The Giant Squid

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The existence of the giant squid, genus Architeuthis, is well accepted by science but it is only in recent years we have begun to learn about their biology. The legend of the many armed Kraken that could pull a whole ship under, is probably based on the giant squid. There is one report from World War II of survivors of a sunken ship being attacked by a giant squid that ate one of the party

	Giant squid are enormous carnivorous mollusks. They have a long, torpedo shaped body. At one end, surrounding a beak-like mouth strong enough to cut through steel cable, are five pairs of arms. One pair, thinner and longer than the rest, are used to catch food and bring it to the mouth. Just past the mouth are the large eyes, getting as big as eighteen inches across. All squid move through the ocean using a jet of water forced out of the body by a siphon. They eat fish, other squid, and, in the case of the largest species, whales. That's right, these big nasty mollusks eat whales. Giant Squids are open water, deep, cold sea creatures. Work by Dr. Ole Brix, of the University of Bergen, indicates the blood of squids does not carry oxygen very well at higher temperatures. A squid will actually suffocate in warm water. Temperature also seems to affect the squid's buoyancy mechanism. Warm water will cause a giant squid to rise to the surface and not be able to get back down. With water temperature even higher at the surface, the squid maybe doomed. It is not surprising then, that most squid groundings occur near where two ocean streams, one cold and one warm, meet.

How big can a squid get? Estimates based on damaged carcasses range up to one hundred feet. The largest giant squid ever measured was discovered at Timble Tickle on November 2, 1878. Three fisherman were working not far off shore when they noticed a mass floating on the ocean they took to be wreckage. They investigated and found a giant squid had run aground. Using their anchor as a grappling hook they snagged it and made it fast to a tree. When the tide went out the creature was left high and dry. After it died, the fishermen measured it and then chopped it up for dog meat. The body of the squid was 7m from tail to beak. The longer tentacles measured 12m and were tipped with 10cm inch suckers. One night during World War II a British Admiralty trawler was lying off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. One of the crew, A. G. Starkey, was up on deck, alone, fishing, when he saw something in the water. It was a Giant Suid that stretched the length of the ship, which was over one hundred and seventy five feet long.		A big cephalopod corpse found by De Witt Webb near St Augustine beach (USA, Flo.) in 1896. The decaying carcass weighed more than 5 tons !

Modern technology has enabled us to witness these mighty battles deep in the ocean. Pictured above is a giant squid have luncheon a large shark.

We know the giant squid feeds on whales from eye-witness accounts. In 1966, two lighthouse keepers at Danger Point, South Africa, observed a baby southern right whale under attack from a giant squid. For an hour and a half the monster clung to the whale trying to drown it. In 1965, a Soviet whaler watched a battle between a squid and a 40 ton sperm whale. In this case neither were victorious. The strangled whale was found floating in the sea with the squid's tentacles wrapped around the whale's throat. The squid's severed head was found in the whale's stomach.