Artwork from ancient Greece depicts what appear to be giant squids attacking fishing boats; antique Japanese woodcuts show similar creatures locked in mortal combat with whales; and Viking legends tell of the terrifying Kraken, a beast so massive it was often (and quite fatally) mistaken by sailors for land. Aristole and Pliny the Elder wrote about them, as did novelists Herman Melville and Jules Verne centuries later.
There seemed to be plenty of evidence suggesting the existence of some sort of species of supersized squid swimming the seas, but for the longest time there wasn’t any kind of scientific proof to support it. until 1861, when the French gunboat Alecton encountered one off of the Canary Islands. They managed to harpoon and eventually kill the beast after an epic struggle. Unfortunately, when they tried to drag their oversized prize back on board, the rope snapped and most of the monster sank back into the water. Only its tail survived, but it was enough to prove the legend wasn’t a tall tale..
Thimble Tickle's Giant Squid
Shortly after this discovery, giant squids inexplicably began washing up en masse on the shores of Newfoundland. Nobody is quite sure why. All of the beached squid were dead by the time they were discovered except the largest of them all - which remains the largest ever officially recorded - a monster still alive and flailing when three fishermen came across it at Thimble Tickle Bay on November 2, 1878. The men managed to hook the dying beast, which had ran aground in the shallow waters of an ebb tide, with a grapnel and then tied it to a tree to keep it from washing back out to sea.
The squid’s carcass was measured at seven metres long (20 feet), with 11-metre (35-foot) tentacles covered in 40-centimetre (15-inch) wide suckers, and was estimated to weigh around 2 metric tons. The miraculous scientific discovery was then promptly chopped up and turned into dog food.
The Atlantic Giant squid (Architeuthis dux) is one of the scariest looking creatures in the entire animal kingdom. The world’s largest known invertebrate, these torpedo-shaped carnivorous mollusks have eight arms covered in razor-sharp suckers, two specially-designed tentacles to draw prey into their gaping maws, three hearts and even a beak; they also have the ability to change their skin color to blend into their surroundings and can release black ink in order to blind and confuse their prey. Their enormous eyes - bigger than a human head - are the largest of any animal living or extinct, and they can lurk at depths in which the water pressure is enough to a crush a submarine.
Survivors of Squid Attack
Newfoundland is also one of the only places in the world where anyone has survived an attack. Five years before to the discovery of the Thimble Tickle squid, three fishermen on Conception Bay - Daniel Squires, Theophilus Piccot and twelve-year-old Tom Piccot - rowed over to a mysterious floating mound and made the mistake of poking it with a hook. The startled squid attacked, wrapping a tentacle around their dory and drawing the terrified trio towards its waiting jaws. Fortunately, young Tom managed to get his hands on a handy hatchet and was able to sever one of its arms, causing it to retreat. The fishermen managed to make it back to shore with the severed arm still clinging to their dory, which was measured at 5.8 metres (19 feet) long. (The severed arm, not the dory.)
While the Thimble Tickle squid is the largest on record—since commemorated with a 17-metre (55-foot) statue in nearby Glovers Harbour—there are likely to be much bigger ones out there. Fifty-centimeter (18-inch) sucker scars found on whale carcasses suggest some could be as large as 36 metres (120 feet) long, although this isn't certain because the scars would grow at the same rate the whale does. But sperm whales are the giant squid’s only known predator, which is all the more amazing given that the squids are often the same length as a whale.
References
Eyden, P. “Cretaceous Giant Squid”, The Octopus News Magazine Online, 2004.
Andrew Fleming - Andrew Fleming is a freelance writer based in Vancouver and the author of several alleged humour books. He has a perfectly sensible BA in ...
