The Kraken is great and terrible. The largest squid in the world. The legendary octopus Kraken and its real prototype

exists, it's really gigantic
They write about him in scientific publications. And if we have said so much about it, then we will add that the giant octopus is not an octopus at all, but a squid.

What did they write about the fairy-tale monster in the old days? A word from Eric Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen: “When the Norwegian fishermen saw that there were a lot of fish, and that the depth was quickly decreasing, they raised their sails in a hurry, because they realized that this “krakk” was coming - giant octopus. A wide, lumpy back soon appeared from the sea waves. It took a good half hour until they were able to get around. In the puddles of water between the hills, fish swam on the back of the monster. Hills and mountains, islands gradually rose in height and, finally, hands appeared that looked like the horns of a snail.

These arms are thicker than the mast of the largest ship and are so strong that they can easily drag a one-hundred-pound frigate into the abyss. They move in all directions - sometimes they glide along the surface of the water, sometimes they straighten up, and in all respects they are similar to the hands of an ordinary octopus.”

The description, of course, is not free from exaggeration. We know that there cannot be such an octopus on whose back one could take a half-hour walk.

In the church of the port city of Sept Milot (France), destroyed in 1942 during a bombing, there hung a painting in which the artist, based on the stories of sailors, immortalized the battle with giant squid.

This is how Denis de Montfort retells this story (1802)] “One of the ships, leaving the shores of Africa, was heading to the American islands. It was a calm, sunny day. Suddenly huge waves rose and a sea ​​monster. With all its enormity it hung over the captain's bridge, with terrible flexible long arms wrapped itself around the rigging and masts to the very tops and, using its monstrous weight, began to rock the ship, trying to capsize it and drag it into the abyss.

The sailors understood that they had nowhere to wait for help. The whole team took up arms. With axes and sabers they rushed towards the terrible enemy. But their ship was becoming more and more aboard. Then the brave sailors offered a prayer to their patron, Saint Malo, after which they managed to cut off their hands terrible monster. The ship stopped heeling, returned to its normal position and, with the masts again pointing to the sky, continued on its way.”

We will not give a completely different similar story told by Denis de Montfort, but will only convey its content.
The ship of Captain Jan Magnus Dens fell into a calm, and the captain, in order not to waste time, ordered the ship to be cleaned.
Several walkways were lowered from the deck, on which the sailors stood and began to clean the sides of the ship.
To their great horror, suddenly appeared huge squid. With one tentacle he grabbed two sailors and tried to grab a third. The whole team rushed to help their comrades in trouble. Armed with harpoons, knives, and axes, they attacked the squid. The squid retreated, taking two victims with it.
If we look through old adventure sea novels, we will see that in almost every one of them there certainly appears giant octopus and kidnaps one or two sailors.

Giant octopus in scientific data

Now let's scroll through science books. We will not find an exact description in them. It is not known, for example, what dimensions it has giant octopus. We will not find an answer to the questions: how many species are there, how often are they found in the seas?
The reason for such uncertainty in our knowledge is that giant octopuses (squids) live at great depths. True, not really seabed, but still at a depth of 1000-2000 meters. Throughout their lives they swim - they are constantly in motion. How big can they reach? We can judge this only from one single eye of this animal, which is kept in the museum. And this eye has a diameter of 40 cm!

The squid eye in question was found in the stomach of a toothed whale taken by a whaling ship. When the whale was lifted onto the deck and the stomach was opened, among the many remains of cephalopods was the eye of a giant squid, which is a delicacy for toothed whales and sperm whales. Usually they are content with relatively smaller specimens. The stomachs of captured sperm whales contained several barrels of cephalopods. These small squids gather in schools at a depth of 800-1200 meters. This is where the hungry go for dinner.

When do sperm whales and giant squid, a mortal fight ensues between them. Sea giants They measure their strength, in most cases the sperm whale emerges victorious and absorbs the defeated enemy.

Scientists know quite a bit about giant squids thanks to the stomach contents of sperm whales. Sperm whales do not have molars and swallow their food unchewed. Their teeth are quite strange. There is not a single tooth in the upper jaw. Upper teeth atrophy and disappear altogether after the embryonic period. But in lower jaw quite a lot of even, but rare, conical teeth. Therefore, the sperm whale tears food rather than chews it.

Researchers descend in submersibles to depths of up to 1,500 meters. It is possible that someday they will be able to film giant squid, and we can learn something from their lives. But for now, the likelihood of such a meeting is very low. Currently, only a few dozen researchers dive in, and they can remain underwater for no more than a few hours, or at best several days.

True, biologists suggest that in the future there will be more giant squids, and they will more often rise to the surface in search of food.
Now there are very few giant octopuses, as they are being destroyed.

Giant octopus

No one today believes that a giant cephalopod is capable of dragging a ship to the bottom. However, everyone knows - from films and novels - that not a single diver can get countless treasures from under the wreckage of a shipwreck, and not a single diver can get a pearl of impressive size without getting into a fight with a huge octopus...

For a long time, sailors, whose life and work were closely connected with the ocean, believed that strange and huge creatures lived in its depths - krakens, unlike fish, jellyfish, or other aquatic inhabitants.
However, in the legendary appearance of these animals, in the features of the unusual physique and behavior with which the myth endowed them, there was something in common with octopuses. True, these chimerical monsters were incomparably more enormous and dangerous.
In the stories of sailors about encounters with these creatures, one could feel the living breath of the ocean and the experienced fear of people frightened by the monster. With the advent of large ships and vessels, the age of comprehensive study of the ocean and its inhabitants began. It became obvious that the monsters of the deep were a myth that arose as a result of the famous tendency of sailors to the most incredible exaggerations; and the animal that gave birth to these legends is the octopus.
More than 100 species of octopuses have been described, but all of them are small animals, no more than half a meter long. Only three or four species have sufficient muscular strength to emerge victorious from a “hand-to-hand” fight with a person. This common octopus, Doflein's octopus, Apollyon octopus and the closely related Hong Kong octopus.

The first lives in all tropical, subtropical seas and oceans. The second is common off the coast of Japan and is occasionally found in southern Kuril Islands and in the Bay of Posiet. Apollyon lives in the rocks off the coast of Alaska, Western Canada and California. They reach 3 m in length and weigh from 25 to 50 kg.
The species of these animals belong to the order Dibranchidae cephalopods living in seas and oceans. They are called cephalopods because their tentacles are located on the head.
They are also called “sea aristocrats.” The reason for this was their blue blood. This unusual color is explained by the fact that red blood cells and plasma contain hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin, in which iron is replaced by copper.
In addition, nature provided these “noble” animals with three hearts. The main one, consisting of one ventricle and two atria, nourishes all organs; its contraction frequency is 30-36 beats per minute. The other two, called “gill hearts,” push blood through the gills.

The stories of sailors about giant octopuses, with which they sometimes have to meet a giant octopus, could be considered fiction, but in the book of J.-I. Cousteau and F. Diolet “Octopus and Squid” have the following data. An American scientist and specialist in the field of marine biology, F. Wood, while looking through the archives of a marine laboratory in Florida, discovered that in 1897 the corpse of a huge octopus was found on the beach of St. Augustine. The body of a giant cephalopod weighing about 6 tons was examined by Yale University professor A. Verrill. According to the scientist’s measurements, the mollusk had a body 7.5 m long, and tentacles 23 m long, with a diameter of about 45 cm at their base. Part of the body of this animal is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution. The jar has a label with Latin name animal - Octopus giganteus. Apparently, these data are so far the only scientifically confirmed information about the existence giant octopuses, but they cannot be ignored.
How dangerous is an octopus for humans? The scariest thing about a cephalopod is its appearance. By nature, he is very timid and when a diver or scuba diver approaches, he usually hides under rocks.

True, cases of an octopus attacking a person are extremely rare. This can happen to a diver when inspecting the hold or cabin of a sunken ship where a cephalopod is hiding. He has nowhere to go and, in defense, involuntarily attacks the person. Therefore, inexperienced divers in places where octopuses are found should avoid grottoes and underwater caves, which usually serve as shelter for animals.
There is a danger, although small, that, having entered such a cave, the diver will be caught by an octopus if its tentacles can stay on the smooth surface of the diving suit. Finding himself in such a situation, a scuba diver should not panic - he has a knife, and this is a fairly reliable weapon in case of an octopus attack.
You should not start the fight by cutting off the tentacles. To quickly free yourself from the “embrace” of an octopus, scuba diving experts recommend striking its brain, located between the eyes. As long as the nerve center is not destroyed, the suckers and tentacles of the octopus will act, no matter what wounds are inflicted on it.
How strong is this multi-armed “Hercules”? Here is what the English writer and passionate underwater hunter James Aldridge writes about this: “I know one person who allowed the tentacles of an octopus to stick to him for too long. The scars on his stomach that remain to this day convincingly show the strength of the octopus’s suckers, which this careless hunter tore off with a significant amount of flesh.”
The strength of the octopus' suckers has been measured repeatedly. On all eight tentacles of an adult there are approximately 2000 of them, each of which has a holding force of about 100 g.
With this type of giant octopus, the estimated strength of a large cephalopod reaches about 200 kg, but the actual strength is much less. This is explained by the fact that not all suckers take part in retaining prey, but only a certain part of them.
A Spanish schooner carrying silver ingots was wrecked and sank off the coast of Colombia. Seven divers have already tried to reach the valuable cargo, but none of them returned to the surface. It seemed evil rock hung over the ship, partially covered with sand at a depth of 64 meters.
Fearless Harry Risberg, the famous American diver, went to the bottom. There he found the skeleton of his predecessor near the hull of the ship with a diving helmet on his head and a torn wetsuit.
But the brave diver was forced to hastily rise to the surface, as his air supply hose was mysteriously damaged.
Despite this, Risberg dived again two days later. This is what he himself writes in his book “The Gold of Lost Ships”: “Suddenly I had a strange and unpleasant feeling as if there was someone next to me.
This feeling was so strong that I began to spin, illuminating the water with a flashlight. And suddenly... My God! From behind the vague outline of the bronze statue, a gigantic figure rose before my eyes. Looking at her through the thickness of the water, I shuddered. Rising to his full height, completely filling the doorway... and closing my path to retreat, a creature from a drug addict’s vision stood in front of me.
The vile, wart-covered body swayed slowly from side to side, constantly twitching and twisting. The monster was about fifteen feet (4.5 m) in diameter, and its barrel-shaped, massive body was about 4 feet (1.2 m).
The long, sticky tentacles were studded with hundreds of saucer-sized suckers. Its color slowly changed, moving from brown and dirty yellow through light brown to gray and almost white.

This vampire's demonic eyes seemed to be watching my every move."
A fierce fight began, during which Risberg managed to cut off three of the monster’s tentacles one by one with his knife.
In truth, it seems strange that the diver himself emphasized the “diabolical cunning” of his opponent, that the octopus tried to attack a person with only one “arm,” like a fencer: it would not have been difficult for him to use eight at once!
But at the moment when the monster finally decided to act like a normal octopus, the diver managed to plunge a steel blade into “the only unprotected place on the octopus’s body - the jugular vein.” However, before giving up the ghost, the monster found the strength to thoroughly shake his opponent like a baby rattle, tear his spacesuit and injure his skin. Bleeding and choking, Risberg lost consciousness.
It returned to him in the ship's decompression chamber. Risberg's comrade, concerned about his long absence, sent two local divers to him. They freed him from the clutches of the dead monster and raised him to the surface of a giant spruce. At the same time, they clamped the holes in the suit, from which the air came out...
Much in this story is questionable. And this begs the question: is it just a frightening fiction? This, on the one hand, is very typical for literature describing underwater adventures, and on the other hand, it reflects the generally accepted idea of ​​the creature that the British sometimes figuratively call “devil-fish”.
Let us turn to Victor Hugo’s novel “Toilers of the Sea.” Hugo devoted three whole chapters to the famous fight between the fisherman Gilliatt and the octopus.
“To believe in the existence of an octopus, you have to see it,” writes Hugo. -...The cobra makes a whistle, the octopus is silent...; The howler monkey has a prehensile tail, the octopus has no tail...; a vampire has clawed wings, an octopus has no wings...; the stingray has an electric discharge, the octopus has no electric discharge...; The viper has poison, the octopus has no poison; The lamb has a beak, the octopus has no beak.”
Let's approach this description with scientific point vision. First of all, the octopus has poison. This fact was experimentally established back in the 18th century. For a long time, no one was surprised that an octopus can defeat enemies whose size is many times larger than its own, stronger and better armed.
Once, already in our days, the caretaker of the Neapolitan aquarium Lo Bianco watched in amazement as an octopus from a distance paralyzed crabs and lobsters placed in the same bath with it. Does the mollusk hypnotize its victims? This explanation, of course, might tempt the romantic mind, but it would not satisfy the scientist. Researchers Krauss and Baglioni found the key to solving this mystery.
After careful observations, it was found that when attacking its prey, the octopus always began by pulling it to its mouth at some distance, like a gourmet inhaling the smell of a delicious dish. If you take the prey away from him at this moment, the victim will still die after some time, without any visible damage. Intrigued, Krauss isolated the substance from salivary glands in the tongue of an octopus and easily found out that it has poisonous properties.
The venom of some species of octopuses (about 200 species are known) is also dangerous to humans. One young spearfisher named Kirk Holland was doing his favorite thing off the coast of Australia, near Darwin. His friend John Bailey was with him.
Already returning to shore, John noticed “ blue octopus» 15 centimeters in diameter, a giant octopus floated next to him. Having deftly caught him, he let the prisoner crawl over his shoulders and arms. Then, as a joke, he threw the clam onto his friend's back. The animal stuck to the man's back at the base of his neck for a few moments, and then fell into the water. Already on shore, Holland began to complain of dry mouth and sore throat.
He didn't say anything about the bite, but John noticed a small drop of blood appearing in the area of ​​the back where the octopus was sitting. Soon young man Vomiting and dizziness began, he fell on the sand and lost consciousness. Bailey rushed to take him to Darwin Hospital. On the threshold of the hospital, Holland stopped breathing...
The octopus's mouth is equipped with two powerful chitinous jaws, shaped like a parrot's beak. With them, the cephalopod bites its prey, holding it with its suction cups. In this case, the poison of the salivary glands from the throat and mouth enters the wound.
The beak bite leaves little damage, but since saliva prevents blood from clotting, bleeding can be quite prolonged. The severity of the lesion depends on the type of octopus and, apparently, on its size.
The first signs of poisoning: stabbing pain and burning at the site of the bite. Subsequently, these sensations spread to the entire limb. The tissue around the wound swells. When the poison is absorbed into the blood, breathing becomes difficult, the voice weakens, and the body temperature rises. As a rule, recovery occurs within 3-4 weeks. However, there are known cases of death from octopus poisoning.
The most dangerous is the smallest cephalopod - the Australian ringed octopus. It fits in the palm of your hand, but is menacing with its poison, so strong that after being bitten by this little thing, death occurs within a few minutes. This octopus is amazingly beautiful. Its orange-brown body is colored with iridescent blue rings. When an animal is excited or frightened, these rings begin to phosphoresce. Research has shown that the amount of venom injected through a ring octopus bite is enough to kill seven people. The crooked beak of this little killer sharp and strong, it easily pierces the shell of a crab, but people struck by it usually do not notice its bite and, feeling dizzy, do not immediately understand what happened.

In June 1967, the Polish magazine Dookola Svata reported, 23-year-old soldier James Ward, while boating in a bay near Sydney (Australia), noticed a beautiful octopus in the water, smaller than a human palm. Ward reached into the water to grab it...
Less than an hour had passed before the young soldier died. He was killed by a ring octopus. The venom of this creature acts so quickly that even if an antidote could be created, it would not be delivered in time.
However, one victim of the ringed octopus was saved.
In December 1962, on a beach in Victoria, such an octopus bit a young man. Fortunately, the doctor was able to immediately apply oxygen and artificial respiration. Five hours later the patient was out of danger.
When Victor Hugo claimed that the octopus does not have a beak, he was also wrong. All cephalopods have, in the place where their arms and legs meet, a curved, giant octopus like a parrot's, only upwards. It's spicy and powerful weapon capable of easily shredding the skin of an enemy, turning it into rags, and even crushing the hard shells of crustaceans.
When the animal is calm, the beak is hidden in the folds of the body and is almost invisible, but this does not make it disappear.
Hugo also has a special idea about the feeding style of octopuses: “There is no vice equal in strength to the embrace of an octopus. You are attacked by a pneumatic pump. You are dealing with a void armed with tentacles... This creature penetrates you with a thousand vile mouths; the hydra grows into a person; man merges with the hydra." In addition to these thousands of sucking mouths, Hugo gives his octopus one more, but what one!
He is even more “disgusting” than a thousand others: “In the center of the monster there was a single hole. What is this - a mouth? Or maybe the anus? Both! The same hole performs two functions - entry and exit."
In fact, in all mollusks, including cephalopods, the anus is always clearly separated from the mouth. And this fact was known to Aristotle. So, in octopuses, the mouth opening is located in the place where its tentacles meet, and the anal opening opens under the “mantle”.
Between the mantle and the body a cavity is formed, something like a bag, communicating with external environment through the transverse slot. On the other side, this cavity opens outwards with a siphon, also called a “nozzle”. Water freely penetrates into this bag through a transverse slit and washes the gills that extend there, feeding them with oxygen. This circulation of water is used by the octopus for more than just breathing.
When it gets tired of crawling along the bottom and wants to swim freely, the mollusk presses the mantle tightly to the body, closing the transverse slit, and then with a sharp contraction of the muscles pushes out the water through the siphon nozzle. Since the siphon is directed in the same direction as the “legs,” the octopus receives an impulse to move backward.
Repeating this cycle, it floats as if in leaps, with the help of a natural jet engine. But it can also move forward with its tentacles. Excretion products entering the cavity under the mantle are also washed out through the siphon.
But let's return to the description of the octopus in Hugo's novel.
We are witnessing a real battle. Our hero, waist-deep in water, suddenly finds himself in the tight embrace of a “pneumatic” monster, whose five tentacles, with fifty suction cups each, strangle him, squeeze him, depriving him of freedom of movement.
In fact, the octopus, as already mentioned, has eight “arms”, and each has about 240 suckers, that is, almost 2000 in total.
The octopus from “The WorkerGiant Octopus of the Sea” is obviously something special! What to do? Gilliatt has a knife in his hand, but can this weapon help him?
“He hits the octopus’s tentacles with a knife. But the steel blade only glides across the surface. In addition, their loops fit so tightly to the body that when you cut them, you are cutting across your body.”
As you can see, octopuses in the past were not as soft as they are today. We are relieved to learn that the octopus still had weakness, known to Gilliatt.
We learn that the main thing is to wait for the right moment: “... the moment when the octopus stretches its head forward. One brief moment. Whoever misses it is lost.” A person needs to catch it, and then... “It’s like a fight between two lightning bolts. Gilliatt plunged the blade of his knife into the sticky flat lump of mucus and in one circular motion - like a whip curls when struck - he outlined both eyes with it. He pulled out his head like a tooth is pulled out.”
And here is the opinion on the same subject, the famous French expert on marine fauna E. Boulanger: “... it is enough to squeeze the octopus’s body tightly between the head and body” so that it loosens its grip.
True, we doubt that this will always be possible, because the length of an octopus with tentacles can reach six meters or more, and its weight can be up to 200 kilograms! It’s safer to just stick a knife between the creature’s eyes. In this case, the brain will be affected, causing instant death and therefore liberation.
Without a sharp object, you can, as Polynesian divers sometimes do, bite it with all your strength in the same place.
The octopus has had a bad reputation for a long time. But Hugo was the first writer to turn the octopus into a creature consumed with a special hatred of man. The reaction to such exaggeration was, as one might expect, also exaggerated.
Thus, the American octopus specialist, professor at the University of the Giant Octopus of Miami, Stephen Rigs Williams, liked to say that “a farmer in his field risks more when encountering a pumpkin than a diver with an octopus.” If you look at the octopus from the outside, it really seems like a shy, even timid creature.
Its soft naked body looks very vulnerable; it becomes clear that when the enemy approaches, he most often has to flee, hiding in rock crevices and under stones.
Everything about him betrays a desire to hide, to become invisible. He has brought the art of camouflage to perfection. The agility and speed with which it changes its color and color is much greater than that of the famous chameleon.
In case of extreme danger, the octopus can become almost transparent and, in addition, throw out an ink cloud from the siphon. This cloud not only blinds the enemy, but also seems to play another role in the life of the octopuses, perhaps even more important. This was experimentally established by the director of the marine station in California, J. McGinicy. He placed an octopus and a moray eel, whose sharp teeth are well known, in the same aquarium. At first, the moray eel greedily rushed in search of the octopus, apparently wanting to quickly settle scores with it.
Before mortal danger the unfortunate mollusk went through literally all the colors of the rainbow. When the opponents finally found themselves nose to nose at a distance of half a meter, the octopus, scared to death, threw out an ink cloud, and night fell in the aquarium. Until now everything was going as usual.

But little by little the black cloud dissipated, and it turned out that the moray eel stopped noticing the presence of the octopus: she no longer recognized him, even when he was almost touching her nose. Her sense of smell was paralyzed and remained that way for an hour or two! Therefore, the ink cloud is not only an optical protective shield, but also something like a chemical bomb.
Professor Edison Verill from the University of Connecticut, USA, formulated the contemporary understanding of the scientific world about the character of the octopus back in 1879: “There is no evidence that any species of octopus on its own initiative attacked a person or that anyone was seriously injured by it . These creatures are rather apathetic and secretive, often hiding in rock crevices and under stones.
Their main food is bivalves and, if you're lucky, fish. They, following the example of crabs and lobsters, do not disdain carrion. Their strength and viciousness are greatly exaggerated."
Nowadays, many scuba diving enthusiasts, accustomed to encountering these sea animals, go even further: they play with them. If you believe their stories, these are “kind and funny” creatures, and communication with humans gives them pleasure.
Is it really possible to say now that all the stories about the aggressiveness of the octopus and attacks on humans are only a figment of the imagination? It's too early to draw such a conclusion.
In the book Animals of Legend, Dr. Maurice Barton from the British Museum shows that the plots of many legends and fairy tales still have very real roots.
In the last century, Reverend William White Gill, during his twenty-year stay in Polynesia, collected a lot of evidence of octopuses attacking people, seemingly for no apparent reason.
“Not a single Polynesian,” he wrote, “will ever go hunting for octopuses alone, without a faithful companion who can come to the rescue in a critical situation.”
Thor Heyerdahl himself was once grabbed by the ankle by a small octopus almost at the final destination of his journey on the Kon-Tiki.
The octopus, by its nature, is undoubtedly a predator, and therefore a hunter. Most often, he waits in ambush for his prey, hiding in a rocky crevice, and grabs it as it swims past.
If the prey is out of direct reach or large enough, it rushes at it, spreading its tentacles wide, and catches it in a “net” dotted with suction cups.
If a large enough octopus meets a person in free swimming, will the clam think only of escape? We doubt it.
He might attack, especially if he feels threatened. We also doubt that, having found ourselves face to face with an octopus of considerable size, a scuba diver will come up with the idea of ​​playing with it.
But even if the octopus seems timid and defenseless, it should be remembered that the most non-giant octopus creature can become dangerous.
The news site LENTA.RU on November 7, 2000 at 03:45 am broadcast the following message:
“Spanish fishermen caught a giant luminous cephalopod in the Atlantic Ocean, apparently living deep in the water, reports Reuters. The caught specimen resembles an octopus and weighs 125 kilograms. According to preliminary estimates, this is the largest creature of its type ever found.
The cephalopod will be preserved and placed in a research center that houses another specimen, weighing 63 kilograms, previously considered the largest such creature.”
The eyes of an octopus are very expressive. Apparently, this is why they are often compared to human ones. The cells of the octopus's retina include a brown pigment, which neutralizes too bright light during the day and increases the sensitivity of the eye at night.
Focusing the gaze on objects located at different distances is accomplished by moving the lens closer or further away from the retina. During deep sleep, the octopus does not close its eyes, but only strongly constricts its pupils. His breathing slows down, he presses all tentacles, except the two lower ones, to his body. The two lower arms outstretched to the sides perform a guard function. Touching them, as well as the slightest vibration of the water, acts on a sleeping octopus like an alarm clock.

“A beast with eyes that make you look again,” says Martin D. Wells, one of the world’s few experts, about octopuses. He claims that octopuses quite intelligently monitor what is happening around them. Jacques-Yves Cousteau also testifies to this: “If an observer finds himself in front of the eyes of a large octopus, he involuntarily experiences something similar to respect, as if he had met a very smart old animal.”
Indeed, from the point of view of “intellectual” development, octopuses are an exception among their soft-bodied counterparts, all sorts of snails, chitons and oysters. Octopuses - that's the name of octopuses in Latin - look against their background as intelligent upstarts, owners of a very voluminous and developed brain, thanks to which they penetrate into any labyrinths and get out of networks. By the way, the octopus brain is considered an exquisite delicacy, which is why octopuses have become the target of predatory capture.
All species of octopuses have a fairly large brain, consisting of 14 lobes, covered with a rudimentary cortex of gray cells (“memory depot”) and reliably protected by a cartilaginous skull. A thin esophagus passes from the pharynx to the stomach through the thickness of the brain. Therefore, its stretching is very limited and animals can only swallow food that has been previously ground to a mushy state with the teeth of the tongue and in very small portions.
The octopus has eight tentacle arms, each of which contains on average up to 50 million neurons, which form a single system with the brain.
With the help of their lateral limbs, octopuses very deftly “walk” along the bottom. The brain only commands the hands to start moving. The very decision about its character, speed and direction is made by each individual hand independently. Moreover, even when cut off from the body, the tentacles continue to perform previously programmed actions.
Octopuses are the favorite prey of moray eels, sharks, penguins, albatrosses, whales and dolphins, so one of the ways to preserve life for them is autotomy - self-shedding of limbs.
Grabbed by the enemy by the tentacle, the octopus, with sharp contractions of its muscles, tears off its arm, which continues to wriggle for some time, distracting the attention of the attacker, while the octopus manages to hide during this time. And very soon it acquires a new tentacle.
“At 5 p.m. on May 10, 1874, the 150-ton schooner Pearl was attacked and sunk by a giant cephalopod. A monster, whose size exceeded the length of the ship, suddenly emerged on the starboard side and wrapped its tentacles around both masts, remaining in the water. It then tried to pull its body onto the deck of the schooner, and its size was such that it was unable to squeeze into the 50-foot space between the masts. Huge weight A cephalopod that fell on board the Pearl disrupted the stability of the ship, and it lay on its side.
Although the Bay of Bengal is nearby east coast India was absolutely calm that day; the schooner quickly began to fill with water and soon sank. Pearl's crew of seven were rescued by the steamer Stravoen, which was passing two miles away."
Incredible? At first glance - yes. However, the reputable London newspaper The Times, which published this article on July 4, 1874, cited in confirmation not only the stories of the sailors of the sunken schooner, but also eyewitness accounts from the crew of the steamship Stravowen. Moreover, as Pearl skipper James Floyd claimed, they were attacked by none other than an octopus.
The English marine writer Frank T. Bullen, who sailed for a long time on the whaling schooner Sperm Whale in the Indian Ocean, talks about a similar case...

Richard Ellis's book Monsters of the Seas (1998) provides the astonishing testimony of the ship's surgeon Thomas Bill of the whaler Kent in 1898. The whaler stood that day at the pier of Bonin Island (Japan). The doctor decided to take a walk along the sandy shore and, after walking a hundred meters, he suddenly saw a very large octopus lying down.
The troublesome doctor stepped on the monster's head. And then he almost paid with his life for his frivolity: the octopus grabbed the doctor’s hand with its tentacle and pulled him towards him.
Screaming wildly from fear and pain, the doctor tried to resist, but then another tentacle “swaddled” the bully’s arms and legs! Luckily for him, sailors armed with knives and axes were nearby. Two of them attacked the monstrous mollusk and, cutting off its terrible tentacles, freed the doctor, who had almost lost consciousness from pain.
The length of the octopus resting in the sun from the body to the tips of the tentacles was almost 7.5 meters. Of course, it costs nothing for such a monster to grab a person with one tentacle and turn him into minced meat.
Discussing this episode, ichthyologists came to the conclusion that there was no aggression on the part of the octopus. The ship's doctor behaved aggressively.
American scuba divers Clayton Fisher and John Lachelle managed to film a 6-meter “baby” weighing 97 kg in an underwater cave at a depth of 120 meters off the coast of Junee (Alaska). A few years ago, diver Jack McLean ventured under a swimming octopus and released air from his breathing tanks. The mollusk suddenly surfaced, where it was caught by hooks from a boat drifting nearby. Measurements showed that the maximum length of the monster was 8.37 meters, and its weight reached 214 kilograms!
In March of the following year, the same Jack McLean in the same place (Bay of the Pharaohs, California) saw a 10-meter “eight-armed” monster weighing clearly at least 300-320 kilograms. McLean doesn’t remember how he got to the boat that was waiting for him, because he constantly looked back at the octopus, who was clearly angry about something.
The Honolulu Advertiser (Hawaii Islands) for July 27, 1986 reported a sighting off the Solomon Islands ( Pacific Ocean) octopus length... 12 meters! As it turned out, this giant was attracted to the surface from a 300-meter depth by a half-dead five-meter herring shark. Having allowed the stunned passengers and crew of the motor ship "Ururi" to look at him, the imperturbable "master of the waters" slowly sank with his prey to the rocky bottom.
On May 14, 1999, the same newspaper published two photographs of a giant octopus at least 11-12 meters long, reporting that such creatures appear off the coast of Hawaii quite regularly.
Octopuses also feed on green turtles, which reach a third of a hundredweight in weight and are clearly of gastronomic interest to the eight-armed robbers. Octopuses deal with these armored creatures quite easily, and according to the observations of biologists, octopuses often gather around the habitats and breeding grounds of turtles and stand there for a long time in anticipation of a prey that has lost its vigilance...

There is the so-called Architeuthis - a genus of huge oceanic squid, whose length reaches 18 meters in length. The greatest length of the mantle is 2 m, and the tentacles are up to 5 m. The largest specimen was found in 1887 on the coast of New Zealand - its length was 17.4 meters. Unfortunately, nothing is said about weight.

Giant squid can be found in the subtropical and temperate zones of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. They live in the water column, and they can be found both a few meters from the surface and at a depth of one kilometer.

No one is capable of attacking this animal except one, namely the sperm whale. At one time it was believed that a terrible battle was being fought between these two, the outcome of which remained unknown to the last. But, as recent studies have shown, architeuthis loses in 99% of cases, since power is always on the side of the sperm whale.

If we talk about squid caught in our time, we can talk about a specimen that was caught by fishermen in the Antarctic region in 2007 (see the first photo). Scientists wanted to examine it, but could not - at that time there was no suitable equipment, so they decided to freeze the giant until better times. As for the dimensions, they are as follows: body length - 9 meters, and weight - 495 kilograms. This is the so-called colossal squid or Mesonychoteuthis.

And this is possibly a photograph of the largest squid in the world:

Even ancient sailors told stories in sailor taverns horror stories about the attack of monsters that emerged from the abyss and sank entire ships, entangling them with their tentacles. They were called krakens. They became legends. Their existence was viewed rather skeptically. But even Aristotle described a meeting with the “great Teuthys”, from which travelers who plied the waters suffered Mediterranean Sea. Where does reality end and truth begin?

Homer was the first to describe the kraken in his tales. Scylla, about whom Odysseus met in his wanderings, is nothing more than giant kraken. The Gorgon Medusa borrowed tentacles from the monster, which over time transformed into snakes. And, of course, the Hydra, defeated by Hercules, is a distant “relative” of this mysterious creature. On the frescoes of Greek temples you can find images of creatures that wrap their tentacles around entire ships.

Soon the myth took on flesh. People met a mythical monster. This happened in the west of Ireland, when in 1673 a storm washed up on the seashore a creature the size of a horse, with eyes like dishes and many appendages. He had a huge beak, like an eagle's. Remains of the Kraken for a long time were an exhibit that was shown to everyone for big money in Dublin.

Carl Linnaeus, in his famous classification, assigned them to the order of mollusks, calling them Sepia microcosmos. Subsequently, zoologists systematized all known information and were able to give a description of this species. In 1802, Denis de Montfort published the book “General and Particular Natural History of Mollusks,” which subsequently inspired many adventurers to capture the mysterious deep-seated animal.

The year was 1861, and the steamer Dlekton was making a routine voyage across the Atlantic. Suddenly a giant squid appeared on the horizon. The captain decided to harpoon him. And they were even able to drive several sharp lances into solid kraken. But three hours of struggle were in vain. The mollusk sank to the bottom, almost dragging the ship with it. At the ends of the harpoons there were scraps of meat weighing a total of 20 kilograms. The ship's artist managed to sketch the struggle between man and animal, and this drawing is still kept in the French Academy of Sciences.

A second attempt to capture the kraken alive was made ten years later, when it ended up in a fishing net near Newfoundland. People fought for ten hours with the stubborn and freedom-loving animal. They were able to pull him ashore. The ten-meter carcass was examined by the famous naturalist Harvey, who preserved the kraken in salt water and the exhibit delighted visitors to the London History Museum for many years.

Ten years later, on the other side of the earth, in New Zealand, fishermen were able to catch a twenty-meter clam weighing 200 kilograms. The most recent discovery was a kraken found in the Falkland Islands. It was “only” 8 meters long and is still kept at the Darwin Center in the UK capital.

What is he like? This animal has a cylindrical head, several meters in length. Its body changes color from dark green to crimson-red (depending on the animal’s mood). The most big eyes in the animal world among the krakens. They can be up to 25 centimeters in diameter. In the center of the “head” is the beak. This is a chitinous formation that the animal uses to grind fish and other food. With it, he is able to bite through a steel cable 8 centimeters thick. The kraken's tongue has a curious structure. It is covered with small teeth that have different shapes, allow you to grind food and push it into the esophagus.

A meeting with a kraken does not always end in victory for people. Like this incredible story wanders on the Internet: in March 2011, a squid attacked fishermen in the Sea of ​​Cortez. In front of people vacationing at the Loreto resort, a huge octopus sank a 12-meter ship. The fishing boat was moving parallel coastline, when suddenly several dozen thick tentacles emerged from the water towards him. They wrapped themselves around the sailors and threw them overboard. Then the monster began to rock the ship until it capsized.

According to an eyewitness: “I saw four or five bodies washed ashore by the surf. Their bodies were almost completely covered with blue spots - from the suckers of sea monsters. One was still alive. But he hardly resembled a person. The squid literally chewed him up!”

This is Photoshop. The original photo is in the comments.

According to zoologists, it was a carnivorous Humboldt squid that lives in these waters. And he was not alone. The flock deliberately attacked the ship, acted in a coordinated manner and consisted mainly of females. There are fewer and fewer fish in these waters and the krakens need to look for food. The fact that they reached people is an alarming sign.

Below, in the cold and dark depths of the Pacific Ocean, lives a very smart and cautious creature. About this truly unearthly creature there are legends all over the world. But this monster is real.

This is the giant squid or Humboldt squid. It received its name in honor of the Humboldt Current, where it was first discovered. This is a cold current washing the shores South America, but the habitat of this creature is much larger. It extends from Chile north to Central California across the Pacific Ocean. Giant squids patrol the depths of the ocean, conducting most of his life at a depth of up to 700 meters. Therefore, very little is known about their behavior.

They can reach the height of an adult. Their size can exceed 2 meters. Without any warning, they emerge from the darkness in groups and feed on fish on the surface. Like their octopus relative, giant squids can change their color by opening and closing pigment-filled sacs in their skin called chromatophores. By quickly closing these chromatophores, they turn white. Perhaps this is necessary to distract the attention of other predators, or perhaps it is a form of communication. And if something alarms them or they behave aggressively, then their color turns red.

Fishermen who cast their lines and try to catch these giants off the coast Central America they call them red devil. These same fishermen talk about how squids pulled people overboard and ate them. The squid's behavior does nothing to alleviate these fears. Lightning-fast tentacles armed with spiny suckers grab the victim's flesh and drag him towards a waiting mouth. There the sharp beak breaks and shreds the food. Red Devil Apparently giant squids eat everything they can catch, even their own kind. As a desperate measure of defense, the weaker squid shoots an ink cloud from a sac near its head. This dark pigment is designed to hide and confuse enemies.

Few people have had the opportunity or the courage to approach a giant squid in the water. But one wild animal filmmaker went into the dark to capture this unique footage. The squid quickly surrounds him, first showing curiosity and then aggression. The tentacles have grabbed his mask and regulator and this is fraught with the cessation of air. It will be able to restrain the squid and return to the surface if it also shows aggression and behaves like a predator. This short meeting gave some insight into intelligence, strength and

But the real giants are the krakens that live in the Bermuda area. They can reach a length of up to 20 meters, and at the very bottom hide monsters up to 50 meters long. Their targets are sperm whales and whales.

This is how the Englishman Wullen described one such fight: “At first it was like the eruption of an underwater volcano. Looking through binoculars, I was convinced that neither the volcano nor the earthquake had anything to do with what was happening in the ocean. But the forces operating there were so enormous that I can be excused for the first assumption: very big sperm whale grappled in mortal combat with a giant squid almost as big as himself. It seemed as if the endless tentacles of the mollusk had entangled the entire body of the enemy in a continuous net. Even next to the ominously black head of a sperm whale, the squid's head seemed such a terrible object that one would not always dream of it. nightmare. Huge and bulging eyes against the deathly pale background of the squid’s body made it look like a monstrous ghost.”

If you are interested in who or what an octopus is, then this article will help you understand this issue.

The meaning of the word "octopus"

This word has different meanings depending on the area in which it is used. Most general concept connected with the natural world. The octopus is a marine inhabitant, an invertebrate animal from the Octopodidae family. Scientists often classify the octopus as a group of cephalopods, the representatives of which belong not only to the above-mentioned family, but also to other families: Eledonidae, Cirroteuthidae, Tremoctopodidae.

If you don’t go into scientific details and terms, then in the broadest sense of the word, an octopus is an ordinary octopus.

Description of the animal: appearance

Octopus has big head, somewhat reminiscent of an egg, on which there are two huge eyes that can see perfectly in the dark. The octopus has a very short body (it is practically invisible); around the octopus’s mouth there are eight so-called “arms” - muscular tentacles with suction cups, with the help of which the animal catches and holds prey. Behind the head there is one “leg” in the form of a mantle, which helps the octopus swim under water.

There is not a single bone in the body of an octopus! Thanks to this, the animal easily changes its shape and can fit into very narrow gaps.

Octopuses from different families vary greatly in size: from 3 cm to 18 m in length!

Habits, nutrition, reproduction

The octopus is a benthic marine animal, that is, it lives at very great sea depths. Lives only in salt water, hiding between rocks, algae and stones.

Octopus feeds on others marine life- catches crabs, fish, mollusks, crustaceans with tentacles. This predator is capable of supporting a weight of up to one and a half thousand kilograms with its tentacles! Simple mathematics: on one tentacle there are up to 2000 suckers, each of which has a holding force of 100 g.

Having grabbed the prey, the octopus injects poison into the victim’s body, paralyzing it. After immobilizing the prey, the octopus calmly eats.

During the day, the sea bottom predator rests; its activity occurs during dark time days.

The octopus is a clean animal: it regularly cleans its home with a stream of water, and takes scraps outside to a certain place, forming a garbage heap.

These animals are heterosexual. After fertilization, the female lays eggs and cares for the small octopuses, protecting them from danger.

The lifespan of octopuses is 3-5 years.

The octopus has blue blood and three hearts.

Octopus is sea ​​chameleon. He is able to change the color of his body and adapt to the general background environment. Cephalopods can also glow from below. The nature of their luminescence is not fully understood. Scientists believe that they may need lighting to lure prey, attract females, and protect them from enemies.

Fleeing from danger, octopuses “shoot back” with ink.

If an octopus is grabbed by the tentacle, it throws it away just like a lizard throws off its tail.

Octopuses are easy to train and recognize geometric figures by shape and size, and also recognize those people who care for them.

Now you know who the octopus is. Let's look at other meanings of this word.

Using a word in a different meaning

This word is associated not only with the world of biology. "Octopus" is the title of a film about the Italian mafia. The film has 48 episodes and was filmed from 1984 to 2001. IN leading role Commissioner Corrado Cattani starred the famous Italian actor Michele Placido.

Several Russian models bear the name "Octopus". anti-tank gun, as well as a control and navigation point (Russia).

In addition, the word "octopus" also has figurative meaning- "greedy monster."

After reading the article, you will probably not be confused if you are asked who or what an octopus is, but will be able to answer this question in detail.

Since ancient times, people have believed in the existence of terrible monsters that live in the depths of the sea. So, many legends and myths revolved around a giant octopus, which could easily sink a ship.

The Kraken, as legends say, was a huge squid - about 70 meters in diameter. Its limbs were long, unusually strong and, as befits an octopus, with two rows of suckers. With its blow, this monster smashed wooden schooners to smithereens. But the most remarkable thing in such tales is that popular rumor endowed this animal with remarkable intelligence.

No wonder they say that fear has big eyes. So the English corvette, which almost lost its life due to the fault of the kraken in 1811, claimed that its ship at full speed crashed into a monster with tentacles, which reached 180 meters in diameter. The sailors, who at first thought that they had stumbled upon some island in the ocean, immediately after the collision began to suffer from health problems - they lost consciousness, their noses bled, they vomited, they lost their minds and jumped overboard. Perhaps the reason for this was the poisonous ink released by the octopus. However, the kraken did not mow down the entire crew, quickly plunging under water.

If we remember the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, then there was also a giant two-kilometer octopus, after which it sank under the water a funnel was formed, which pulled ships to the bottom.

Named "kraken" sea ​​monster owes it to the fish out of the waters Northern Europe, legends about which existed during the Viking times. Even such fearless warriors recalled with trembling horror how they had to fight monsters that had the body of a whale and the tentacles of an octopus.

And in 1896, it seems that the remains of a kraken, washed ashore by the tide, were even found. The length of the animal found on the coast of St. Augustine (Florida, USA) was almost 30 meters.

What does reality tell us? If the kraken exists in nature, then official science this animal is not yet recognized. But in the Guinness Book of Records there is a mention of the largest cephalopod, which weighs 58 kg and has tentacles 3.5 meters long. Although later an octopus caught off the coast of New Zealand set a new record: it weighed 75 kg and had 4-meter tentacles.

Meanwhile, the behavioral characteristics of octopuses lead zoologists to believe that these animals are indeed intellectually developed. During the experiments, it turned out that they easily find a way out of the maze and recognize their brothers. It was concluded that the intelligence of the giant octopus is akin to mental abilities cats.
Alas, intelligence did not in any way add longevity to these giants. Thus, the longest-living record holder was a giant octopus, which lived only 5 years. This is due interesting fact from the life of an octopus. The fact is that after mating the male stops feeding. At all. However, octopuses do not die from starvation at all, but from some substance produced by special glands. And the main purpose of these glands is precisely to kill the cephalopod.
In addition, octopuses are unusually clean - they regularly “clean” their home with a stream of water released from the body. And by the color of a giant octopus one can judge its mood. If an animal is frightened, it turns pale, and if it is angry, it turns red. Well, in the case when the octopus is threatened by some predatory creature, it prudently imitates the color “ala poisonous” sea ​​snake" Sometimes you might think that the octopus even glows, but this does not happen at all from happiness, but because of bacteria emitting a faint light, which the intelligent cephalopod stuffs into its “pockets.”

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