Which Real-Life Creature Still Eludes
Scientists?
IN THE LAKE AT HOGWARTS LIVES A REAL-LIFE
creature that is as mysterious as any magical beast. It is not
elusive because it is small; in fact, it is the largest
invertebrate on earth. It is the giant squid, which lives in waters
so deep and far from shore that no human living today has seen one
alive.
Architeuthis, as
scientists call it, can grow to seventy feet long. Its eyes, the
largest of any animal, are well-suited for gathering what little
light exists in the mile-deep waters of its home. There is no
sunlight at those depths, but certain creatures have chemicals in
their bodies that glow.
The French science fiction author Jules Verne
wrote about the giant squid in his novel 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea. The creature attacks the electric
submarine in the story, Nautilus:
Sailors called the giant squid the Kraken. Many people believed the exaggerated reports
that the Kraken was two kilometers wide and looked like an island
when it surfaced.
Before my eyes was a horrible monster, worthy to figure in the legends of the marvellous. It was an immense cuttlefish, being eight yards long. It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with great speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes. Its eight arms, or rather feet, fixed to its head, that have given the name of cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the Furies’ hair. One could see the 250 air-holes on the inner side of the tentacles. The monster’s mouth, a horned beak like a parrot’s, opened and shut vertically. Its tongue, a horned substance, furnished with several rows of pointed teeth, came out quivering from this veritable pair of shears.
Verne was following a long tradition in making the giant squid out to be a villain. But, turning our expectations about monsters upside down as usual, J. K. Rowling’s giant squid is kind. When Dennis Creevey falls into the lake in Goblet, the squid rescues him, placing him back into the boat.