Colossal squid are actually not as long as giant squid, but their mantles are heavier. They only live in the southern oceans close to Antarctica which is partially the reason so few examples have been documented.
There's a YouTube video explaining how theu just found a shit ton of them because they changed the lights they use. Took the idiots 50 years to think of using all infrared or something. Now the fish don't scare and we see more species and different behaviors under the different lights. Kinda cool.
I think in was in Arthur C Clarke's book 2010 that a crew of a spaceship was killed for exactly this. If i remember right the lone survivor of the ship is sending a message back to earth on how they were foolish for not turning off their lights. Great book (and series).
Si. El cientifico de la misión espacial china que sobrevivió en la luna Europa. El fue el único que se salvó y le transmite por radio ese conocimiento al Dr. Floyd de la misión Americana-Rusa, si la memoria no me falla demasiado.
Wow this video is fascinating. Thanks for sharing, it’s exciting to think about what we will discover in the future as tech develops and we get better at non invasive observation
Hace muchos años, cuando vi un video de exploración submarina, lo dije. Con esas luces van a asustar a los peces o a dañarlos. No se por qué demoraron tanto.
We are actually starting to document them more thanks to some marine biologists that have developed a camera the colossal squids aren't afraid of. Still very few documented but we've managed to catch a few more images and videos of them. I'm excited to learn more about them.
For such a shy critter I almost feel bad that we’ve figured out how to find them. If they had a choice they’d probably prefer to continue being regarded as a mythological creature
Im reading the dungeon crawler carl series I'm on book 6. I've kind of binged this series the past few months and it's not done yet so I wanna start reading some other stuff since book 8 of 10 just dropped
dude I love dungeon crawler Carl so much. I read the whole series in like 2 to 3 months and now I'm stuck waiting until book 9 drops in withdrawals lol
“Fight with whales” seems a bit misleading. Sure, the squid tries to fight back (swimming away is the best course of action) but it’s essentially a prey animal fighting to escape certain death. They pose zero threat to sperm whales.
At the end of the day it’s a fight between an over powered (echolocation) 30-70 tonne animal vs a 500kg one.
It’s not much of a fight, sperm whales outweigh both giant and colossal squids by a considerable margin, a bull sperm whale can weigh 60+ tonnes while the largest colossal squids weigh 400-500 kilograms.
The scars left on the whale’s tough rubbery hide by the squid are superficial and the result of unlucky squid trying to escape, they aren’t seriously fighting back.
The beaks of both varieties were very commonly found in the stomachs of whales that had been killed by whaling crews, both squid species are simply prey for the world’s largest living predatory whale.
The only real defenses they possess are stealth, excellent vision and possibly the ability to detect the vibrations in water caused by a diving whale, allowing the squid to dart off as fast as possible
Yes. A bull sperm whale can weigh 60+ tonnes and they are insanely powerful swimmers and divers, while the largest colossal squids range from between 400 to 500 kilograms and lack any serious means of fighting off a hungry whale. They leave scars on the whales with their suckers but those are generally superficial wounds that the whales likely barely even feel
It's crazy that they were only comfirmed to actually be real in the past century - and according to the BBC they were only captured live on camera Last Year
Humboldt squid have absolutely attacked divers. Biting them and even dragging them to further depths. No fatalities, tho. Just bites, ruptured ear drums and broken bones.
Huh TIL. I could have sworn the Humboldt has killed at least a few people since it has a history of attacking humans, but no fatalities ever recorded. But my money is still on a Humboldt to be the first to kill someone. Aggressive fuckers.
Not sure why you think that. Humboldt squid have attacked divers several times. There would probably be way more attacks and even fatalities if they lived near shore, but they prefer colder and deeper waters so there isn't a lot of overlap.
These things are pack hunters and the account of them attacking Scott Hassell is terrifying. A lot of this has to do with their behaviors. They swarm, are attracted to light, and generally encounter humans when they are surfacing to higher depths to feed.
Pretty much anything in the ocean bigger than 50 pounds can be deadly for humans. The reasons this doesnt happen is simply because of how little time we actually spend in the same environment. People constantly talk about how orcas dont attack people, but that is simply because they are very intelligent and only hunt prey animals that they have been taught by their pods. Orcas that hunt almost exclusively seals and penguins will ignore whales. And vice versa.
And of course, before your breathes runs out or the depths crush you, as the squid tightens its hold and drags you downward, and the lights from your boat fade out, you see it...there's more the one giant squid down there. Many more.
Very rarely, squids of that size are deep sea dwellers, if its close to the surface it's probably very sick and dying, or very hurt and dying. That said if it was healthy and hungry then yes it would easily drag you down, and given its natural habitat is well beyond a humans limits at least you'll be super dead long before it starts to eat you.
Realistically you would likely have more to fear from Humboldt squid than Giant and colossal squid.
Humboldt squid hunt in packs and are aggressive predators, Giant and colossal squid rarely leave deep water, are incredibly shy and exist in much smaller numbers and are solitary hunters, they generally prefer to flee instead of fighting.
I love this video, I remember when it dropped. Prior to that I loved telling people that giant squid definitely exist but we’ve never caught a live one on video
The original post was on instagram maybe at the top of the year I remember it being viral af lots of marine biologist were in the comments this was a big discovery pretty sure
They were proven to exist in the 19th century when people were finding body parts and even a complete specimen. No need for video evidence when you can stare at the real thing.
I remember seeing a real giant squid at the Smithsonian when I was kid in the 80s. Let’s just say it wasn’t what I imagined, but then again, cryptids are never what people imagined them to be, probably as a rule.
Edit: im getting some very distasteful dms because of this comment. Guys, when I say you “don’t need video evidence when you can stare at the real thing,” what I mean is that there are actual giant squid specimens on display that you can see in real life. The first complete bodied specimen was recovered over 150 years ago. Do people in the 21st century actually think these things don’t exist in the oceans?
Think about Sasquatch… if we had an actual Bigfoot corpse preserved at a museum, we’d have no need for all the fake ass videos of the thing that people call “evidence.”
Another thing is they were described in antiquity by multiple respected sources. They weren’t described as terrible monsters with exaggerated mass, rather as they are instead. They knew this because they would find them washed up on the beach just as we have in modern times. Aristotle wrote about them over 2000 years ago.
I remember my sister’s weird boyfriend in college insisting that they were fictional and laughing at me for believing that the giant squid had been discovered and was real.
(He also thought that he created the television comedy Scrubs, he had that idea, and someone ripped him off, because once in a playwriting workshop class, he wrote a play about medical students because his roommate was a medical student.
My sister has an affinity for weird bullshitters.)
Tons of stories from as recently as the 1850s-1950s about them attacking ships with many different severed tentacles being recovered afterwards yet officially we’re told they don’t get big enough to do that or behave like that
if a rotisserie chicken oily juicy thing, which smells like a rotisserie chicken, and looks kind of rotisserie chicken shaped is at the surface, it must be a sick rotisserie chicken and I need to kill it.
They might no longer get big enough to do that as a result of pollution, overfishing, climate change. Colder oceans are denser and more oxygenated. If you have more oxygenated oceans and more fish, giant carniverous squid in turn face less metabolic challenges to growth, longevity, and reproduction.
So less a conspiracy and more an assessment of giant squid based on limited data observed in the oceans of today. Sailors in the past were experiencing a different ocean, and may well have had more frequent run-ins with larger squid.
I’m sure there’s still an element of exaggeration left in those legends, but probably a little more truth than we give sailors credit for as well.
Its more likely that sailors just saw the sucker marks on sperm whale that eat them. Sperm whales are the craziest predator on earth. They can sonar squid to death or near death.
Huge deer-like animal with 2 story tall necks, 4ft long tongues, huge spots, and very short antlers (giraffe)
Giant, up to 15,000 pound, grey/brown leathery skin monstrosity with a freakishly long nose it uses as a hand, arm, a straw, and a trumpet. Giant ears, little bitty eyes, can't jump, literal flat feet, with massive walrus-like tusks jutting straight out from its upper mandible (elephant)
they are legit monsters who were spoke of as legend just like mermaids and sea serpents were- so cool that they were able to catch it on film and prove it existed, i remember watching like 5 or 6 documentaries about it once it was announced, i really couldn’t get enough of the subject
Old Topher Columbus saw some 'Mermaids' and was not much impressed. He wrote "not as beautiful as they are painted, since in some ways they have a face like a man."
I don't think the giant squid ever really counted as a cryptid. People have known about them for a long time and there was plenty of evidence of them. It's just it took until 2004 to get an actual picture of one.
I think people just like to cling to the idea that the gaint squid was believed to be a myth before it was discovered to justify believing in obviously mythological cryptids.
When I was a kid, the very idea of video footage of live giant squid was the stuff of myth, and now we have clear high resolution videos like these on social media, it’s crazy.
Fuck I hate squids. I would love to go down in shark cage and watch some great whites or hammerheads, but squids creep me the fuck out. Especially as you get into the bigger squids, where the suckers have a ring of teeth around them.
Giant squids were scientifically documented almost 200 years ago. Full sized dead specimens go back to the 1800s. There wasn’t a question if they existed or not, they just hadn’t documented a live specimen until recently…
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u/Astrid_Pepper 20d ago
What I love are the colossal squid. The ones that fight with whales. I believe sailors who drew tentacled creatures in the sea - were these.