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A study published in March 2012 suggested that giant squids could detect a moving sperm whale from 394 feet (120 meters) with those big eyes. Giant squid have more than just giant eyes. Learn about the giant squid's beak, suckers, and other over-sized body parts in this video with Smithsonian scientist Clyde Roper.
- Giant Squid
Anatomy. Giant squid have eight arms but use their two long...
- Giant Squid
3. Jetsquid. Squid use a jet propulsion system to power themselves through the water and have three hearts that pump blue blood. 4. The eyes have it. Giant and colossal squid have the largest eyes ...
- Overview
- A note on sizes: Very few people have successfully measured the eye of a giant squid. In the few successful attempts, the eyes belonged to dead animals and were distorted. Thankfully, Nilsson and Warrant managed to get a photo of a freshly caught giant squid, captured by a Hawaiian fisherman in 1981. There’s a standard fuel hose running over the eye, and the duo used this to gauge its size – it was at least 27 centimetres wide. They also got access to a colossal squid – the largest one ever caught – which had been frozen in New Zealand’s Te Papa Museum. Its eye was the same size – 27 to 28 centimetres. There are some larger estimates of 40 centimetres or so, but the duo think that these are overblown.
The giant squid sees the world with eyes the size of soccer balls. They’re at least 25 centimetres (10 inches) across, making them the largest eyes on the planet.
For comparison, the largest fish eye is the 9-centimetre orb of the swordfish. It would fit inside the giant squid’s pupil! Even the blue whale – the largest animal that has ever existed – has measly 11-centimetre-wide eyes.
So why the huge leap in size? Why does the giant squid have a champion eye that’s at least twice the size of the runner-up?
Dan-Eric Nilsson and Eric Warrant from Lund University, Sweden, think that the squid must have evolved its eye to cope with some unique challenge that other animals don’t face – to spot one of the world’s biggest predators, the sperm whale.
It’s generally true that bigger eyes can see more light. You’d expect that a big-eyed squid should be able to see further than a small-eyed one, which would be useful for finding mates or prey. But Nilsson and Warrant showed that this intuitive explanation can’t account for the squid’s extreme eye.
Using a mathematical model, they found that in the deep ocean, eyes suffer from a law of diminishing returns. Small eyes can see dramatically further if they grow a bit bigger. But once the pupil passes 2.5 centimetres, these improvements become tinier and tinier. Once the pupil reaches 3.5 centimetres, and the eye itself reaches 9 centimetres, there’s very little point in making it any bigger. And that’s exactly where fish have stopped. Even though the swordfish’s head is capable of holding a much larger eye, it doesn’t.
Reference: Nilsson, Warrant, Johnsen, Hanlon & Shashar. 2012. A Unique Advantage for Giant Eyes in Giant Squid. Current Biology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.02.031
Photo: squid by National Geographic, eye by Ernie Choy
The giant squid (Architeuthis dux) is a species of deep-ocean dwelling squid in the family Architeuthidae. It can grow to a tremendous size, offering an example of abyssal gigantism: recent estimates put the maximum size at around 12–13 m (39–43 ft) [2][3][4][5] for females and 10 m (33 ft) [3] for males, from the posterior fins to the tip ...
- Anatomy, Diversity & Evolution. Anatomy. A giant squid’s body may look pretty simple: Like other squids and octopuses, it has two eyes, a beak, eight arms, two feeding tentacles, and a funnel (also called a siphon).
- Ecology & Behavior. Distribution. Giant squid are thought to swim in the ocean worldwide, based on the beaches they've washed upon, as shown in the map (via Wikimedia Commons).
- Squids at the Smithsonian. Meet Clyde Roper. Dr. Clyde Roper grew up close to the ocean and was a lobster fisherman before going to graduate school, where he studied squid.
- Cultural Connections. Giant Squid of Myth. The giant squid has captured the human imagination for more than 2,000 years. For a long time, people who spotted them floating, dead, at sea or washed up on beaches couldn’t figure out what they were.
The eye diameter of the giant squid, which measures up to 27 cm (10.6 inches), is among the largest of all living animals; it is second only to that of the colossal squid. Such large eyes are thought to have given the giant squid and the colossal squid the ability to discern large shapes, such as that of the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus ...
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Massive Eyes. Giant squid, along with their cousin, the colossal squid, have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom, measuring some 10 inches in diameter. These massive organs allow them to detect ...
