Yes, release the Kraken! Recognizable by its massive size and tentacled
limbs, the Kraken is one of the most legendary and feared sea monsters of the deep. Stories of the Kraken say it could take down
whole ships, grab sailors off decks, and create whirlpools—all to get humans into the water
and into the monster’s waiting beak. Because despite having more than half of the
world’s species to choose from for dinner, apparently there is nothing in the ocean more
delicious than humans. We know less about the oceans on our own planet
than we do about our solar system. And before we started going to space, sailing
far away from land was just about the scariest, most uncertain trip a person could take. So much about the ocean is inherently terrifying. It’s dark, vast, deep, and unpredictable. It sparks our imaginations of what could lie
beyond the horizon, or what lurks beneath the waves. And that’s where the Kraken comes in. The first written mention of the colossal sea beast was by King Svarah of Norway in
1180. He tells sailors to look out for a large squid-like
monster that swims the coasts of Norway, Greenland, and Iceland. Since then, the Kraken has continuously appeared
in literature, most famously in the work of Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, and Alfred Tennyson. It’s not surprising that we first find this creature in Northern Europe given the reliance
the Nordic people had on the ocean for trade, travel, and survival. Unlike other sea monsters that require a bit
more imagination, the idea of a giant, tentacled creature prowling below the surface of the
water, waiting to take down unsuspecting ships and sailors makes sense. Because there are living organisms that fit
the description (minus the sailor-eating part). The giant squid and the colossal squid are two living cephalopods that can be found in
every ocean on Earth. Giant squid really are giant, measuring up
to 43 feet in length. But the colossal squid holds the title of
world’s largest living invertebrate, growing up to 49 feet long (at current record!). The largest one found so far weighed over
1,000 pounds. Oh, and in addition to suckers, it has barbed
hooks on its tentacles, and they are very fast swimmers. Both species frequent the deep, cold waters
of the ocean, making it hard to see them in their natural habitat. Before the 21st-century, no photographic evidence
of a living giant squid existed. It wasn’t until 2012 that we first caught
these creatures alive on video in their natural habitat. The Kraken is bigger than giant and larger
than colossal. It’s a sea beast with multiple tentacles
that often acts aggressively towards humans. A Kraken is basically an angrier, much larger
version of a squid. Personally, I’m terrified of the Kraken. Something about those giant eyes, wiggling
tentacles, and suckers just completely freaks me out. And I’m not the only one. Victor Hugo apparently hated anything with tentacles. In his 1866 novel The Toilers of the Sea,
a character has a frightening encounter with an octopus who wraps itself around his body
and almost kills him. Hugo dedicates an entire chapter outside of
the plot to rant about how terrifying and monstrous these quote “Devil-Fish” are. Writing about quote, “what ancient legends
call the Krakens,” he describes them as “glutinous masses endowed with a malignant
will.” Hugo describes how such a creature could wrap itself around a swimmer and drown them, and
even goes as far as to say they are capable of sucking blood with their tentacles. He summarizes his fear of suckers stating,
“Claws are harmless compared with the horrible action of these natural cupping-glasses. The talons of the wild beast enter into your
flesh; but with the cephalopod, it is you who enter into the creature.” Yikes. There are real accounts of octopuses attacking
and even drowning swimmers, many of which occur in the 19th century, the same time Hugo,
Tennyson, and Verne wrote their Kraken stories. In Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under
the Sea, Captain Nemo and his crew are attacked by not just one, but “10 or 12,” “horrible
monsters” described as giant octopuses. It’s a bloody, inky, chaotic fight scene
with tentacles flailing everywhere, and the crew defending itself with hatchets and harpoons. Tennyson’s 1862 poem “The Kraken” depicts
the monster as an apocalyptic force that will rise from quote “His ancient, dreamless,
uninvaded sleep” one day to be seen by “men and angels.”The Kraken appears in nonfiction
literature as well, with reports of giant squid corpses beginning in the 14th century. We have accounts of massive tentacles washing
ashore and of giant squid corpses floating at sea. Sperm whales are the natural predator of giant
squid, so pieces of the creatures have been found in their stomachs, and they even sometimes
get scars of huge sucker marks from a squid that put up a fight. Okay, but how does that explain the legends of Kraken attacking humans? Well, octopuses have attacked swimmers and
divers—we have the footage. But there’s another element at work—sharks. We need to take these predators into account
when talking about the kraken. Though shark attacks are rare, they do happen. Often, all a witness would see is a flailing
body, blood, and maybe even the victim dragged under the surface of the water—but no evidence
of what was causing the attack. This established the idea that large creatures
in the ocean posed a threat to humans. Combine that with sightings of the alien body
of a giant squid or a large tentacle, and the Kraken legend begins to take form. To quote Hugo: “These animals are indeed
phantoms as much as monsters. They are proved and yet improbable.” The Kraken is unnerving because it resembles a real animal. Sure, we don’t have conclusive evidence
of one over 50 feet long, but we’ve only measured around 500 giant squid throughout
recorded history. We can hardly call that a representative sample
of an entire species. All we really have are glimpses of a creature we don’t completely understand. The relatively few species we do know about
in the deep ocean are frightening because they seem otherworldly. We don’t need to look to space for aliens;
they exist right here in the uncharted territories of Earth. Even more bizarre creatures may exist in the
dark depths of our oceans, inspiring authors to craft even stranger, more terrifying sea
monsters.
