There are constantly stories about the Kraken that are full of fiction. For example, it is assumed that there is such a creature as the Great Kraken, living in the territory of the Bermuda Triangle. Then the fact that ships disappear there becomes understandable.

Who is this Kraken? Someone considers him an underwater monster, someone considers him a demon, and someone considers him a higher mind, or supermind. However, scientists still received truthful information at the beginning of the last century, when real krakens were in their hands. Until that moment, it was easier for scientists to deny their existence, because until the 20th century, they had only eyewitness stories to think about.

Does the kraken really exist? Yes, it is a real organism. This was first confirmed at the end of the 19th century. Fishermen fishing near the shore noticed something very bulky, firmly sitting aground. They made sure that the carcass did not move, and approached it. The dead kraken was taken to the science center. Over the next decade, several more such bodies were caught.

Verril, an American zoologist, was the first to investigate them, and the animals owe their name to him. Today they are called octopuses. These are terrible and huge monsters, belong to the class of mollusks, that is, in fact, relatives of the most harmless snails. They usually live at a depth of 200 to 1000 meters. Somewhat deeper in the ocean live octopuses 30-40 meters long. This is not an assumption, but a fact, since the actual size of the kraken was calculated from the size of the suckers on the skin of the whales.

In legends, they spoke of him like this: a block erupted from the water, enveloped the ship with tentacles and carried it to the bottom. It was there that the kraken from legend fed on drowned sailors.

The kraken is an ellipsoid, jelly-like substance that is shiny and grayish in color. It can reach a diameter of 100 meters, while it practically does not react to any irritants. She doesn't feel pain either. It is, in fact, a huge jellyfish that looks like an octopus. She has a head, a large number of very long tentacles with suckers in two rows. Even one tentacle of a kraken can destroy a ship.

There are three hearts in the body, one main, two gills, because they drive the blood, which is blue, through the gills. They also have kidneys, liver, stomach. Creatures do not have bones, but they do have brains. The eyes are huge, complexly arranged, approximately like a person's. The sense organs are well developed.

Pontoppidan on the Kraken

The first detailed summary of marine folklore about the kraken was compiled by the Danish naturalist Eric Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen (-). He wrote that the kraken is an animal "the size of a floating island." According to Pontoppidan, the kraken is able to grab with its tentacles and drag even the largest warship to the bottom. Even more dangerous for ships is the whirlpool that occurs when the kraken quickly sinks to the seabed.

According to the Danish author, this kraken brings confusion to the minds of sailors and cartographers, since sailors often take it for an island and cannot find it a second time. According to Norwegian sailors, a young kraken was once washed ashore in northern Norway.

Further, Pontoppidan conveys the words of the sailors that it takes three months for the kraken to digest the food it swallows. During this time, he excretes such a quantity of nutrient excrement that he is always followed by clouds of fish. If a fisherman has an exceptional catch, then they say about him that he "fished on the Kraken."

Testimony of R. Jameson

In the English edition of St. James Chronicle" in the late 1770s. the testimony of Captain Robert Jameson and the sailors of his ship was cited about a huge body they saw in 1774, up to 1.5 miles in length and up to 30 feet in height, which either appeared from the water, then sank and finally disappeared "during the extreme excitement of the waters." Following this, they found so many fish in this place that they filled almost the entire ship. This testimony was given in court under oath.

Scientists about the kraken

Based on the description given by Pontoppidan, Carl Linnaeus classified the kraken among other cephalopods and assigned it a Latin name Microcosmos. True, the kraken was excluded from the second edition of his Systema Naturae.

Sonnet Tennyson

Under thunderous waves
Bottomless sea, at the bottom of the sea
The Kraken sleeps, undisturbed by dreams,
As ancient as the sea, a dream.
Millennial age and weight
Huge algae of the depths
Intertwined with whitish rays,
Sunny above him.
He scattered a multi-layered shadow on it
Coral trees unearthly sprawl.
Kraken sleeps, fattening day by day,
On fat sea worms,
As long as the last fire of heaven
Will not scorch the Depths, will not stir up the waters, -
Then he will rise with a roar from the abyss
To the sight of the angels ... and die.

In 1802, the French zoologist Pierre-Denis de Montfort published a study of molluscs, in which he proposed to distinguish between two types of a mysterious animal - kraken octopus, which lives in the northern seas and was allegedly described for the first time by Pliny the Elder, and a giant octopus that terrifies ships plowing the open spaces southern hemisphere.

The scientific community reacted critically to Montfort's reasoning. Skeptics believed that the evidence of sailors about the kraken could be explained by underwater volcanic activity off the coast of Iceland, which manifests itself in bubbles emanating from the water, a sudden and rather dangerous change in currents, the appearance and disappearance of new islands. It wasn't until 1857 that the existence of the giant squid was proven ( Architeuthis dux), which, apparently, served as the prototype of the kraken.

According to cryptozoologist Mikhail Goldenkov, evidence of the size of a kraken “from an island” and “thousands of tentacles” indicates that this is not one creature that, with such dimensions, would be torn to pieces by waves even in a weak storm, but a flock of giant cephalopods, perhaps , giant or colossal squid. Smaller squid species are often gregarious, which may indicate that larger species are also gregarious.

Kraken in literature and cinema

The image of the Kraken has been repeatedly used in fiction and cinema. Alfred Tennyson dedicated one of his best sonnets to a fictional monster, to which the title of the story by A. N. Strugatsky refers, “Days of the Kraken”. The Kraken is also mentioned in Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. John Wyndham has a fantasy novel The Kraken Awakens, in which, despite the title, the kraken itself does not appear. In the novel by Sergei Lukyanenko "Draft", the kraken lived in the seas of the world "Earth-three". In the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels by George R. R. Martin, the golden kraken is the symbol of the Greyjoy dynasty, an ancient line of skilled sea warriors. In the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Davy Jones is depicted as being able to summon the Kraken from the abyss and set him on the ships he wishes to destroy. For some reason, the Kraken is also mentioned in the films "Clash of the Titans (1981)" and "Clash of the Titans (2010)" and "Wrath of the Titans" () according to the ancient Greek myth of Perseus (in the films, Perseus must kill the Kraken as a product of Hades), although the Kraken is not is a character mentioned in ancient Greek myths. It is impossible not to mention the fantastic novel by Sergei Pavlov "The Aquanauts" (1968), in which giant squid occupy one of the central places. In the One Piece manga and anime, a Kraken appears at the bottom of the ocean, harnessed by the protagonist to move underwater. In another Naruto: Shippuuden anime, in one of the fillers (episode 225), the plot is based on the Black Pearl and the kraken. The creature that defeats Kratos in the second episode of the legendary God of War game series can also be attributed to the Kraken. There is also a kraken at the beginning of Tomb Raider Underworld. The kraken is present in the ArcheAge online MMORPG game coming out in 2012, it is located in the water between three continents and poses a great danger to single ships passing by.

see also

Notes

Categories:

• mythical animals
• Characters in The Book of Fictional Creatures by Borges
• Poems by Alfred Tennyson
• cephalopods
• cryptids

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Synonyms:

• Ruslana
• parks

See what "Kraken" is in other dictionaries:

kraken- noun, number of synonyms: 2 krak (1) monster (35) ASIS synonym dictionary. V.N. Trishin. 2013 ... Synonym dictionary

KRAKEN- the Scandinavian version of Saratan and the Arabian dragon or sea serpent. In 1752-1754, the Danish Bishop of Bergen, Eric Pontopidian, wrote in the Natural History of Norway that "floating islands are always Krakens." Among the youthful works ... ... Symbols, signs, emblems. Encyclopedia

KRAKEN- KRAK, KRAKEN (German, from other Swiss krake tree stump with branches). A fabulous sea monster, as if living in the depths of the northern seas, near Norway. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910 ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

kraken- roll ... Concise Dictionary of Anagrams

The Kraken Awakens- The Kraken Wakes ... Wikipedia

Half Life 2: Beta- This article is proposed for deletion. An explanation of the reasons and a corresponding discussion can be found on the Wikipedia page: To be deleted / November 7, 2012. Until the discussion process is completed, the article can be ... Wikipedia

Jack Sparrow- Captain Jack Sparrow Captain Jack Sparrow Appearance The Curse of the Black Pearl Disappearance On Stranger Tides ... Wikipedia

XXY- XXY ... Wikipedia

Huge terrible krakens owned the minds of sailors for centuries. Many believed that this monster was able to entangle the ship with its tentacles and drag it into the depths of the sea along with the crew. There were all sorts of tales about these monsters.

It was said that the tentacles of the kraken can reach a length of up to one mile ... And the sailors allegedly often took the surfaced kraken for an island, landed on it, made a fire and thereby woke up the dormant monster, it abruptly plunged into the abyss, and the resulting giant whirlpool pulled the ship into the abyss together with sailors...

Terrible kraken - myth or reality? The kraken was first mentioned in a Scandinavian manuscript around 1000, Olaus Magnus (1490-1557), mentioned above, also took a lot of space in his book, the Danish naturalist Eric Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen (1698-1774) also wrote about the monster ). Although the kraken is essentially a mythical creature, it is believed that the giant squid became its prototype.

“It is difficult to imagine a more terrible image than the image of one of these huge monsters, hovering in the depths of the ocean, even more gloomy from the inky liquid released by these creatures in huge quantities; it is worth imagining hundreds of bowl-shaped suckers with which its tentacles are equipped, constantly in motion and ready at any moment to cling to anyone and anything ... and in the center of the interweaving of these living traps is a bottomless mouth with a huge hooked beak, ready to tear apart the victim, caught in the tentacles. At the mere thought of this, frost cuts through the skin. This is how the English sailor and writer Frank T. Bullen described the largest, fastest and most terrible of all invertebrates on the planet - the giant squid. With short throws, this oceanic giant develops speeds that exceed those of most fish. In size, it is quite comparable to the average sperm whale, with which it often enters into a deadly fight, although the sperm whale is armed with very sharp teeth.

The squid's beak is very strong, and its eyes are very similar to human ones - they are equipped with eyelids, have pupils, irises and movable lenses that change their shape depending on the distance to the object that the squid is looking at. It has ten tentacles: eight ordinary ones and two that are much longer than the rest and have something like spatulas at the ends. All tentacles are studded with suckers. The usual tentacles of a giant squid are 3-3.5 m long, and a pair of the longest stretches up to 15 meters. With long tentacles, the squid pulls prey towards itself and, braiding it with the rest of its limbs, tears it apart with its powerful beak.

Until the second half of the 19th century, scientists doubted the existence of giant squids, and the stories of sailors were considered the fruit of their unbridled imagination. But now, for unknown reasons, on the coasts and the surface of the seas, they began to find many dead squids of gigantic size.

True, not always the monsters found were dead. “On October 26, 1873, three fishermen on a small boat,” writes E. R. Richiuti in the book Dangerous Inhabitants of the Sea, “saw some strange floating object in one of the fjords of Newfoundland, it was a giant squid. The fishermen had to fight him not to the stomach, but to death: one of them, suspecting nothing, poked an unknown object with a hook, and immediately squid tentacles flew out of the water, the animal grabbed the boat with a death grip and dragged it under the water. One of the fishermen, a 12-year-old boy, managed to cut off two squid tentacles with an ax, and he surrendered; the fishermen leaned on the oars and safely reached the shore. The piece of tentacle cut off by the boy remained in the boat and was then measured: it was 5.8 meters long.”

The most terrible collision of a man with a giant squid was described in newspapers in 1874. The steamer Strathoven, heading for Madras, approached the small schooner Pearl, which was rocking on the water. Suddenly, the tentacles of a monstrous squid rose above the surface of the water, they grabbed the schooner and dragged her under the water.

The captain of the schooner, who managed to escape, told the details of the incident. According to him, the crew of the schooner watched the fight between the squid and the sperm whale. The giants hid in the depths, but after a while the captain noticed that a huge shadow was rising from the depths at a small distance from the schooner. It was a monstrous squid about 30 meters in size. When he approached the schooner, the captain fired a gun at him, and then a swift attack of the monster followed, which dragged the schooner to the bottom.

Biologist and oceanographer Frederick Aldrich is convinced that squids even 50 meters long can live at great depths. The biologist proceeds from the fact that all found dead specimens of a giant squid about 15 m long belonged to still young individuals with suckers of five centimeters in diameter, while traces of suckers of 20 centimeters in diameter were found on many harpooned whales ...

In the meantime, a giant squid 8.62 meters long can be seen with your own eyes in the British Museum of Natural History. Archie (as the squid was nicknamed) was caught in 2004 by fishermen from a trawler near the Falkland Islands. Fortunately, the fishermen realized that they had caught a unique specimen, froze it entirely and transported it to London. Scientists not only examined the giant, but also prepared it for display. Now Archie, who is in a 9.45 meter long aquarium filled with a special preservative solution, can be seen by all museum visitors.

It is worth noting that when talking about the kraken, some confusion often arises, the latter is sometimes considered a giant octopus. However, the reality of giant octopuses has not yet been proven, although there are a number of facts that indicate the possibility of the existence of very large specimens. For example, in 1897, the corpse of a huge octopus weighing about 6 tons was found on St. Augustine Beach in Florida. This giant had a body 7.5 m long, and 23 m tentacles, which had a diameter of about 45 cm at their base.

In 1986, the crew and passengers of the Ururi motor ship near the Solomon Islands (Pacific Ocean) were able to observe a 12-meter-long octopus that emerged from a 300-meter depth. Approximately the same octopus was photographed in 1999. Therefore, it is possible that not only giant squids, but also huge octopuses took part in the formation of the terrible image of the kraken.

Andrey Sidorenko

Kraken is a mythical sea monster of gigantic proportions, known from the descriptions of Icelandic sailors, from whose language its name comes. Depicted as a huge octopus or squid.

Source: legends and myths of seafarers of different nations

Sonnet Tennyson

Under thunderous waves
Bottomless sea, at the bottom of the sea
The Kraken sleeps, undisturbed by dreams,
As ancient as the sea, a dream.
Millennial age and weight
Huge algae of the depths
Intertwined with whitish rays,
Sunny above him.
He scattered a multi-layered shadow on it
Coral trees unearthly sprawl.
Kraken sleeps, fattening day by day,
On fat sea worms,
As long as the last fire of heaven
Will not scorch the Depths, will not stir up the waters, -
Then he will rise with a roar from the abyss
To the sight of the angels ... and die.

It is known that in the 19th century, two ships belonging to different states with the same name “Kraken”, sank as soon as they left the port. And the reasons for this circumstance are unknown. They just didn't exist. The ships went down on their own.

It is called Krake, Kraxe, Ankertrold and even Krabbe, but it gained worldwide fame under the name Kraken. He was ranked among cuttlefish and octopuses and squids. It should be noted that there is still no consensus on what type of marine life this deep-sea creature belongs to. Just like there is no general theory of where the giant monster could come from. Although there are quite a few versions. But does the "giant squid" really exist?

Great Kraken.

And it all started with rare attacks by a giant creature on Viking ships, who ventured a little further than usual to move away from the coast. The Vikings recalled with horror their fights with a huge monster that captured their ships with its long tentacles. It was the fishermen of Northern Europe who gave the monster the formidable name "Kraken". And the maritime traditions of Scandinavia keep mention of a monster capable of twisting and dragging a whale a hundred feet long to the bottom.

Moreover, legends keep many descriptions of the Kraken. And everyone, without exception, says that he is nothing but a sea monster with some kind of superintelligence. He alone lies at the bottom of the world's oceans, waiting for the whole earth to finally sink under water. Then he will become the main one on this planet, and no one will be able to interfere with him. He alone will enjoy all the vast and unified space of the "water planet".

However, despite the fear and danger, there were always a great many who wanted to discover the lair of the Kraken. Desirable of course was the absence of the owner. The thing is that in the same Scandinavian legends, countless treasures are mentioned that the Kraken collects from the ships it flooded. Legends even keep stories about happy sailors who managed to get small parts of the monster's wealth from the seabed.

Most researchers are sure that the first written mention of the real existence of the Kraken belongs to the immortal Homer. It was he who first described in literature the appearance and some of the habits of a terrible monster with 6 heads Scylla (Scylla). She lived in a cave in the sea between Italy and Sicily.

Descriptions are found in the annals of many more scientists and travelers of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The fear of the monster is reflected in the painting and sculpture of that time. Take, for example, the same eight heads of the Lernaean Hydra depicted on a marble slab in the Vatican. They are much more like the tentacles of a huge octopus than the predatory heads of a mythical monster.

But over time, the mysterious Kraken began to be forgotten. He was mentioned less and less in stories and remained only in scary stories for children. Its existence was attributed to the rich imagination of sailors from the north. By the 15th century, even sailors had finally ceased to be afraid of him.

From the myths of ancient Greece today.

But by the middle of the 18th century, the world again remembered the deep-sea monster. And again, the ships of the northern countries of Europe became a victim of the Kraken. Only this time, there were much more witnesses to the monster attacks, and the descriptions are much more detailed. But most importantly, the witnesses themselves belonged to the category of highly respected and revered people, for whom lies were unusual, and who were accustomed to trust.

First, the Archbishop of Uppsala (Sweden) Olaus Magnus, known to the world as a chronicler and an excellent historian, wrote a book on the history of the northern peoples. The book was published in 1555, and in it quite a lot of attention was paid to a certain "mysterious fish" attacking ships. According to the description of the archbishop, the fish, in its size, resembled a small island rather than a sea creature.

Further, the Danish naturalist Bishop of Bergen Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan (E rik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan) in 1953 publishes two volumes of a book called "Natural History of Norway" (Bidrag til Norges Naturhistorie). The book contains unique materials on the natural history of Norway. And the Kraken is also mentioned in great detail. Bishop Pontoppidan described him as a crab fish that easily drags the largest ships to the bottom. “The Kraken is capable of sinking even the largest warship to the bottom. But much more dangerous is the whirlpool that occurs along with the sharp immersion of the animal into the water. In addition, the bishop calls Kraken and the main culprit of errors on the map. Since even the most experienced captains mistook the huge body of the animal for an island, they marked it on the map. Naturally, no one ever saw this island later.

Based on the Bishop's book, the world-famous Swedish naturalist and naturalist, as well as a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, Carl Linnaeus (Linnaeus, Carolus), included the Kraken in his classification of living organisms. In Linnaeus' Systema Naturae, 1735, this mysterious and elusive sea dweller appears as a cephalopod from the cuttlefish order (Sepia microcosmos). It is worth noting that Kraken was nevertheless excluded from the second edition of this book by the author.

However, this did not stop the French zoologist Pierre-Denis de Montfort, in his book The Natural History of Mollusks, published in 1802, from making a clear distinction between the northern Kraken (kraken octopus) and the giant octopus of the southern hemisphere. De Montfort called the kraken "a colossal marine pulp".

Writers did not lag behind researchers of the world of fauna. Victor Hugo in 1866 mentions something similar to a giant octopus in his novel Toilers of the Sea. In 1870, Jules Verne's book "20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" was published, which also describes a giant octopus. Herman Melville releases "Moby Dick", where he describes a giant fleshy creature under 210 meters in length and with a whole ball of writhing anacondas. And even James Bond in Ian Fleming's novel "Doctor No" could not avoid meeting with a giant sea monster.

Kraken attacks.

While the science fiction writers were writing, the Kraken did not waste time. Dozens of ships were attacked by the monster. So the British whalers on the Arrow in 1768 collided with a small island. The island turned out to be alive and put up serious resistance to experienced sailors. Moreover, the English ship barely managed to avoid sinking, and death to its crew.

As the sailors said, when the island suddenly stirred, and they realized who they were facing, the captain gave the signal to attack. But at that moment, when the harpoon pierced the jelly-like mass, most of the crew members, as if on cue, became dizzy and bled from the nose. At this time, the sea creature was able to climb aboard the ship with its tentacles. The whalers barely managed to pull out the harpoon, with a joint effort to throw the monster back into the sea and escape from its pursuit.

In the ship's log of another English vessel, the Celestina, there is also an entry about a meeting with the Kraken. It happened in 1810 during the Reykjavik-Oslo flight. The corvette team noticed an incomprehensible round object in the sea about 50 meters in diameter. Deciding not to tempt fate, the captain of the corvette ordered to bypass it. But this was not possible. The huge tentacles of the monster instantly grabbed the sides of the corvette, dumping it on its left side. Despite the fact that after a long battle with an unknown monster, the team still managed to cordon off the ship, the damage was massive, and the ship had to return back to the port of departure.

In 1861, the French sailing ship Adecton, en route from Madeira to Tenerife, was attacked in the same pattern as the Celestina. But the captain of the ship Buie and the crew of the ship continued the battle until the monster retreated. As a reward, the crew got a part of the giant's tentacle, the length of which was 7 meters.

The London Times of July 4, 1874 keeps references to the Pearl schooner and its battle with a cephalopod monster. May 10, 1874 "Pearl" was very unlucky. The size of the Kraken, which the British encountered almost immediately after leaving the port, exceeded the size of the ship itself. After a short battle, the Monster managed to capture the mast with its tentacles, turn the schooner over and pull it under the water. Several crew members managed to escape, who were able to return to the UK on an unknown how surviving boat.

Where does the Kraken live?

Many do not believe that the length of the Great Kraken is limited to only 30 meters. And therefore, in our time, there are still enough ridiculous rumors, new myths and very real facts about the mysterious and powerful Kraken.

One of the American newspapers devoted to the study of the mysterious animals of our planet, at one time devoted quite a lot of space on its pages to the Kraken. Somehow, an interview appeared in it with one of the cryptozoologists, who said that, according to his assumptions, the habitat of a marine animal is located in the Bermuda Triangle. It was there that the Great Kraken made his attacks. This, according to the scientist, explains the notorious story of the disappearance of ships in this area of ​​the Atlantic.

But the first thing that modern Kraken seekers checked was old Viking maps. They marked places that should be avoided while swimming, as there was a high probability of encountering a deep sea monster there. Following the maps, it turned out that giant octopuses are found to a greater extent in Antarctic or Arctic waters at kilometer depths.

Some cryptozoologists believe that the appearance of Krakens is associated with the melting of ice. Giant octopuses, bound for thousands of years by a multi-meter thick layer of ice, are released during the melting of ice masses and begin to show their aggression. Also with this natural phenomenon, scientists associate the appearance in the Atlantic Ocean of huge dead monsters washed ashore. According to scientists, not all individuals managed to survive captivity in ice, and dead individuals sooner or later were delivered in waves to the coasts of North America and Greenland.

Moreover, cryptozoology does not deny the possibility that a giant octopus existed millennia before the appearance of the first man on Earth. Its appearance on our planet may well coincide with the time of the existence of dinosaurs on it. After the global catastrophe that shook the Earth's ecosystem, the Kraken is perhaps the only representative of that time.

There is another version, it is also directly related to Antarctica. It is believed that the world owes the appearance of giant squid to the secret bases of the Nazis, also hidden inside the ice. The fascination of scientists of Nazi Germany with the myths and legends of the northern peoples is generally recognized. And some researchers believe that the creation of a creature like the Kraken could well have been provoked by the experiments of the Nazis. To create a gigantic monster from Scandinavian legends, capable of detecting and sinking any ship and submarine, is quite in the spirit of research by scientists from Nazi Germany. After the defeat of Germany in World War II, all the monsters were released and left to their own devices.

Scientists partly confirm some of these versions. Biologists and zoologists agree that the Krakens sail from the Arctic and Antarctica. So from the Arctic, octopuses follow the Labrador Current along the coast of North America. This current obeys some of its own rhythms, but once every 30 years its waters become especially cold, and then Krakens appear. But for the most part, giant squid are found already dead in the Newfoundland area. Scientists are not yet ready to say unequivocally what this fact is connected with, with a reaction to the warm currents of the Atlantic Ocean, or with the characteristics of the cephalopods themselves and their strange migration.

It is worth noting the existence of several less popular versions. According to one of them, the Kraken is an ordinary mutated squid. Mutation, according to biologists, is also not worth excluding, since this theory is quite real. Changes may be related to conditions and habitat. Also, one should not exclude variants of mutation in the course of already modern experiments.

A few more versions belong to ufologists. According to some of them, the "Kraken" is an alien mind that has taken a fancy to our planet tens of thousands of years ago. According to others, it was deliberately thrown out by aliens in order to poison the calm existence of mankind at sea. Also, "Kraken" is mentioned by ufologists and as the protection of underwater alien bases.

Kraken found?!

Not surprisingly, for the first time, a sea monster was defeated by his native water element. In 1896, the remains of a giant octopus washed ashore were found by two cyclists. The body of the monster was discovered by them during a morning walk along the coast in the town of St. Augustine, Florida. The length of the deep-sea giant was a little less than 30 meters.

The body was examined by the president of the scientific society, DeWitt Webb. Having not determined what species to attribute the dead animal to, the doctor sent his photographs to Yale University biology professor Edison Verrill. Verrill himself became famous for proving the possibility of the real existence of a monster similar in size to the mythical Kraken. Verril only after re-examining the photographs assigned the name “octopus giganteus” to the then unknown creature, changing his initial opinion that it was a squid. But he soon changed this opinion, coming to the conclusion that these were still the remains of a whale.

With this, however, William Doll of the Washington National Museum no longer agreed. Doll, by the way, no less famous specialist in shellfish, insisted that the monster from the coast of Florida belongs to the octopus family. Moreover, he arranged a very tough and lengthy correspondence with Verrill on this subject.

But Verril was supported by the zoologist F. Lucas, who literally stated the following: “It looks like whale fat, it stinks, like a whale, it means that this is a whale.” This very strange argument nevertheless tipped the scales in favor of Verril's version, and "octopus giganteus" disappeared forever from encyclopedias of zoology. True, at the same time, he remained on the pages of most popular books and publications about the animals of our planet.

But still, the first description belongs to the Dane Stensstrup, who observed several giant objects off the coast of Iceland, as well as in the Sound. In addition, Stesstrup described a “sea monk” caught back in the 16th century, the remains of which, as it turned out, had lain all this time in the Copenhagen Museum. It was Stensstrup who in 1957 assigned the Kraken the Latin "architeuthis monacus" to the largest squid species studied to date. But the official passport for this octopus, whose average length is about 20 meters, according to all the rules of zoology, was issued by Professor Edison Verrill.

And although the Kraken has finally received the official name "architeuthis dux", scientists are not sure that it is he who is the largest representative of the soft-bodied. The whole point is that there is another type of supergiant squid "m esonychoteuthis hamiltoni". The largest recorded squid of this species reached 13 meters. But, according to the researchers, these were just children, and according to the calculations of zoologists, an adult should be at least twice as long. But so far no one has been able to pull out such a colossus.

To date, the largest representative found in the hands of researchers still alive reached 19 meters. It was found just after a storm on the coast of New Zealand and was named "a rchiteuthis longimana". And in total, starting from the 18th century, about 80 individuals similar in size to it were found. Which suggests that the Kraken is far from alone. Of course, if the actual dimensions of the "Great Kraken" are measured by 20-30 meters.

No one saw a live Cracker.

Despite the fact that today the distribution area of ​​​​giant squids and octopuses already covers almost the entire World Ocean, no one has seen him alive. All specimens longer than 20 meters were found exclusively dead.

Moreover, so far no one has been able to photograph the giant in natural conditions. Individuals of this size incredibly manage to avoid even video filming. Research vessels use modern mid-depth and bottom trawls, conduct their searches in various areas of the World Ocean, but without much success. Zoologists tend to believe that, like most cephalopods, these squids and octopuses feel the approach of ships. Or live in areas of deep canyons. That's just how they manage to distinguish a curious research ship from a fishing trawl that can be flooded remains a mystery.

Over the entire centuries-old history of mankind, a fairly large number of facts related to this marine life have accumulated. But, as before, he remains a mysterious and unknown creature from the depths of the sea.

The Complete Encyclopedia of Mythological Creatures. Story. Origin. The magical properties of Conway Dinn

kraken

The Scandinavian peoples considered the kraken, a strange creature sometimes confused with a giant devilfish or octopus, to be a terrible threat. It is usually seen in the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean and along the coast of Norway. Legend has it that two krakens were created at the creation of the world, and these creatures will live as long as the Earth exists.

The huge body of this ocean dweller, which was much larger than the body of a sperm whale, was sometimes mistaken for an island. The kraken was so huge that it could easily drag a person off the ship or turn the ship itself over by sticking to it with its tentacles. In calm weather, sailors looked carefully for signs of unusually boiling water, which served as a signal that the kraken was rising to the surface. When this creature rose, it was impossible to avoid its deadly attack.

In 1680, Fr. e. there was a message that a young kraken was stuck in the narrow Altstahong channel. When he died, such a terrible smell appeared that the inhabitants of the surrounding villages were afraid that he would cause some terrible disease. In 1752, a Norwegian bishop personally saw the kraken and wrote about it. He claimed that the kraken threw out "ink" that acted as a smoke screen, and all the water around the ship turned black.

In Irish folklore, there are also stories about sea monsters. The sea monster orc constantly devastated one of the islands off the coast of Ireland, until he was killed by a Saracen warrior named Rogero.

Psychological characteristics: A person who appears harmless on the outside but has dangerous and/or malevolent personality traits.

magical properties: very dangerous; Not recommended.