Kraken is a giant sea monster in Norse mythology, which is said to be more than 150 meters long, with huge tentacles full of suction cups, and can surface to prey on whales and attack ships. Today we can be sure that Kraken does not exist, but one of its prototypes, the Great King Squid, is still shrouded in a veil of mystery and is described as a deep-sea troll with a body length of more than 30 meters!
Graphic note: Kraken, picture from the internet
Architeuthis, scientific name great king squid, belongs to the mollusk phylum in taxonomy - cephalopods - subclass - gun order - king squid family , is a giant cephalopod, in the entire family of invertebrates is also super large. The reason why the king squid is very mysterious is because they usually live in the deep ocean waters, in the past they were rarely captured by humans, and only the decaying remains that were occasionally washed up on the beach were found, so their knowledge is very limited.
Since the middle of the 20th century, with the development of distant-water fisheries, more and more king squid have been captured, and now there are nearly 800 individuals. It is precisely by relying on a large number of individual specimens that we have a deeper understanding of the king squid, so how big can the king squid grow?
Photo note: Rushing to the beach or being caught king squid, picture from the Internet
Steve O'Shea, a marine biologist at the University of Science and Technology in Auckland, New Zealand, a research expert on the King Squid, compared hundreds of King Squid specimens and confirmed that the largest known King Squid is 13 meters long and weighs 275 kilograms! This length is obviously far from the length of 30 meters in various stall pseudo-science, but it is still huge compared to humans, after all, a ferrous squid that we often eat can definitely scare people to death if it suddenly becomes hundreds of times larger!
Illustration: Comparison of the size of the largest individual king squid with human size, the picture comes from the network
Although the king squid is not as large as we think, it is still a giant animal in terms of length, but its length is mostly virtual, because it is a slender tentacle, and the body part (carcass length) of a 13-meter-long individual is actually only 2.25 meters. Judging from the individuals currently caught and found, the female is significantly larger than the male, and the largest known male king squid is only 10 meters long and weighs only 150 kilograms.
Breaking the myth of the size of the king squid, let's talk about its combat effectiveness. We often see paintings of the king squid and the sperm whale fighting in the deep sea, two trolls desperately trying to kill each other, and the winner will feed on the loser. In fact, sperm whales are the natural enemies of the king squid, and the definition of natural enemies is that in nature, one organism specializes in preying on or endangering another organism, and the analysis of interspecific relationships in the biome can be either predatory or parasitic. Therefore, the king squid is actually the food of sperm whales, and it is a staple food. Why do you think sperm whales always dive into the deep sea up to 2,000 meters deep? Of course, it's for the sake of the squid, but they're eating big squid , the king squid!
Photo note: Sperm whale preys on the king squid, the picture comes from the network
The king squid is so big, doesn't he have the ability to fight back at all? There really isn't, the average body length of the sperm whale can reach 16 meters, the weight of 40 tons, compared with the king squid is like a 1.8 meter strong man and 1 meter high broom, there is no possibility of confrontation. As for the so-called king squid, it can be choked to death by blocking the nostrils of the sperm whale with a suction cup, don't you know that the sperm whale can hold its breath for two hours without breathing at a time? If you want to kill a sperm whale, you really have a lot of ideas! Since sperm whales prey on king squid are done in the deep sea, we have not yet recorded a picture of sperm whales preying on king squid, but a few years ago we did take photos of sperm whales playing with a tentacle of the king squid.
Image note: Sperm whale compared to human body size, image from the network
Photo note: Sperm whales are eating the tentacles of the king squid, the image is from the internet
Although we were not able to capture the thrilling deep-sea duel between the trolls, we determined the sperm whale's predation on the king squid through a treasure, which is ambergris! Ambergris is expensive, with a small piece costing hundreds of thousands, comparable to equal weight gold. Ambergris is actually mainly excreted by sperm whales, scientifically called pathological stones, which are formed by the remains of the king squid. As a mollusk, the king squid has only endoskeletons and crocodiles on its body that are hard, and cannot be digested after being swallowed by sperm whales, and will be wrapped in a special cholesterol in the intestines of sperm whales, and then excreted. We have found some crocodiles belonging to the king squid in ambergris that have not been completely decomposed.
Photo note: Ambergris that people pick up at the beach, the picture comes from the Internet
Picture note: Ambergris species of the king squid crocodile, picture from the internet
After reading the above analysis and introduction, are you disappointed? It turned out that the king squid was neither as huge as the legend, nor as powerful as imagined. Nevertheless, the king squid is still one of the largest cephalopods (and invertebrates), a terrifying killer for small fish and other cephalopods, and it is also capable of killing humans in the water, perhaps the ancient legends of the king squid attacking ships and killing sailors are not empty.
Image note: There may have really been incidents of the king squid attacking human ships, the picture comes from the Internet
There are indeed many huge creatures living in the vast and deep ocean, but the best of them are all vertebrates, and the king squid is already the limit of marine invertebrates!
Finally, if you want to know about ambergris, you can reply to the three words of "ambergris" in the comments, collect 30 "ambergris", and in the next issue, I will introduce the small knowledge and interesting stories about this precious artifact.
Resources:
1.allcock, l.; barratt, i. (2014). "architeuthis dux". iucn red list of threatened species. 2014: e.t163265a991505. doi:10.2305/iucn.uk.2014-1.rlts.t163265a991505.en. retrieved 3 january 2018.
2. "giant squid | national geographic". animals. 10 june 2011. retrieved 21 october 2020.
3. marshall, michael (20 march 2013). "world's giant squid are one big happy family". new scientist. no. 2909.
4.kubodera, t.; mori, k. (2005). "first-ever observations of a live giant squid in the wild". proceedings of the royal society b: biological sciences. 272 (1581): 2583–2586.
Image / Network (Intrusion and Deletion)
Text / Jiang's Little Thief Dragon (Jiang Hong)
Typography / Jiang's Little Thief Dragon