A Real live Sea Monster: The Giant Squid

For hundreds of years people have been fascinated with the idea that there might be the possibility of sea monsters out lurking in the ocean depths...I have news for you, there are some very real monsters that call the depths of the ocean home.

One of these monsters is the Giant Squid, people used to look upon these as mythical magical creatures, capable of sinking entire ships when they got the mind to. Well these are not mythical or magical like people previously believed but they are very impressive.

Like all squid, the Giant Squid has a body and eight arms plus two longer arms that serve as hands, the inside of the arms are covered in suction cups that are lined with serrated rings; injuries provoked by these suction cups have been seen on and around the heads of sperm whales that, people believe, make the Giant Squid a part of their diet.

Not only do Giant squid have long arms, but they also have fins at the end of their body which they use to get around with the help of their jet-like propulsion. The Giant squid breaths with two big gills located on the inside of their body, and what helps them get away from predators is the inky blackness that they shoot out behind them to cover their tracks.

The most amazing thing about the Giant squid is that it has the largest eyes in the world; the eyes of the Giant squid can reach a diameter of up to a foot long. God provided the Giant squid with eyes that big because the bigger the eye, the more light can be detected.

Most fish have a swim bladder that helps them maintain a buoyancy in the water, but the Giant squid has an ammonium chloride solution that flows through its body, this not only gives it a natural buoyancy but it also gives the squid a terrible taste, making it unfit for human consumption.

Giant squid only have one natural enemy and that is the sperm whale, for the reason that the Sperm Whale seem to enjoy having the Giant Squid for lunch, although recent studies have discovered that the Giant squid may hunt the Sperm whale as well...kind of like the hunted turns into the hunter kind of thing. Other things on the Giant squid's menu include different types of fish and the occasional fisherman, just kidding.

There have been reports of Giant squid reaching lengths of over one hundred feet, that is including the mantle and the long arms; whether such reports are true or not is another matter altogether.

The way that the Giant squid mates is an extremely debated matter however, everybody agrees upon the fact that it does happen and they have even found little baby Giant squid that they are planning to keep in aquariums and study in an attempt to learn more about them.

The Giant squid can be found in all the world's oceans but that does not help the scientists very much when it comes to finding the Giant squid, this is one of the most elusive animals in the world; the one place that you will probably not find a giant squid is in warm waters, there is something about warm water that makes the Giant squid lose its buoyancy.

There have been reports of squid around for a long time, it is believed that tales of such sea monsters as the Kraken and the sea serpent are nothing more than exaggerated stories about the Giant squid.

Pieces of the Giant squid brought in by the French gunboat Alecton, sparked the scientific community to find out as much as possible about this mythical creature, they have not been all that successful; it has only been recently that scientists managed to capture the Giant squid on film.

It is really cool how the Creator made some animals on this earth that can live with us, they can be our food, clothing or our friends, but then the Lord put things on earth like the Giant squid that no matter how much we try...we cannot easily find things about it, it is like God put some things on earth just to keep us interested.