General Perspective on the Giant Squid

The giant squid is a name that often scares people when they think about.  They see it as a monstrous beast that can kill people.  They find the way it looks it so strange that they make up stories about how terrible it is, how it kills people, and how it should be killed.

In reality, the giant squid has very rarely been seen alive and healthy, and it will not attack unless provoked.  However, people would rather create movies and books about its evil deeds.

In Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a twenty-five foot, forty or fifty thousand pound giant squid with eight legs attacks the Nautilus, a submarine.  The information that Verne gives is completely inaccurate and shows how little people actually know about the giant squid.  Other incorrect accounts of the giant squid include the 1961 movie Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, James Bond film Doctor No, and Beast, a novel by Peter Benchley and the made for TV movie inspired by it.  In each of these, the giant squid is inaccurately portrayed as a man-killing monster that should be killed on sight.

This amazing creature did nothing to deserve this title.  It is a unique creature whose appearance frightens people, but it is not the monster they believe it to be.

Beast, by Peter Benchly, the author of Jaws