Ein 15 Meter großer Pottwal im Kampf mit einem Riesenkalmar

Giants of the deep sea

Until the mid-19th century, many adventurous legends about giant squid abounded, with sailors describing them as gigantic sea monsters. For a long time incredibly imaginative accounts circulated about the size and behavior of these large cephalopods. Even today, science is far from completing research on these denizens of the deep sea.

Large, plate-sized scars on the skin of whales fueled suspicions of giant squid measuring up to 60 meters. But we have since discovered that the suction cups on their tentacles are not actually that large, but that old scars grow as whales grow. This means that an adult sperm whale injured by a giant squid as a calf would have a very large scar from the squid’s suction cups indeed.

Giant squid (scientific genus name: Architeuthis) live at depths of 300 to over 1,000 meters, including off the coast of New Zealand. Since people began deep sea fishing, multiple specimens have made their way to the surface entangled in their nets. This is how the nearly six-meter long male made its way to our 1:1 Giants of the Seas exhibit at the OZEANEUM.

A giant squid battling a sperm whale, its tentacles wrapped around the whale’s skull – this is how the model in the OZEANEUM’s 1:1 Giants of the Seas exhibit is displayed. But the fact is that such a struggle has never been observed by humans. The scene is based on the known behavior of these animals – and based on the observations of the scientists who regularly find remains of giant squid in the stomachs of sperm whales. The suction cup scars on whales’ skin is another indication of these battles.