From the depths

Giant squids – Architeuthis and Mesonychoteuthis, pronounced ar-ke-teu-tus and mez-a-nic-a-teu-tus – symbolise an extraordinary paradox as we move through the beginning of the 21st century. As humankind endeavours to detect signs of life in the solar system and beyond, enormous creatures inhabit our oceans, no living specimens of which have yet been observed by science. Washed up and damaged carcasses are the sole clues as to the natural history of these beasts. There was not even an image of a live giant squid until September 2005, when two Japanese researchers took the first photographs of the creature in its natural habitat. Aptly, they have been tagged as the least-known large animals on earth, and the largest invertebrates in the known universe.

They are the last 'monsters' to be conquered. Some 13 metres long, weighing up to 500 kg, with an array of hooks, claws and suction cups, the largest eyes in the animal kingdom and a misplaced parrot beak-like mouth, these giants of the deep are not only monstrous but essentially alien. From the kraken of antiquity, with which they have been identified, to the battles of Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, to the 'thing' in Michael Crichton's novel Sphere (1987) and the 'beast' of Peter Benchley's 1991 novel of the same name, giant squids have long been represented as terrifying monsters. Little wonder that they now lurk in the nether regions of our subconscious.