery of giant squid carcasses, these octopus bodies have not yet converted the mainstream scientific community, and therefore they are relegated to the status of globsters. This is partly because the best and largest of them rotted badly while the scientific community ridiculed them, and were not in good enough shape to convince skeptical minds once science did take interest. Measuring invertebrates is an inexact science anyway because of how easily their bodies stretch, and a carcass that has nearly rotted away is an even worse candidate than normal. Some people think that it is only a matter of time, though, until enough really large carcasses are recovered and giant octopuses longer than 25 feet begin to appear in biology books, not just cryptozoology books.

Clark, Jerome and Coleman, Loren. Cryptozoology A-Z. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Pages 90-92, 146

Clark, Jerome. Unexplained!. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1999. Pages 244-254

Griggs, Kim. Giant Octopus Puzzles Scientists.

Newton, Michael. Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology: A Global Guide to Hidden Animals and Their Pursuers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2005. Pages 22, 175, 194, 276, 282, 296, 308, 326, 347-348, 400, 418, 495

Wikipedia, The. Gigantic Octopus

Wikipedia, The. Lusca