The legend of the Kraken


The Giant Squid is a real mysterious creature that has interested a lot of people because of its gigantic size. Not only now, but already hundreds and hundreds of years and in these years there's told a lot of stories about them. From Aristotle (4 the century B.C) to this very day, these creatures have always amazed a lot of people from any age. A very interesting story that's told about the gigantic squid is the Norwegian legend about the Kraken. The Kraken was a gigantic squid, with the size of an island that was able to sink any ship of any size.

Giant squids became very interesting in the scientific world after a portion of the Giant squid was secured, in 1861 by a French gunboat. Not long after this event a lot of other giant squids stranded at Newfoundland especially at the Thimble Tickle Bay. At the Thimble Tickle Bay, the first gigantic squid with a length of 10.7m was found. Then at the end of the 19 century there were found specimens on the coasts of New Zealand. The stranding of Giant Squids happen all around the world and why is a big question. Scientist think that the cause of these stranding has to do with the change of the deep cold water distribution. Frederick Aldrich thinks that it's all predictable and that they spawn each 90 years. He said that there would be a spawning between 1964-1969 and it was true.

The first young alive larval was found and captured on a video in 2001 by discovery channel.
Two years later there have been made real photos about the Giant squid in his natural habitat. Actually 900 km from Tokyo. They tried to catch one and they almost caught a 8 meters big squid, but the squid escaped after 4 hours! In that time the cameraman made over 500 photos about the Giant squid.

On September 2005 the photos of the Giant squid were released to the world by Kubodera and Mori. The photographs were taken at a depth of 900 meters. Look at the picture above, the squid attacked the bait, but escaped like described above. Finding the squids wasn't a mystery anymore said Kubodera :"Just follow the Sperm Whales because we know that they hunt squids".

In December 2005 the Melbourne Aquarium in Australia paid the fishermen that caught an intact body of a Gigantic squid covered in ice for 90.000$ ! The squid was caught at the New Zealand coast of the South Island. One year later the famous squid "Argie" was caught at the Falkland Islands. Argie was 8 meters long and was sent to the Natural History Museum of London to be examined and preserved.

Four December 2006 the last specimen that was caught on video, an adult giant squid with a length of 3 meters that weighed only 50kg. (see video )

Giant squids, also called the Architeuthis, are huge sea creatures that can grow up to 13 meters, but male creatures can only grow up to 10 meters. There are 8 species of giant squids like the colossal squid for example that can reach bigger sizes, there are even reported squids of 20 meters! They have eight arms and 2 long ones. They weigh hundreds of kilos and their top predator is the Sperm Whale who loves to eat squid. Attacking a Giant Squid isn't very easy, there have been found scars that were inflicted by Giant Squids on the head of Sperm Whales.

Giant Squids have complex brains and very big sensitive eyes, with a special body that's adapted to the deep seas. The Giant squid is one of the largest squids (colossal squid is the biggest one). Examining these squids is hard, but by finding pieces of squid in the bodies of the Sperm Whales it helped science a lot.

The first colossal squid that was caught!


Giant squids feed themselves  with other fishes and squids. They use their two longest arms to attack their pray and then they tear it apart with their big jaws. The giant squid appears everywhere around the world, but mainly they are found in the seas around Newfoundland, New Zealand and Japan. The specimens are rarely found in tropical or polar areas.