The amazing creature from the ocean depths, 200 kilograms and more than 4 meters long, was found on the coast of Britannia Bay, in South Africa.
People walking on the beach sighted the beast lying on the sand and recorded it in photo and video.
Protagonists of multiple legends of the ancient sailors, the giant squid are extremely elusive, since a live specimen was never photographed before 2002 and only one was filmed in 2006.
The giant squid’s history dates back to a history written in 1180 by King Sverre of Norway.
For ancient sailors, the sea was treacherous and dangerous, hiding a horde of monsters in its inconceivable depths. Any encounter with an unknown animal became mythological in the stories of the sailors. After all, the story grows in the narrative. But even after decades of searching, the giant squids had only been seen in photographs.
Finally, in July 2015, scientists recorded the first video of a living giant squid swimming about 2,000 feet (609 meters) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The images showed the elusive creature about 10 meters long. The largest squid on record, so far. So did this discovery open the door to the possibility that the kraken exists? Well, as a result of new and disturbing images, we can say yes.
This makes the group of people in South Africa, including Adéle Grosse, who filmed the video we share here, very fortunate to have had such a meeting on the beach. In the images you can clearly see the huge conical body of the beast, with its giant eyes – the largest in the animal kingdom -, its eight large tentacles, and its beak-shaped mouth.
These monsters live more than 3,000 meters below the surface of the ocean, hence the unusualness of their sightings. However, we are learning more about them every time thanks to new technologies and the specimens that appear every now and then on the beaches.
Earlier this year, the entire genome of a giant squid (Architeuthius doge) was sequenced for the first time, revealing that they have high intelligence, at the level of a dog.
After the find
Following the find, marine biologists from the Iziko Museum in South Africa were alerted to the giant squid. The animal has already been safeguarded and preserved, awaiting study.
Wayne Florence, curator of marine invertebrates, said that “it was surprising to see him there live” when asked about the creature.
“Lately we have had a great public interest in the subject, in fact, many people hardly know that these giants really exist!”
For now, there is no certainty what may have killed the sea creature, but scientists hope to find out soon, once restrictions on the coronavirus are eased.
“We can only determine the cause of death once we dissect the specimen,” said Florence. “Although he is in very good physical condition, so I think we can rule out something like trawling.”
“The giant squid is already in a museum freezer, and we have made preliminary measurements and taken skin samples for DNA analysis,” he concluded.
The kraken exists
Last year, photographer Deron Verbeck was in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii searching for sharks when he found a white shark with strange markings on its back. He knew something strange was happening.
What the photo revealed was that those were not just marks, but scars of what could be suction rings from a giant tentacle that quite possibly belonged to a gigantic creature. It turned out that the shark had gone deeper than normal in search of food, but something unexpected happened.
Verbeck immediately posted the quirky photo of the shark on his Facebook page, but after sending it to Florida International University shark ecologist Yannis Papastamatiou, he ordered him to remove it, immediately.
Apparently, no scientist had ever seen anything like it before, and Papastamatiou did not want the finding to be revealed until it was properly studied. Sharks are generally seen as top predators of the oceans, but what happens when two species from the top of the food chain clash?
Even stranger is that they usually don’t even meet. Sharks generally remain in the pelagic zone, but those tentacle scars (as seen in the shark pictured) probably came from a species of monster squid that lives at least a thousand feet deep, or perhaps evidence of the existence of the kraken.
“While the exact species could not be confirmed, the candidate species include the giant squid (Architeuthis dux), or species of the genera Thysanoteuthis rhombus (diamondback squid) and Megalocranchia (a species of crystal squid)”Papastamatiou said in a study published in the biological journal Journal of Fish Biology. “Telemetry shows that C. longimanus (whitetip sharks) will dive within the mesopelagic zone and can interact or even forage on large cephalopods.”
Apparently, hunger caused this shark to chase the Kraken-like creature, which must have been at least 10 meters long, based on the 8-meter tentacle that left those scars. Papastamatiou and colleagues believe that when the shark attempted to bite the creature, it faced an unexpected reaction.
Giant squids are also known to have sharp teeth embedded in their shoots for extra grip. While predators don’t always get along well with other predators in the wild, there has never been evidence that any shark faces an extremely large squid.
This also means that creatures that inhabit different areas of the ocean may not be as isolated as we thought. Because no one witnessed this Sharktopus sequel, there are still things that are still unclear. There is a possibility that the cephalopod was even larger, especially since the largest giant squid ever found was 13 meters long and it is believed to have weighed about a ton.
The colossal squid is an elusive species that is not far behind. It is known to be larger than a blue whale, but these giants are said to be around 14 meters long, with only their bodies occupying 2 to 4 meters in length. Much is unknown about them, since the only specimens closely studied have been pups.
There is a possibility that sharks are on the menu of the largest known invertebrate. While there is no evidence of colossal squid feeding on sharks, they are known to chase some fairly large fish, and even other species of deep-sea squid.
Biologists believe it was the shark that started the epic battle. There is a species of shark that supposedly hunts the colossal squid, the Pacific sleeper shark.
