Giant Squid (Architeuthis
dux)
In Herman Melville’s classic book Moby-Dick, the author describes a true sea monster: “A vast pulpy mass lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to catch at any hapless object within reach.” He was describing the giant squid (aka Kraken), a creature that has terrified mariners for centuries.
The description of this pulpy mass is a true fact: the giant squid is an invertebrate, and it is the largest known invertebrate in the world today. It has never been proven that these massive squid have ever really attacked a ship, but they do have eight destructively long tentacles with powerful suction cups. They are the main prey of sperm whales and have long fights to see if the whale will get a meal or not. The sperm whales are left with suction cup marks from the squids huge suction cups.
Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea further describes the giant squid: "It was a squid of colossal dimensions, fully eight meters long…It gazed with enormous, staring eyes…Its eight arms…like the serpentine hair of the Furies…The monster's mouth—a beak made of horn and shaped like that of a parrot…Its tongue…armed with several rows of sharp teeth…What a freak of nature! A bird's beak on a mollusk!"
Reaching up to 60 feet in length, the giant squid is positively the largest know mollusk. Part of the cephalopod class which includes smaller squid and octopus, it moves through the water using jet propulsion to catch what ever it can, latching on with long tentacles and devouring the prey like a true carnivore utilizing its’ powerful beak.
This amazing deep sea creature lives down to a depth of 10,000 feet . Its range includes the entire globe. It is one of the few deep sea creatures that can survive a trip to the ocean's surface. Most of what we know about giant squid comes from the captures of dead specimens collected by fishermen and the odd squid that washes ashore. During many of the recent attempts to capture a live giant squid on robotic camera, we have discovered that Archteuthis dux remains one of the more elusive creatures on the planet. As in days of old, this giant mollusk continues to capture our imagination.
In Herman Melville’s classic book Moby-Dick, the author describes a true sea monster: “A vast pulpy mass lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to catch at any hapless object within reach.” He was describing the giant squid (aka Kraken), a creature that has terrified mariners for centuries.
The description of this pulpy mass is a true fact: the giant squid is an invertebrate, and it is the largest known invertebrate in the world today. It has never been proven that these massive squid have ever really attacked a ship, but they do have eight destructively long tentacles with powerful suction cups. They are the main prey of sperm whales and have long fights to see if the whale will get a meal or not. The sperm whales are left with suction cup marks from the squids huge suction cups.
Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea further describes the giant squid: "It was a squid of colossal dimensions, fully eight meters long…It gazed with enormous, staring eyes…Its eight arms…like the serpentine hair of the Furies…The monster's mouth—a beak made of horn and shaped like that of a parrot…Its tongue…armed with several rows of sharp teeth…What a freak of nature! A bird's beak on a mollusk!"
Reaching up to 60 feet in length, the giant squid is positively the largest know mollusk. Part of the cephalopod class which includes smaller squid and octopus, it moves through the water using jet propulsion to catch what ever it can, latching on with long tentacles and devouring the prey like a true carnivore utilizing its’ powerful beak.
This amazing deep sea creature lives down to a depth of 10,000 feet . Its range includes the entire globe. It is one of the few deep sea creatures that can survive a trip to the ocean's surface. Most of what we know about giant squid comes from the captures of dead specimens collected by fishermen and the odd squid that washes ashore. During many of the recent attempts to capture a live giant squid on robotic camera, we have discovered that Archteuthis dux remains one of the more elusive creatures on the planet. As in days of old, this giant mollusk continues to capture our imagination.