An image of a monster 160-foot-long (49-meter-long) giant squid made the social media rounds yesterday.
Steeped in mystery, the elusive, deep-sea-dwelling giant squid, with eyes the size of basketballs, may be larger than it has gotten credit for. In fact, the monster cephalopod may grow to be longer than a school bus, researchers say.
Specimens recognizable as giant squid (Architeuthis dux) have been found washed up onshore since at least 1639. However, these sea monsters — which some people say inspired the legend of the giant kraken, though not all scientists agree — are so elusive that they were largely thought to be mythical until they were first photographed alive in their natural environment in 2004.
Ever since giant squid was discovered, there has been considerable speculation as to how large they can get. In a previous analysis of more than 130 specimens, scientists said that none exceeded 42 feet (13 meters) in length. Suggesting that giant squid could grow larger was “a disservice to science,” they said.
People began to share the photo of the supposed cephalopod on Facebook and Twitter, and thus the fake giant came to life.
Staff at the rumor-research website snopes.com did a drive-by of the beach in Santa Monica and reported no signs of the giant squid.
“Nor did any of the many local news outlets cover any such topic,” they write.
David Emery writes on About.com that the giant squid in the photograph is actually a 30-foot-long (9-meter-long) giant squid that washed ashore in Spain in October 2013.
But it’s a hoax, the fake photo combined a blown-up image of that squid and a picture of people standing on a beach.
“From a pure photographic standpoint, what stands out to me as a red flag is the squid’s shadow on the left—actually all of its shadows,” said Sherry Brukbacher, news photo editor at National Geographic. “This makes me question the image immediately.”
“It’s more likely the animal’s body would be flush with the ground and not sticking up like that, unless it was hardened and stiff,” she said. “Also, all the edges of the squid are uniformly smooth—unnaturally so.”
Giant squid are large enough to battle sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus)—sometimes the squid win, and sometimes they end up in the belly of a beast.
