The Kraken's Timeline Unleashed Across Myth and Science

Photo of a Kraken depicted as a sea monster devouring a ship.

Have you ever wondered how much of myths and legends we know today are based on actual events or things? What inspired mythological monsters such as the Kraken? Isn't it curious how these various stories from different era, depict creatures with striking resemblance to each other and to some organisms we know today? Wouldn't it be short of amazing to trace back the identity of the organisms from which these monsters were based on? Journeying from legends to science fiction to scientific investigations before figuring-out that creatures like the sea monk, the sea monster and the sea serpent are all but the same organism?

That is exactly what biologists Dr. Rodrigo Salvador and Barbara Tomotani uncovered in their 2014 paper entitled: "The Kraken: when myth encounters science".

By bringing together myths, legends, and science, they have revealed the Kraken to be the giant squid (Architeuthis). They are historically depicted to be as humongous as an island or a mountain, lurking sea monsters that whip and sink entire fleets. Their mystery has been told with rich, cliff-hanging stories, around the world, which we can now access and flip like a storybook.

Gianpaolo Coro transforms the narrative of the elusive Kraken into a witty, compelling timeline - from Gessner's sea serpent in 1587 to the real dimensions of the giant squid in 1982 to the Clash of Titans in 2010 and so much more. 

A segment of the giant squid's timeline, where it is depicted as a sea serpent in "Historiae animalium."

The timeline also includes the first digital distribution map of Architeuthis dux computed using D4Science e-Infrastructure.

Photo from Coro et al (2015)

What made the timeline possible was a semi-automatic tool called the Narrative Building and Visualizing Tool (NBVT) which pulls information such as images and entities from 
Wikidata or Wikimedia Commons as a starting framework for a comprehensive visual narrative. NBVT allows selection among automatically generated semantic network of narrative ontologies, with the freedom to create new entities. Information is automatically saved and rendered graphically as tables, network graphs and timelines.

This can be a powerful tool to make your narrative come to life. You can also try it here.

To know more about the giantsquid, visit SeaLifeBase.

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Salvador, R. B., & Tomotani, B. M. (2014). The Kraken: when myth encounters science. História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos, 21(3), 971-994.

Coro, G., Magliozzi, C., Ellenbroek, A., & Pagano, P. (2015). Improving data quality to build a robust distribution model for Architeuthis dux. Ecological Modelling 305, 29-39.

Ocean Giants: Giant Squid

Last week we talked about the Kraken, that it's a squid-like sea monster and that its identity can be either of the two known largest extant squids. First was the heaviest, the colossal squid Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni (read article here). The second is the longest, the giant squid Architeuthis dux with a cosmopolitan distribution.

Photo taken by Tsunemi Kubodera from Ogasawara Islands, off Tokyo on December 4, 2006 [1].

There are many different species listed under the genus Architeuthis, 21 nominal species in total. But based on a genetic study conducted by Guerra et al (2013), all species are synonyms of A. dux; thus, there is only one giant squid. Furthermore, like the majority of deep sea species, little is known of its biology. Obviously it's a predator; it feeds on fishes and other cephalopods. It has a short life cycle; spawning occurs only once and the females die after bearing their eggs. The largest recorded species measured 12 m in length, unfortunately there was no record of its weight. Studies on its growth and mortality were very limited since getting a sample population from the ocean was tough. Thus, if you have other information on them, which you wish to include in our information system, please e-mail us at sealifebase@fin.ph or join us as a collaborator.

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[1] Accessed from http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/giant-squid/
[2] McClain CR et al (2015) Sizing ocean giants: patterns of intraspecific size variation in marine megafauna. PeerJ 2:e715. Accessed from https://peerj.com/articles/715/
[3] Guerra A et al (2013) Architeuthis dux: única especie de calamar gigante en el mundo. MOL. Revista de la Sociedad de Ciencias de Galicia 53:46-53.
[4] Bolstad KS et al (2004) Gut contents of a giant squid Architeuthis dux (Cephalopoda: Oegopsida) from New Zealand waters. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 31(1):15-21.


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