Top Photo Credit: The Alecton crew tries to catch a giant squid. From “20000 leagues under the seas” by Jules Verne. Reference: Andreas Fehrmann.

From Myth To Reality

When the Nautilus returns to the Atlantic Ocean, a “poulpe” (usually translated as a giant squid, although the French “poulpe” means “octopus”) attacks the vessel and devours a crew member.

Excerpt from Chapter XVIII of Jules Verne’s fantastic tale of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea:

    “Well,” said Conseil, with the most serious air in the world; “I
remember perfectly to have seen a large vessel drawn under the waves
by a cephalopod’s arm.”
    “You saw that?” said the Canadian.
    “Yes, Ned.”
    “With your own eyes?”
    “With my own eyes.”
    “Where, pray, might that be?”
    “At St. Malo,” answered Conseil.
    “In the port?” said Ned, ironically.
    “No; in a church,” replied Conseil.
    “In a church!” cried the Canadian.
    “Yes; friend Ned. In a picture representing the poulp in
question.”
    “Good!” said Ned Land, bursting out laughing.
    “He is quite right,” I said. “I have heard of this picture; but
the subject represented is taken from a legend, and you know what to
think of legends in the matter of natural history. Besides, when it is
a question of monsters, the imagination is apt to run wild. Not only
is it supposed that these poulps can draw down vessels, but a
certain Olaus Magnus speaks of a cephalopod a mile long, that is
more like an island than an animal. It is also said that the Bishop of
Nidros was building an altar on an immense rock. Mass finished, the
rock began to walk, and returned to the sea. The rock was a poulp.
Another bishop, Pontoppidan, speaks also of a poulp on which a
regiment of cavalry could maneuver. Lastly, the ancient naturalists
speak of monsters whose mouths were like gulfs, and which were too
large to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar.”
    “But how much is true of these stories?” asked Conseil.
    “Nothing, my friends; at least of that which passes the limit of
truth to get to fable or legend. Nevertheless, there must be some
ground for the imagination of the story-tellers. One cannot deny
that poulps and cuttlefish exist of a large species, inferior,
however, to the cetaceans. Aristotle had stated the dimensions of a
cuttlefish as five cubits, or nine feet two inches. Our fishermen
frequently see some that are more than four feet long. Some
skeletons of poulps are preserved in the museums of Trieste and
Montpellier, that measure two yards in length. Besides, according to
the calculations of some naturalists, one of these animals, only six
feet long, would have tentacles twenty-seven feet long. That would
suffice to make a formidable monster.”
    “Do they fish for them in these days?” asked Ned.
    “If they do not fish for them, sailors see them at least. One of
my friends, Captain Paul Bos of Havre, has often affirmed that he
met one of these monsters, of colossal dimensions, in the Indian seas.
But the most astonishing fact, and which does not permit of the denial
of the existence of these gigantic animals, happened some years ago,
in 1861.”
    “What is the fact?” asked Ned Land.
    “This is it. In 1861, to the north-east of Teneriffe, very
nearly in the same latitude we are in now, the crew of the despatch
boat Alector perceived a monstrous cuttlefish swimming in the
waters. Captain Bouguer went near to the animal, and attacked it
with harpoons and guns, without much success, for balls and harpoons
glided over the soft flesh. After several fruitless attempts, the crew
tried to pass a slip-knot round the body of the mollusk. The noose
slipped as far as the caudal fins, there stopped. They tried then to
haul it on board, but its weight was so considerable that the
tightness of the cord separated the tail from the body, and,
deprived of this ornament, he disappeared under the water.”
    “Indeed! is that a fact?”
    “An indisputable fact, my good Ned. They proposed to name this
poulp ‘Bouguer’s cuttlefish.’”
    “What length was it?” asked the Canadian.
    “Did it not measure about six yards?” said Conseil, who, posted at
the window, was examining again the irregular windings of the cliff.
    “Precisely,” I replied.
    “Its head,” rejoined Conseil, “was it not crowned with eight
tentacles, that beat the water like a nest of serpents?”
    “Precisely.”
    “Had not its eyes, placed at the back of its head, considerable
development?”
    “Yes, Conseil.”
    “And was not its mouth like a parrot’s beak?”
    “Exactly, Conseil.”
    “Very well! no offence to master,” he replied, quietly; “if this
is not Bouguer’s cuttlefish, it is, at least one of its brothers.”
    I looked at Conseil. Ned Land hurried to the window.
    “What a horrible beast!” he cried.
    I looked in my turn, and could not repress a gesture of disgust.
Before, my eyes was a horrible monster, worthy to figure in the
legends of the marvelous. It was an immense cuttlefish, being eight
yards long. It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with
great speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes. Its
eight arms, or rather feet, fixed to its head, that have given the
name of cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body,
and were twisted like the furies’ hair. One could see the 250
air-holes on the inner side of the tentacles. The monster’s mouth, a
horned beak like a parrot’s, opened and shut vertically. Its tongue, a
horned substance, furnished with several rows of pointed teeth, came
out quivering from this veritable pair of shears.
    What a freak of nature, a bird’s beak on a mollusk! Its
spindle-like body formed a fleshy mass that might weigh 4,000 to 5,000
lbs.; the varying color changing with great rapidity, according to the
irritation of the animal, passed successively from livid gray to
reddish brown. What irritated this mollusk? No doubt the presence of
the Nautilus, more formidable than itself, and on which its suckers or
its jaws had no hold. Yet, what monsters these poulps are! what
vitality the Creator has given them! what vigor in their movements!
and they possess three hearts! Chance had brought us in the presence
of this cuttlefish, and I did not wish to lose the opportunity of
carefully studying this specimen of cephalopods. I overcame the horror
that inspired me; and, taking a pencil, began to draw it.
    “Perhaps this is the same which the Alecto saw,” said Conseil.
    “No,” replied the Canadian; “for this is whole, and the other
had lost its tail.”
    “That is no reason,” I replied. “The arms and tails of these
animals are reformed by redintegration; and in seven years, the tail
of Bouguer’s cuttlefish has no doubt had time to grow.”
    By this time other poulps appeared at the port light. I counted
seven. They formed a procession after the Nautilus, and I heard
their beaks gnashing against the iron hull. I continued my work. These
monsters kept in the water with such precision, that they seemed
immovable. Suddenly the Nautilus stopped. A shock made it tremble in
every plate.
    “Have we struck anything?” I asked.
    “In any case,” replied the Canadian, “we shall be free, for we are
floating.”
    The Nautilus was floating, no doubt, but it did not move. A minute
passed. Captain Nemo, followed by his lieutenant, entered the
drawing-room. I had not seen him for some time. He seemed dull.
Without noticing or speaking to us, he went to the panel, looked at
the poulps, and said something to his lieutenant. The latter went out.
Soon the panels were shut. The ceiling was lighted. I went towards the
Captain.
    “A curious collection of poulps?” I said.
    “Yes, indeed, Mr. Naturalist,” he replied; “and we are going to
fight them, man to beast.”
    I looked at him. I thought I had not heard aright.
    “Man to beast?” I repeated.
    “Yes, Sir. The screw is stopped. I think that the horny jaws of
one of the cuttlefish are entangled in the blades. That is what
prevents our moving.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “Rise to the surface, and slaughter this vermin.”
    “A difficult enterprise.”
    “Yes, indeed. The electric bullets are powerless against the
soft flesh, where they do not find resistance enough to go off. But we
shall attack them with the hatchet.”
    “And the harpoon, Sir,” said the Canadian, “if you do not refuse
my help.”
    “I will accept it, Master Land.”
    “We will follow you,” I said, and following Captain Nemo, we
went towards the central staircase.
    There, about ten men with boarding hatchets were ready for the
attack. Conseil and I took two hatchets; Ned Land seized a harpoon.
The Nautilus had then ren to the surface. One of the sailors, posted
on the top ladderstep, unscrewed the bolts of the panels. But hardly
were the screws loosed, when the panel rose with great violence,
evidently drawn by the suckers of a poulp’s arm. Immediately one of
these arms slid like a serpent down the opening, and twenty others
were above. With one blow of the axe, Captain Nemo cut this formidable
tentacle, that slid wriggling down the ladder. Just as we were
pressing one on the other to reach the platform, two other arms,
lashing the air, came down on the seaman placed before Captain Nemo,
and lifted him up with irresistible power. Captain Nemo uttered a cry,
and rushed out. We hurried after him.
    What a scene! The unhappy man, seized by the tentacle, and fixed
to the suckers, was balanced in the air at the caprice of this
enormous trunk. He rattled in his throat, he was stifled, he cried,
“Help! help!” These words, spoken in French, startled me! I had a
fellow countryman on board, perhaps several! That heartrending cry!
I shall hear it all my life. The unfortunate man was lost. Who could
rescue him from that powerful pressure? However, Captain Nemo had
rushed to the poulp, and with one blow of the axe had cut through
one arm. His lieutenant struggled furiously against other monsters
that crept on the flanks of the Nautilus. The crew fought with their
axes. The Canadian, Conseil, and I, buried our weapons in the fleshy
masses; a strong smell of musk penetrated the atmosphere. It was
horrible!
    For one instant, I thought the unhappy man, entangled with the
poulp, would be torn from its powerful suction. Seven of the eight
arms had been cut off. One only wriggled in the air, brandishing the
victim like a feather. But just as Captain Nemo and his lieutenant
threw themselves on it, the animal ejected a stream of black liquid We
were blinded with it. When the cloud dispersed, the cuttlefish had
disappeared, and my unfortunate countryman with it. Ten or twelve
poulps now invaded the platform and sides of the Nautilus. We rolled
pell-mell into the nest of serpents that wriggled on the platform in
the waves of blood and ink. It seemed as though these slimy
tentacles sprang up like the hydra’s heads. Ned Land’s harpoon, at
each stroke, was plunged into the staring eyes of the cuttlefish.
But my bold companion was suddenly overturned by the tentacles of a
monster he had not been able to avoid.
    Ah! how my heart beat with emotion and horror! The formidable beak
of a cuttlefish was open over Ned Land. The unhappy man would be cut
in two. I rushed to his succor. But Captain Nemo was before me; his
axe disappeared between the two enormous jaws, and miraculously
saved the Canadian, rising, plunged his harpoon deep into the triple
heart of the poulp.
    “I owed myself this revenge!” said the captain to the Canadian.
    Ned bowed without replying. The combat had lasted a quarter of
an hour. The monsters, vanquished and mutilated, left us at last,
and disappeared under the waves. Captain Nemo, covered with blood,
nearly exhausted gazed upon the sea that had swallowed up one of his
companions, and great tears gathered in his eyes.

Up to the middle of the 19th century, the giant squid was a sea monster from ancient legends, about which science only knew what tales sailors and fishermen told. Olaus Magnus in the 16th century, Egede and Pontoppidan in the 18th century, had described the kraken. The mostly exaggerated tales from the middle ages more look like a cock-and-bull story than scientific reports.

Whale hunters reported, that sperm whales in their death throes often disgorged something that resembled a squid’s arms, only it was much larger. When the whale was cut open, often they found horn beaks the size of their hands, resembling a parrot’s beak. The whalers concluded, that sperm whales fought with giant squids in the deep. Herman Melville concurs, 1851 in “Moby Dick” he describes the encounter of his whale ship Pequod with a giant squid.

It was not until three years after the Pequod’s literary encounter with the giant squid, that the subject was first dealt with scientifically.

The Danish scientist Japetus Steenstrup received the beak, the shell and some suckers of a giant squid, that had been washed ashore a year previously on the Danish coast. He compared the material with corresponding organs of smaller squid species and concluded that it had to have belonged to a giant squid species, which he named Architeuthis, the first and largest of the squids. The genus Architeuthis Steenstrup 1856 until today means the giant squids from the Atlantic.

A large part of the scientific research on giant squids at that time is closely connected with Newfoundland Island in the Northwest of America.

Twenty years after Steenstrup had described the giant squid Architeuthis, in 1873 a giant squid attacked a small fisher boat near Portugal Cove, but withdrew, after the fishermen had hacked off two of its arms. Those arms, parts of the larger tentacles, were taken ashore and so got into the hands of Reverend Harvey in nearby St. John’s. Harvey examined the arm parts, described the fishermen’s fight in several newspaper articles and then sent the arm parts to the biologist Verrill in New Haven, Connecticut. Two months later the fishermen in the Logy Bay, also Newfoundland, managed, so to speak to catch the Big One.

They managed to catch a giant squid nine metres (27 feet) long and to take it ashore. Reverend Harvey bought the giant squid and had it photographed in his living room. Afterwards he sent it to Professor Verril who conformed what had been assumed for some time so far: Architheuthis exists and it is really a giant squid.

Since then several hundred specimens of giant squids have been caught and washed ashore in different species (three distinct species are assured, there are numerous more insecure species) all over the world. The last specimen was washed ashore on the 22nd of June 2002 in Tasmania on the South coast of Australia.

Of the giant squid’s biology, only the morphology has so far been researched. Until today nobody has managed to observe giant squids in their natural environment. Giant squids have been caught with dragnets from the ocean floor, as well as with floating nets in the open sea. So today it is assumed that giant squids live in depths of 300 to 1000 metres (1000 to 3000 feet) on the continental shelf’ slope. As beaks of juvenile giants squids have been found in the stomachs of albatrosses and certain fish, it is also assumed that giant squids dive into ever deeper water during their live.

Giant squids are cephalopods (Cephalopoda). They have ten arms altogether, of which two long tentacles with club-like broadened ends armed with suckers to catch the prey.

Eight short arm around the mouth then guide the prey to the mouth. There a horn beak cuts the prey in small pieces, that are then further ground by the radula. While freshly caught squids and those washed ashore usually appear white, their natural colour is supposed to be red. Those squids appear to be white, because the outer layers of the skin have been grazed off by the surf.

Giant squids are often said to effuse a disgusting smell of ammonia. That is because giant squids are among those squid species that keep ammonia in the muscular tissue to enhance buoyancy. It is assumed that giant squids can float in the water that way, without having to invest muscle power. So for humans giant squids are indigestible. The contrary is fact, however, with sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus). A large part if a sperm whale’s diet consists of squids, among those also giant ones. As described before, in the stomachs of sperm whales, collections of squid beaks can be found. Sperm whales’ skin often carry the scars of giant squids’ suckers armed with teeth. The idea to calculate the squid’s size from those scars is made more difficult by the fact that sperm whales, of course, grow and so the result is falsified.

In contrary to sperm whales, giant squids orient optically. As among smaller squid species, a giant squid’s eyes are large in relation to its body. Those larges optical organs in the animal kingdom are as big as a soup plate.

There are also interesting things to be said about giant squids’ methods of reproduction. Female giant squids have been caught with spermatophores (sperm packets, see also snails’ reproduction) in their arm tissue, supposedly placed there by males. It remains unclear, how the female gets hold of the sperm cells to fertilise any eggs. It is assumed either the female opens the spermatophores on its own, or that the spermatophores are removed hormonally from the tissue. Even young females have been caught with very many implanted spermatophores, which leads to the conclusion, that giant squids are solitary and rarely meet other giant squids.

Very little is known about giant squids’ behaviour. The assumption is that they are not highly active hunters like their smaller relatives, but carrion eaters and lurking hunters. In giant squids’ stomachs, fish and other squids have been found. Because of he ammonia in giant squids’ musculature, for a long time the assumption has been that giant squids are slow lurking animals. This may be doubted after the first movie pictures of a live giant squid, which instead point towards giant squids being highly aggressive hunters.

Large sea animals, like sperm whales, are however not among their usual prey. So it may be called sure that sperm whales hunt the giant squid and not the other way round.

Much of giant squids’ biology is either unknown, are must be concluded, together with the anatomical material present, from the behaviour of smaller, better known squid species.

For a long time, the experiment to supply sperm whales with cameras, to film giant squids, have been without success. 2004 Japanese scientists (Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum and Kyoichi Mori of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association) managed to film a live giant squid with a network a cameras. Because the giant squid lost parts of an arm in the process, even DNA research was possible.

In the meantime there have been impressive observations of the multiple possibilities to use tentacles, as well as giant squids’ bioluminescence, used for hunting as well as for communication.

Certainly, today we know much more about giant squids, as did Japetus Steenstrup. But we hardly can say to know everything about those creatures living in the deepest parts of the sea. And so even the giant squid, at least partly, will always remain a mystery, until the progress of technology allows man to finally completely reveal this secret of nature.

Reference: www.molluscs.at/cephalopoda/giant_squid.html