#头条创作挑战赛 #
Kraken legends have been around for thousands of years.
huge shadows lurking underwater; indescribable tentacles peeking out of the abyss; the terrifying power that shakes the giant ship; Huge eyes that breathe... Everything makes humanity terrified. However, these descriptive characteristics make it easy for us to define their identity as a squid, after all, it is all right, that is, the body size is outrageous.
Since the legend will be a legend, it is naturally a little exaggerated, since such a big "siren" does not exist, but the largest known squid in the world is already quite amazing.
Depending on how it is measured, there are two contenders for the laurels of the megalomaniac squid. The king squid is the longest squid, while the king squid is the heaviest. To insert a mouthful, squid and squid belong to the squid family, but they belong to the genus Squid and Squid.
Compete for the crown
According to the information currently available, the king squid can reach a maximum of 12 to 14 meters from the tip of the body to the tip of the tentacle and weighs up to 270 kilograms. Juggins, a cephalopod expert at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, believes that such body length is somewhat conservative, according to him, a 20-meter-long king squid was witnessed in Cape Town, South Africa. But this claim has not been confirmed.
The king squid that lives in the Antarctic Sea and may travel as far north as New Zealand is only about 9-10 meters long, and it obviously loses a lot in length. Although the overall length is insufficient, its weight makes up for this deficiency, as the king squid can weigh up to 450 kg. According to Oceana, a marine nonprofit, this could make the king squid the world's largest invertebrate.
In short, according to the information currently known, these two species can compete for the largest squid, and who is the largest must be judged according to the way of measurement.
They are all the best
According to a 2012 study in the journal Current Biology, although they differ in weight and length, they all have the largest eyes of any mollusk, perhaps even the largest ever seen in the animal kingdom. Their eyes are 27 centimeters wide, about the size of a football. Their eyes are also equipped with a light-emitting organ called a luminescence, which allows them to see clearly in the dark.
Their huge size naturally leads to huge beaks, which are made of materials similar to human nails. They use their beaks to cut food into bite-sized pieces of food, and then a tooth-covered tongue-like organ called a toothed tongue further chops the food.
Their food choices are fish and other squid, as for who can eat them. According to the Museum of New Zealand, when they reach adulthood, only sperm whales are their regular predators. Even they can account for 77% of sperm whales' diet, such a large proportion, which proves the prevalence of sperm whales preying on them, so the statement that giant squid and sperm whales on the Internet fight back and forth is obviously false.
postscript
Most of what scientists know about these giant squids comes from their carcasses, some floating on the sea, some washed up on the beach after death, and some found in the stomachs of sperm whales. Therefore, the study of them can be said to be slow, after all, many characteristics are lost after death.
Scientists didn't photograph adult giant squid in their natural habitat until 2004, and it wasn't until 2012 that the first video of an adult giant squid in the wild was taken. Therefore, it is still very early to study them, and it may be possible to find larger squid in the future, but at this stage, it is difficult to understand the existing squid.