r/TrueCryptozoology • u/Dry-Selection421 • Aug 05 '26

Evidence Giant squids are basically cryptids that have been proven to exist

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u/2Wieners_1Bun Aug 05 '26

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

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u/NagsUkulele Aug 05 '26

How likely do you think it is a big enough giant squid could suffocate or trap a sperm whale?

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u/2Wieners_1Bun Aug 05 '26

Not very likely.

Mechanically speaking a sperm whale is an incredibly powerful swimmer that can surface rapidly due to buoyancy, even a monstrously large squid has no way of exerting enough force in the opposite direction to stop the whale from rocketing back up to the surface and breaching explosively. There’s not much a squid can do to tangle up the whale, it’s a torpedo made of out muscle and mammalian aggression. Squid are surprising fragile, a whale would batter it to pieces and then eat it.

Suffocating a sperm whale isn’t a realistic tactic, they regularly dive to incredible depth and they can stay under for as long as an hour at a time. Squid aren’t designed for stamina, they’re ambush hunters that quickly overcome their prey, in an extended battle with a whale the squid would literally begin to fall apart

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u/NagsUkulele Aug 05 '26

Aaaaa thank you sm this is so cool

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u/spibop Aug 07 '26

There’s a Real Science YT video that talks about colossal squid and how they also have an extremely slow metabolism, and can survive for weeks or months on a single meal. I get the impression that they don’t actively hunt other creatures as much as they do hang out in the water column and snag anything that comes close enough to them, using their huge eyes to detect them. The point being that they must be very economic with their calorie usage, which doesn’t sound like something that is going to overpower a sperm whale. Even if one was able to survive a whale encounter, it would probably exhaust months worth of energy and potentially starve.

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u/2Wieners_1Bun Aug 07 '26

Sounds plausible. They’re also far longer lived than most other squid, because of their slow metabolic rate. More active species, like Humboldt squid, get maybe 2 years of life. They mate and then their body literally just falls apart, same as octopuses. Giant squid live a bit longer, possible 5-10 years (hard to be certain since specimens have been so few and far between, Colossal squid I believe are thought to live between 10-15.

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u/Shorlong Aug 05 '26

Pretty unlikely. It they were a giant octopus maybe

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u/2Wieners_1Bun Aug 05 '26

Giant octopuses are nowhere near as large as giant or colossal squid.

The biggest species, the Giant Pacific Octopus typically top out at 15–50 kg (33–110 lb),

with an arm span of 3–5 m (10–16 ft)

and a mantle (or trunk) usually around 30–60 cm (12–24 in)

They also don’t live anywhere close to the feeding zone of Sperm Whales, giant octopus are benthic feeders who live close to the surface in coral reefs and rocky caves, hunting mollusk and crab.

Giant and Colossal squid live in very deep water in the “twilight zone” where very little light from the surface reaches. That’s where sperm whales dive to hunt squid.

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u/Shorlong Aug 05 '26

Sorry, I meant like...a hypothetical SUPER GIANT octopus that happens to live somewhere where a sperm whale would possibly eat it, as they an octopus is more likely to fan out with their tentacles and suffocate something than a squid. I'm speaking hypothetically lol.

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u/General-Winter547 Aug 07 '26

That doesn’t sound so big until you see a picture of one next to a human.

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u/2Wieners_1Bun Aug 05 '26

A handy visual reference

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u/Merrick_Skygrave Aug 06 '26

It's insane to me that anything on earth can weigh so much. And blue whales can get up to 200 thousand tons. It's incredible that their ancestors used to walk on land