Octopus

Known varieties of octopus range in size from a circumference of a few inches to as large as 23 feet. There is some evidence that, deep in the sea, there lives an unknown species of octopus, genus Architeuthis, is well accepted by science though few have ever been seen, that can grow to over a hundred feet across and weigh 10 tons, and little is known about their habits.

The octopus is a distant cousin of the squid and both belong to a group of animals called cephalopods. Both are invertebrates, that is they have no backbone, and each have multiple arms, lined with suckers, that allow the creatures to hold fast to prey or other objects. Both are fairly intelligent, with large dark eyes getting as big as eighteen inches across - and are the largest in the animal kingdom - and they are carnivorous.

Giant squid are carnivorous mollusks that have a long, torpedo shaped body. At one end, surrounding a beak-like mouth strong enough to cut through steel cable, are five pairs of arms. One pair, thinner and longer than the rest, are used to catch food and bring it to the mouth. Just past the mouth are the eyes.

Squid have ten arms, though, while the octopus has only eight. Squid are also thought to spend most of their time in the mid-waters while the octopus is a bottom dweller using its arms to move from rock to rock. Finally, while the squid has a reputation for aggression, the octopus has a more shy and retiring disposition.

Not so harmless as you might think
All squid move through the ocean using a jet of water forced out of the body by a siphon. They eat fish, other squid, and, in the case of the largest species, whales. The legend of the Kraken, a many armed sea monster that could pull a whole ship under, may have been based on the giant squid.

Not that octopi are entirely harmless. When angered they can be dangerous to both swimmers and divers. With their strong, long arms they can hold a man underwater until he drowns. The giant squid is a known creature and they have been seen at sea. Several dead, or nearly dead, animals have been found in the shallows or beached. In contrast only one colossal octopus carcass has ever been found and it was, and still is, surrounded in controversy.

Encounters
The story starts at Timble Tickle on November 2, 1878 when three fisherman were working not far off shore when they noticed a mass floating on the ocean they took to be wreckage. They investigated and found a giant squid had run aground. Using their anchor as a grappling hook they snagged the still living body and made it fast to a tree. When the tide went out the creature was left high and dry. When the animal died, the fishermen measured it and then chopped it up for dog meat. The body of the squid was twenty feet from tail to beak. The longer tentacles measured thirty five feet and were tipped with four inch suckers.

November of 1896: Two boys cycling along the beach south of St. Augustine, Florida, came across the body of an enormous creature that had been washed up by the tide. Dr DeWitt Webb, a local amateur naturalist and President of the St. Augustine Historical Society, took an interest in the remains. After an examination of the mutilated and decaying body he believed that he'd discovered the carcass of a huge octopus.

The portion of the creature that remained, the body minus the arms, was eighteen feet in length and ten feet wide. Parts of tentacles, unattached to the body, stretched as long as 36 feet with a diameter of 10 inches. Dr Webb estimated weight at four or five tons. Realizing this was an important find Webb wrote to Yale Professor Addison Verrill, a leading expert on cephalopods, about the creature:

"You may be interested to know of the body of an immense Octopus thrown ashore some miles south of this city. Nothing but the stump of the tentacles remains, as it had evidently been dead for some time before washed ashore."

Based on photographs sent by Webb, Verrill concluded that the creature was indeed a colossal octopus that might have had a diameter of one-hundred and fifty feet when living. Strangely enough, despite the importance of the find, Dr Verrill, nor any other scientist, traveled to St. Augustine to view the carcass in person.

Webb finally sent Verrill a sample of the tissue of the creature preserved in formalin. Verrill was surprised to find it had the appearance of blubber and abruptly changed his mind stating that he now believed the creature was a whale and that the arms were not associated with the body.

The whole matter would have rested like that if it hadn't been for Forrest Wood, the director of Marine Studios (later Marineland) in Florida. Wood came across an old news story about the monster and discovered that Webb's sample was still stored at the Smithsonian Institution.

Wood persuaded the Smithsonian to let Dr Joseph Gennaro, of the University of Florida, to take some of the samples for analysis. Gennaro immediately recognized that the material was not blubber and examination under a microscope showed the tissue was more similar to octopus than whale or squid. Further tests later confirmed this conclusion.

So it seems that Webb was right and Verrill changed his mind too quickly. Maybe. The scientific community has not yet accepted Gennaro's conclusions and it may take another beached carcass to settle the matter.

Giant squids vs. Sperm whales
We know the giant squid feeds on whales from eye-witness accounts. In October 1966, two lighthouse keepers at Danger Point, South Africa, observed a baby southern right whale under attack from a giant squid. For an hour and a half the monster clung to the whale trying to drown it as the whale's mother watched helplessly. "The little whale could stay down for 10 to 12 minutes, then come up. It would just have enough time to spout - only two or three seconds - and then down again." The squid finally won and the baby whale was never seen again.

Giant Squid have been seen in battle with adult whales too. In 1965, a Soviet whaler watched a battle between a squid and a 40 ton sperm whale. In this case neither were victorious. The strangled whale was found floating in the sea with the squid's tentacles wrapped around the whale's throat. The squid's severed head was found in the whale's stomach.

Sperm whales eat squid and originally it had been thought that such battles were the result of a sperm whale taking on a squid that was just to large too be an easy meal. The incident with the Brunswick suggests otherwise.

The Brunswick was a 15,000 ton auxiliary tanker owned by the Royal Norwegian Navy. In the 1930's it was attacked at least three times by giant squid. In each case the attack was deliberate as the squid would pull along side of the ship, pace it, then suddenly turn, run into the ship and wrap it's tentacles around the hull. The encounters were fatal for the squid. Since the animal was unable to get a good grip on the ship's steel surface, the animals slid off and fell into the ship's propellers.

Apparently, for some unknown reason, the Brunswick looked like a whale to the squids. This suggests that the sperm whale is not always the aggressor in the battles. In fact, though many sperm whales have been captured, few of their stomachs seemed to contain parts of giant squids.

They can only survive in cold water
Unfortunately for scientists, but good for the rest of us, humans do not meet up with giant squids very often. (There is at least one report from World War II of survivors of a sunken ship being attacked by a giant squid that ate one of the party.) Squids are thought to be open water, deep, cold sea creatures. Work by Dr. Ole Brix, of the University of Bergen, Norway, indicates the blood of squids does not carry oxygen very well at higher temperatures. A squid will actually suffocate in warm water.

Temperature also seems to affect the squid's buoyancy mechanism. Warm water will cause a giant squid to rise to the surface and not be able to get back down. With water temperature even higher at the surface, the squid may be doomed. It is not surprising then, that most squid groundings occur near where two ocean streams, one cold and one warm, meet.

How big can a squid get?
Estimates based on damaged carcasses range up to one hundred feet. One story, though, suggests they might get even larger. One night during World War II a British Admiralty trawler was lying off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. One of the crew, A. G. Starkey, was up on deck, alone, fishing, when he saw something in the water.

As I gazed, fascinated, a circle of green light glowed in my area of illumination. This green unwinking orb I suddenly realized was an eye. The surface of the water undulated with some strange disturbance. Gradually I realized that I was gazing at almost point-black range at a huge squid.

Starkey walked the length the of the ship finding the tail at one end and the tentacles at the other. The ship was over one hundred and seventy five feet long.

How come more colossal octopi haven't been found? Speculation is that as a bottom dweller the colossal octopus bodies, upon death, stay on the bottom and decay leaving few clues for scientists to find. Perhaps as we start to explore the bottom of the sea further we may come face to face with a colossal octopus and look into his huge unblinking eyes.