Giant squid

The giant squid is one of the biggest animals in the world that has no backbone. The largest one ever measured by scientists was almost 13 metres long, which is longer than a school bus. It lives far down in the deep, dark ocean.

Its eyes are as big as dinner plates, the largest eyes of any animal on Earth. Such huge eyes help it see in the deep water, where almost no sunlight reaches. The giant squid has eight arms and two very long feeding tentacles that it can shoot out to grab food that is far away.

For dinner it hunts deep-sea fish and other squid. It catches them with the sticky, toothed suckers on its tentacles, pulls them close, and bites them with a strong beak in the middle of its arms. Even so, the giant squid is food for others too: sperm whales dive down deep to hunt them.

People almost never see a living giant squid. For a long time we only knew about them from bodies that washed up on beaches, and old sailors made up scary stories about sea monsters. It was not until 2012 that scientists finally filmed a giant squid swimming in its natural home.

A giant squid grows amazingly fast and lives only about five years. There are enough of them in the wide ocean that scientists list them as Least Concern. It is not a monster at all, just a shy and enormous animal of the deep.