The giant kraken is a terrifying monster. Is the giant squid just a legend Kraken exists in our time

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.

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.

Marine life is very diverse and sometimes frightening. The most bizarre forms of life can lurk in the abyss of the seas, because humanity has not yet been able to fully explore all the expanses of water. And sailors have long had legends about a powerful creature that can sink an entire fleet or convoy with its mere appearance. About a creature whose appearance inspires horror, and whose size makes you freeze in amazement. About a creature the likes of which are not in the stories. And if the sky above the world belongs to and, the earth under their feet belongs to the Tarascans, then the expanses of the seas belong to only one creature - the kraken.

What does a kraken look like?

To say the kraken is huge would be an understatement. For centuries, a kraken resting in the abyss of water can reach simply unimaginable sizes of several tens of kilometers. It is truly huge and scary. Outwardly, it is somewhat similar to a squid - the same elongated body, the same tentacles with suction cups, all the same eyes and a special organ for moving under water using air draft. That's just the size of the kraken and the usual squid are not even close comparable. The ships that disturbed the peace of the kraken during the renaissance sank from just one hit with a tentacle on the water.

The Kraken is mentioned as one of the most feared sea monsters. But there is someone to whom even he must obey. In different nations it is called differently. But all the legends say the same thing - this is the God of the seas and the lord of all sea creatures. And it doesn't matter how you call this super creature - one of his orders is enough for the kraken to throw off the shackles of a hundred-year sleep and do what he was instructed to do.

In general, legends often mention a certain artifact that gave a person the ability to control the kraken. This creature is by no means lazy and absolutely harmless, unlike its owners. A kraken can sleep for centuries, or even millennia without an order, without disturbing anyone with its awakening. Or maybe in a few days to change the face of the whole coast, if his peace is disturbed or if he was given an order. Perhaps, among all creatures, the kraken has the greatest power, but also the most peaceful character.

One or many

You can often find references to the fact that many such creatures are in the service of the Sea God. But to imagine that this is true is very difficult. The huge size of the kraken and its strength make it possible to believe that this creature can be on different ends of the earth at the same time, but it is very difficult to imagine that there are two such creatures. How terrifying can be the battle of such creatures?

In some epics, there are mentions of battles between krakens, which suggests that to this day almost all krakens died in these terrible fights, and the sea god commands the last survivors. A creature that does not produce offspring, free in food and rest, has reached such huge dimensions that one can only wonder how hunger has not yet driven it to land and why it has not yet been met by researchers. Perhaps the structure of the kraken's skin and tissues makes it impossible to detect and the creature's century-long sleep hid it in the sands of the seabed? Or maybe there was a depression in the ocean, where researchers have not yet looked, but where this creature is resting. One can only hope that even if it is found, the researchers will be smart enough not to arouse the wrath of the thousand-year-old monster and not try to destroy it with the help of any weapon.

In the dark, unexplored sea waters at great depths, mysterious creatures live, which have terrified sailors since ancient times. They are secretive and elusive, and still poorly understood. In medieval legends, they are represented as monsters attacking ships and sinking them.

According to the sailors, they look like a floating island with huge tentacles that reach the peak of the mast, bloodthirsty and ferocious. In literary works, these creatures are called "krakens".

The first information about them is found in the annals of the Vikings, which speaks of huge sea monsters attacking ships. There are also references to krakens in the works of Homer and Aristotle. On the walls of ancient temples, you can find images of a monster dominating the sea. Over time, there were fewer references to these creatures. However, by the middle of the 18th century, the world again remembered the thunderstorm of the seas. In 1768, this monster attacked the English whaling ship Arrow, the crew and the ship miraculously escaped death. According to the sailors, they encountered a "small living island."

In 1810, the British ship Celestina, sailing on the Reykjavik-Oslo flight, met something up to 50 meters in diameter. It was not possible to avoid the meeting, and the ship was badly damaged by the tentacles of an unknown monster, so they had to return back to the port.

In 1861, the kraken attacked the French ship Adekton, and in 1874 sank the English ship Pearl. However, despite all these cases, the scientific world considered the giant monster nothing more than fiction. Until in 1873 he received material evidence of its existence.

On October 26, 1873, English fishermen in one of the bays discovered some huge and presumably dead sea animal. Wanting to know what it is, they sailed up to it in a boat and poked a hook. In response to this, the creature suddenly came to life and wrapped its tentacles around the boat, wanting to drag it to the bottom. The fishermen managed to fight back and get a trophy - one of the tentacles, which was transferred to the local museum.

A month later, another octopus 10 meters long was caught in the same area. So the myth became reality.
Previously, the likelihood of encounters with these deep-sea inhabitants was more real. However, there has been little to no news of them lately. One of the latest events associated with these creatures dates back to 2011, when the American yacht Zvezda was attacked. Of the entire crew and people on board, only one person could survive. The tragic story of the "Star" is the last known case of a collision with a giant octopus.

So, what is this mysterious ship hunter?

Until now, there is no clear idea what species this animal belongs to; scientists consider it to be a squid, an octopus, and a cuttlefish. This deep-sea inhabitant reaches several meters in length, presumably some individuals can grow to gigantic sizes.

Its head has a cylindrical shape with a chitinous beak in the middle, with which it can bite through a steel cable. The eyes are up to 25 cm in diameter.

The habitat of these creatures extends throughout the oceans, starting from the deep waters of the Arctic and Antarctica. At one time it was believed that their habitat - Bermuda Triangle, and it is they who are responsible for the mysterious disappearances of ships in this place.

Hypothesis of the appearance of the Kraken

Where this mysterious animal came from is still not known. There are several theories about its origin. That this is the only creature that survived the ecological catastrophe of the “time of the dinosaurs”. That it was created in the course of Nazi experiments at secret bases in Antarctica. That, perhaps, this is a mutation of an ordinary squid, or even extraterrestrial intelligence.

Even in our time of advanced technology, little has been studied about the kraken. Since no one saw them alive, all individuals exceeding 20 m were found exclusively dead. In addition, despite their huge size, these creatures successfully avoid photography and video filming. So the search for this deep-sea monster continues...

kraken- the legendary sea monster, reports of which have come from ancient times. Kraken legends claim that this creature lives off the coast of Norway and Iceland. Opinions about the appearance of the kraken differ. There are testimonies describing it as a gigantic squid, while other descriptions represent a monster in the form of an octopus.This word was originally meant any deformed animal that was very different from its own kind. However, later it began to be used in many languages ​​in a specific sense - "the legendary sea monster."

The kraken exists

The first written records of encounters with the kraken were recorded by the Danish bishop Erik Pontoppidan. In 1752 he wrote down various oral traditions about this mysterious creature.

The bishop in his writings presents the kraken as a crab fish of gigantic size and capable of dragging ships into the ocean depths. The size of this creature was truly incredible, it was compared with a small island. The giant kraken was very dangerous precisely because of its size and the speed with which it sank to the bottom. Its downward movement generated a strong whirlpool, leaving the ship no chance of salvation. Kraken, as a rule, was hibernating on the seabed. When he slept, a large number of fish gathered around him. In the old days, according to some stories, the most desperate fishermen, taking great risks, threw their nets right over the kraken when he was sleeping. It is believed that the kraken is the culprit of many maritime disasters. The fact that the kraken exists, the sailors in the old days did not doubt at all.

Mystery of Atlantis

Since the 18th century, a number of zoologists have put forward a version that the kraken may be a giant octopus. Carl Linnaeus, a well-known naturalist, in his book “The System of Nature” classified real-life marine organisms, and he also introduced the kraken into his system, which he presented as a cephalopod (however, he later removed it from there).

In this regard, it should be remembered that in many mysterious stories giant cephalopods, like the kraken, often appear, either acting on someone else's orders, or even of their own free will. The authors of modern films also often use these motifs. So the film "Leaders of Atlantis", released in 1978, in its plot includes the kraken, like a giant octopus or squid, which drags the ship of treasure hunters who encroached on the forbidden statue to the bottom, and the crew itself - to Atlantis, miraculously existing in the ocean. In this film, the mystery of Atlantis and the kraken are bizarrely interconnected.

Giant kraken squid

In 1861, a piece of the body of a giant squid was discovered, which led many to think that the giant squid is the kraken. Over the next twenty years, many more remains of such creatures were discovered on the northern coast of Europe. Probably, the temperature regime changed in the sea, and giant squids, which had previously been hiding in depths inaccessible to humans, rose to the surface. The stories of fishermen who hunted sperm whales say that on the carcasses of sperm whales that they caught, there were traces of giant tentacles.

In the 20th century, they repeatedly tried to catch the legendary kraken, but only young individuals were caught, the length of which was no more than 5 m. Sometimes fragments of the bodies of larger specimens came across. And only in 2004, Japanese oceanologists managed to photograph a rather large specimen - 10 meters.

Giant squids were given the name architeutis. The real giant squid was never caught. A number of museums exhibit well-preserved remains of individuals found already dead. In particular, the Natural History Museum in London displays a nine-meter squid stored in formalin. In the city of Melbourne, a seven-meter squid is presented, frozen in a piece of ice.

Nevertheless, even squids of this size cannot cause significant damage to ships, but there is every reason to believe that giant squids living at depths are many times larger (there were reports of 60-meter individuals), which allows some scientists to believe that the giant kraken from Scandinavian myths could be just a squid of unprecedented size.

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