Giant Squid
Collected 2005
In a long glass tank on the floor of the Ocean Hall lies a real giant squid, pale and slightly translucent, its arms stretched out and its two long feeding tentacles reaching the far end of the case. This is a female about seven metres long, one of the largest and most complete giant squids ever put on public display. Until the early years of this century no one had ever photographed a living giant squid in its natural habitat, so for most of history this animal was known only from carcasses washed up on beaches and from sailors' stories of the kraken.
The specimen was caught by Spanish fishermen off the coast of Asturias in 2005 and was given to the Smithsonian by Spain. Moving a soft, heavy animal across the Atlantic was a project in itself: it travelled in a custom coffin-shaped container, and the story of its journey made headlines. Look at the eyes, which in life were the size of dinner plates, the largest eyes in the animal kingdom, built to gather faint light in the deep. The suckers along the arms are ringed with tiny teeth, and the two tentacles end in clubs of suckers used to seize prey. The beak, hidden at the centre of the arms, is like a parrot's. The fluid in the tank is a special non-toxic preservative developed for the museum, so the squid is safe to view without the harsh smell of formaldehyde.
The Smithsonian's zoologist Clyde Roper spent his career searching for a living giant squid, and the hall's display grew from that work. Sperm whales hunt giant squid in the deep, and the scars on whale skin from squid suckers were for a long time the main evidence of how big these animals could grow. A second, smaller male squid is displayed nearby. Notice the fin at the tip of the body, small for such a large animal, which it uses to hover in the dark.
Did You Know? The squid was shipped from Spain to Washington in a custom container that the crew called the squid coffin.
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