For centuries the giant squid was known by a more infamous name: the Kraken. Giant squid live in the deep sea.
A giant squid was scientifically documented and photographed in Newfoundland in 1873. The Rev. Moses Harvey of St. John's, Newfoundland, called a squid tentacle "the veritable arm of the hitherto mythical devilfish."
Japetus Steenstrup, a Copenhagen University lecturer, introduced the giant squid to science in a paper. The scientific genus name Architeuthis goes back to Steenstrup in 1857.
A giant squid has eight arms and two longer feeding tentacles. The two feeding tentacles are much longer than the rest of its body. It has the largest eyes in the animal kingdom, about 10 inches across. Giant squid have pockets of ammonia solution in their bodies.
Almost everything scientists know about giant squid comes from carcasses washed up on beaches or hauled in by fishermen. Some of the giant squid known to science were taken from the stomach of a sperm whale. Sperm whales, the largest of the toothed whales, eat mostly squid. A giant squid has a hard, parrot-like beak at the base of its arms. A squid's beak is not easily broken down. So beaks can be found in a whale's stomach after the soft body is digested.
Until recently, no pictures of the giant squid in its natural home had ever been taken. On September 30, 2004, a camera on a bait line off Japan's Ogasawara Islands photographed a giant squid alive in the deep ocean. The camera faced the bait and snapped a photograph every 30 seconds for four to five hours. The squid was taking bait about 900 metres (3,000 feet) down, and it was about eight metres long. As of November 2026, the first photographs of a live giant squid in the ocean were reported in September 2005.
In July 2012, a team filmed a live giant squid in its deep-sea home off Japan, from a small submersible. The cameras use lights that the squid cannot see.
Giant squid are usually found near the slopes of continents and islands. Specimens are rare from tropical and high polar latitudes. They are found in all of the world's oceans. Estimates of the depth range vary: one museum page says specimens were caught at 400 to 800 meters, and another source says 300 to 1000 meters is not unrealistic.
As of November 2026, the IUCN Red List lists the giant squid as Least Concern, last assessed 28 April 2010, and scientists do not know how many there are.
Words to know
- Kraken: sea monster
- carcasses: dead animals
- genus: group of species
- infamous: badly known
