Giant Squid

"There's always a bigger fish."

– Qui-Gon Jinn, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

"You fuckin' got done wrong!"

– Tim Higgins, RedLetterMedia... I mean, a sperm whale.

"You think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it!"

– Bane, The Dark Knight Rises... I mean, a giant squid.

Introduction

The giant squid is a deep-sea cephalopod in the family Architeuthidae, notable for growing abnormally large as a result of deep-sea gigantism. Males have been measured up to 33 ft in length while females have been recorded at a maximum of 43 ft in length, both from the prosterior fins to its two tentacles, versus the 33 ft average length of the colossal squid with which it's often confused. Its body is composed of a mantle (torso), eight smaller arms, and two of the larger aforementioned tentacles, between which a beak meant for feeding is located. It has the largest eyes of any living animal, next to those of the colossal squid. Aside from early encounters like one possible case recounted by Aristotle, sightings of the giant squid are rare due to its natural habitat, the earliest images of a live adult specimen having been taken on Goshiki beach in the Kyoto Prefecture of Japan, as well as the first photographs by two Japanese research crews in 2004. Footage of larval giant squids dates back as early as 2001, while footage of a 40 ft live adult was captured in 2006 using a camera attached to a Humbolt squid. The species is dispersed worldwide, typically living around continental islands in the North Atlantic Ocean, as well as around the British Isles, Spain, southern Africa, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. Giant squids are often portrayed in fiction as terrifying beasts, possibly having inspired the kraken of Norse legend and appeared in Peter Benchley's 1991 novel Beast.

Although the giant squid is often portrayed as daunting and alien by nature, this is neither here nor there, as such depictions say more about humanity than they do about giant squids. The same has been said about sharks being fictionalized as predatory man-eaters, a notion popularized by the 1974 novel and 1975 film Jaws, as shark attacks occur around 80 times a year, a number that dropped significantly in 2020, as humans are not part of their natural diet. Similarly, humans have produced negative perceptions of giant squids through modern fiction, but not through literature or cinema—through porn. One likely reason—likely to the point of being positively true—that giant squids' growth is altered as a result of deep-sea gigantism is their persistent avoidance of humans on the surface so that their limbs cannot be used to satisfy twisted fetishes. The International Tentacle Pornography Prevention Campaign (ITPPC), founded in Seoul, South Korea in mid-2019, has been in direct contact with internet service providers and the Japanese government to crack down on the use of giant squid arms and tentacles for sexual purposes. "At least when you order fried calamari at the harborside grill," says ITPPC spokeswoman I Su-Yu, in an early 2020 interview. "You might stumble across a dying animal or a homeless man who you could give it to. Some helpful public service could be done by using squids as a food source, but there's no one to benefit by fetishizing them other than perverts and deviants. Squids themselves would probably prefer being turned into sustenance than becoming sex toys."