Figure 1 - uploaded by Rodrigo B. Salvador
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Kraken, depicted with a more octopus-like appearance, attacking a ship (Author unknown. Available at: ) 

The Kraken, depicted with a more octopus-like appearance, attacking a ship (Author unknown. Available at: ) 

Source publication
Article
Full-text available
Séculos atrás, marinheiros se amedrontavam com histórias do Kraken, um terrível monstro marinho capaz de afundar embarcações e devorar suas tripulações. Atualmente, sabemos que a lenda desse monstro foi baseada em encontros com lulas-gigantes. Esse animal pertence ao gênero Architeuthis e foi alvo de muitos estudos científicos. Apesar de seu enorme...

Context in source publication

Context 1
... the first navigators, the sea was a great unknown, treacherous, unstable, and above all, dangerous; yet, it was the only way to reach certain places. For these men, the sea seemed to hide in its inconceivable depths a horde of lurking monsters. Even the bravest seafarers showed a respectful dread of the sea, and the stories they told gradually became legends, for, as the saying goes, “the tale grows in the telling.” An encounter with any unknown animal in the open sea had the potential to gain a mythological edge. For a monster worthy of its tales, gigantic size was not enough; it should also have some means to attack a ship and kill its crew. Over the centuries, many sea monster legends were born and forgotten; only a few have reached our days. The Kraken, one of these “survivors,” is perhaps the largest monster ever imagined by mankind. Its legend was also born from seamen’s stories, but it was much modified and strengthened over the years. Right from the start, the Kraken was universally incorporated into Nordic mythology and folklore (Hamilton, 1839). According to an obscure, ancient manuscript of circa 1180 by King Sverre of Norway, the Kraken was just one of many sea monsters (Lee, 1883). Still, it had its own peculiarities: it was colossal in size, as large as an island, and capable of sinking ships; it haunted the seas between Norway and Iceland, and between Iceland and Greenland (Lee, 1883). Two other Nordic sea monsters have records almost as old as the Kraken, appearing in the “Saga of Örvar-Oddr” (an Icelandic story from the thirteenth century by an anonymous author); their names are Hafgufa (“sea-mist”) and Lyngbakr (“heather-back”). The habits of theses monsters were later described in the Norwegian encyclopedia Konungs Skuggsjá (from circa 1250, also by an anonymous author). They shared many features with the Kraken, namely their gigantic size (as big as an island or mountain) and their inclination to attack ships and their crews. Therefore, these monsters have been considered as references to the Kraken and are treated as the same monster. However, nearly all sea monsters had some (or all) of these traits, and as such many of them were linked to or confused with (or, to borrow the lexicon of taxonomy, “placed in synonymy with”) the Kraken over the centuries. Their features only reflected the fears of the first navigators, and the Kraken proved to be the strongest figure in their folklore, dragging every other sea monster under its shadow. The other monsters included the Aspidochelone (or Fastitocalon), a creature also similar to an island; possibly the bishop-fish (also known as the sea bishop, sea monk or monk-fish), a sea monster whose legend might also have originated from encounters with seals, sharks or walruses; and, finally, even the biblical Leviathan (Wallenberg, 1835; Ellis, 1998; Matthews, Matthews, 2005). This confusion of creatures explains why the Kraken is found under so many guises in art and literature, from a misshapen mass to a giant cephalopod, passing through creatures as distinct as a humanoid sea giant, a huge, usually lobster-like, crustacean, and a sea serpent (Magnus, 1555; Gesner, 1587; Ashton, 1890). It was only much later that the Kraken’s figure stabilized. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century, science and myth were not clearly separated, and the Kraken slowly but steadily took on the shape of a giant cephalopod, largely due to the increase in the number of sightings of giant squids as seafaring became more common. This culminated in the Kraken’s “modern” form as a giant squid, which can be understood as a return to the animal that long ago originated the legend. Before actually examining the science behind the monster, it is worth lingering a little more in the domain of mythology and further exploring the Kraken in all its legendary glory. First of all, it should be noted that although “Kraken” is the commonest name found in the literature, the monster answers to many other variants: Krake, Krabben, Kraxen, Skykraken and Crab-fish (Pontoppidan, 1752, 1752-1753; Wallenberg, 1835; Lee, 1883; Hamilton, 1839; Matthews, Matthews, 2005). The Kraken’s colossal size initially reached a few kilometers in length (Pontoppidan, 1752, 1752-1753; Wallenberg, 1835), but as the legend matured and took its molluscan shape, it was progressively diminished to more modest proportions. Of course, even this smaller Kraken was still large enough to attack and sink a ship (Figure 1), and its ability to do so is the commonest theme in its stories, reflecting sailors’ fears. There are many accounts in the pseudoscientific and cryptozoological literature, and also in the official naval records, telling of encounters with the monster (e.g., Pontoppidan, 1752, 1752-1753; Hamilton, 1839; Ashton, 1890). They report that the Kraken would attack a ship with its strong arms, and if this strategy failed it could sink a vessel by creating a fierce maelstrom that could drag the ship to the bottom of the ocean. This is the most recurrent “ability” attributed to the Kraken in the literature, and it is found with some variations. Generally, it was thought that the Kraken would start swimming in circles around the ship (which clearly implies a much smaller size for the monster), thus creating the deadly vortex. However, when a larger size was attributed to the Kraken, the monster could create a maelstrom simply by submerging, and the helpless ship would be dragged down even if that was not the monster’s original intent (Pontoppidan, 1752, 1752-1753). Naturally, a monster would not be regarded as such if it did not have a certain taste for human flesh. Legends say that the Kraken was capable of eating a ship’s entire crew; some even claim that the creature could devour the crew of an entire fleet at once. It is also worth mentioning the most curious piece of folklore about the Kraken: the belief that the amber (fossilized tree resin) found on the beaches of the North Sea was the monster’s excrement (Matthews, Matthews, 2005). Despite its fearsome reputation, the Kraken could also bring some benefits for people. Sailors believed that the monster swam accompanied by huge schools of fishes, telling how fishes cascaded down the Kraken’s back when it emerged from the sea (Wallenberg, 1835). Some claimed that fishes ate the monster’s excrement while others said that the Kraken produced some sort of “aroma” to attract its fish prey. Putting their fear aside, some fishermen risked going near the monster in order to secure a more bounteous catch. Besides the myth, the Kraken was also immortalized in art, and two of its appearances deserve special attention. The first is the poem “The Kraken” by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1830), a sonnet where the author combines mythology (with strong references to the biblical Leviathan) and natural history (Thomson, 1986). The second, the novel Twenty thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne (1870), is better known (Figure 2): the monster, called simply “ poulpe ” (octopus) in the French original, attacks the crew of the Nautilus submarine (curiously, the name of another cephalopod). Curiously, even before the legend’s birth, the real animal behind it was already known to Greek and Roman naturalists and had already been scientifically described (according to the manner of the day, of course). The Greek philosopher Aristotle (fourth century BC), in his work The history of animals , had already distinguished the common squid ( teuthis ) from its larger and rarer cousin ( teuthus or, in some translations, teuthos ), which could reach 2.3m in length. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (first century AD), in his work Natural history , also described a giant squid, which had a body “as large as a barrel” and tentacles reaching 9.1m in length. Despite being known, the animal’s rarity and extraordinary size were responsible for its later mythification. Still, both Aristotle and Pliny treated the giant squid as a common animal and did not link it to myths of their own age (and Greek and Roman myths were plenty!). However, some later authors (e.g. Tryon, 1879), especially in fictional literature, made this mistake (a “mistake” because the Kraken’s legend originated from sailors’ accounts dating from a millennium after the age of Pliny). In any case, this confusion is so recurrent that it is worth citing some of these Greco-Roman monsters here. The Kraken, already in its giant squid shape (sometimes even a giant octopus), was linked to some monsters of Greco-Roman mythology: (a) Scylla, the man-devouring she-monster from Homer’s Odyssey , usually depicted as a beautiful woman from the waist up but with monstrous features below the waist, such as six dog’s heads, twelve tentacles (although using the correct malacological terminology, those would be “arms”) and a cat’s tail; (b) Cetus, the monster to whom Princess Andromeda was sacrificed, generally depicted as a whale-like creature, as its name implies; (c) the Lernaean Hydra, the many-headed beast killed by Heracles; and (d) the nameless monster that blocked Straits of Gibraltar mentioned by ...

Citations

... Others have suggested that the hafgufa was inspired by giant squid, due to confusion with the kraken, a mythical sea creature commonly described as a colossal squid or octopus. The discovery of intact specimens of giant squid from the 1870s makes this idea seem plausible (Salvador & Tomotani, 2014) but it is incorrect, and the error arises partly from a confusion between the kraken and hafgufa traditions. In 1741 the Norwegian-Danish missionary, Hans Egede (1818, p. 87) stated that the kraken was the same creature known by the Icelanders as the hafgufa. ...
Article
Full-text available
Trap feeding and tread-water feeding are cetacean hunting strategies first recorded in the 2000s in two whale species at opposite sides of the globe. In both behaviors, whales sit motionless at the surface with their mouths open. Fish are attracted into the whale's mouth and are trapped when the jaw is closed. We identify striking parallels with the behavior of a sea creature named hafgufa in Old Norse sources. The hafgufa tradition can be traced back to the aspidochelone, a type of whale frequently described in medieval bestiaries, first appearing in the Physiologus, a 2nd century CE Alexandrian manuscript.
... Prominent among the mythical beasts is the Kraken, a giant octopus, of Norse mythology. The Kraken was an octopus of a size capable of devouring an entire ship with a taste for human flesh and its actual existence was accepted by Nordic naturalists up to and including Linnaeus in the late 18th century (e.g., Salvador & Tomotani 2014). Thus, the use of a giant octopus as a monster to be battled by the protagonist in Victor Hugo's 1866 novel, "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" (Toilers of the Sea), was not an original invention. ...
... The honey bee is an important species for humans; moreover, they have been repeatedly featured on the news due to their population decay (e.g., Seitz et al., 2016). The giant squid is notable for being the largest invertebrate on the planet; it also has an eerie air of mystery, since it was this species that gave rise to the legend of the Kraken (Salvador and Tomotani, 2014). The interest in nautiluses is a little harder to understand and is probably aesthetic, related to their beautiful and large shells; furthermore, nautiluses' shells are often presented to the public as mathematically "perfect" golden spirals, which is fallacious (Peterson, 2005). ...
Article
Full-text available
Good science communication should give the public the tools to make informed decisions and take action, which can be particularly important for nature conservation. The crisis in invertebrate conservation might be rooted in public prejudices against invertebrate animals, which are perceived as the unpopular 97% of Earth’s animal biodiversity. As such, how we approach science communication regarding those animals might yet play a critical role in their conservation. Given how specialized a topic invertebrate biology is, a large part of its communication fall to scientists. Here, we surveyed both scientists and members of the public about the former’s approaches and assumptions and the latter’s interest and expectations regarding invertebrate science communication, confronting the results of each survey. Our findings show that scientists and the public are only tangentially aligned; there is plenty of ground scientists and communicators need to pay attention to and explore better in order to achieve more meaningful and balanced science communication. Among other findings, topics and approaches that could be used to greater effect include (depending on age groups of the audience) history, folklore, pop culture, and pathology. Our results have unveiled some issues in science communication of invertebrates and are thus a good first approach to start defining the way forward.
... These, as yet unknown species, attach to rocks and appear more plant-like, and if anything, resemble delicate and beautiful flowers swaying in the wind. And then there are cephalopods-the octopus and squid-that have for centuries fuelled the imagination of seafaring cultures (Salvador and Tomotani, 2014;Carbone, 2018). A recently discovered species of a "Dumbo Octopus" (Grimpoteuthis sp.), a small and cute little octopus with fins that resemble big ears (as in Walt Disney's Dumbo the elephant), was filmed nearly 2000 m deeper than any other cephalopod at a depth of nearly 7000 m (Jamieson and Vecchione, 2020). ...
Article
A recurring question within deep-sea science and conservation is why do not people care about the deep sea? How does the deep-sea science community convince non-scientific audiences to support, engage, and care more for the largest habitat on Earth? Here, we examine various aspects of an apparent dichotomy of perspectives between the scientific and non-scientific communities by discussing the problematic roots from within human neuropsychology, and how knowledge of the deep sea is delivered to, perceived by, and ultimately valued by non-scientific audiences. The answers are complex, covering issues such as conscious and subconscious thalassophobia, perspectivism, aesthetics, phenomenology, abstract interpretation, epistemology and media-driven enigmatization, self-deprecation by the science community, and perceived value-driven ethics. This discussion focusses on the nexus of scientific and non-scientific perceptions to catalyze meaningful societal engagement with the deep sea and to try and understand “Why do not people care about the deep sea?”
... The size informed by the Pokédex is well within the real-world range at 0.4 m length and weighing up to 3.5 kg. Squids can go from millimeters to several meters long: the giant squid, Architeuthis dux Steenstrup, 1857, can reach 18 m (Clarke, 1966;Roeleveld & Lipinski, 1991;Salvador & Tomotani, 2014), while the colossal squid, Mesonychotheuthis hamiltoni Robson, 1925, can weigh whopping 500 kg (Salvador, 2019). ...
... However, it is actually relatively straightforward to understand the appeal of these species. The giant squid is notable for being the largest invertebrate on the planet; it also has an air of mystery, since it was this species that gave rise to the legend of the Kraken (Salvador & Tomotani, 2014). The interest in nautiluses is probably aesthetic, related to their beautiful and large shells, often used as ornaments; furthermore, their shells are usually presented to the public as mathematically perfect golden spirals, which is fallacious (Peterson, 2005). ...
Article
Full-text available
Science communication and public outreach are of utmost concern for malacologists working in conservation. However, malacology – and invertebrates in general – is often a difficult topic for science communicators to approach. Molluscs may be less interesting or less appealing to non-expert audiences than larger, more attractive vertebrates, but many invertebratescientists have strategies and creative techniques for public engagement and outreach that are worth exploring. Our study is a preliminary research project assessing scientists’ approaches and attitudes towards the infinitely broad topic of invertebrate science communication and outreach, as well as the public’s understanding and engagement with it. Thus far, we have surveyed scientists from around the world, and we are currently in the process of distributing a complementary survey for non-scientists to the New Zealand publics. In this article, we hone in on some of our findings from the first survey as they pertain to mollusc conservation.
... It is a shame that games such as Splatoon and Abzû failed to invest in ecological education, because the potential is certainly there. Not only have such games reached lots of people (especially children in the case of Splatoon), they also prominently feature invertebrates, which are typically not a priority in conservation efforts (Wilson, 1987;Salvador & Tomotani, 2014). Raising awareness of these animals, either through the cute cartoonish squids of Splatoon or the aweinspiring "krakens" of Abzû, could go a long way to bringing people to their defense. ...
... Later naturalists and taxonomists proved less experimentally versed than Aristotle, limiting themselves to the perpetuation of the highly successful stereotype of the uncannily voracious, and therefore cunning and treacherous beast (Pliny, 1961; but see also later discussion for a different perspective). In these accounts, which include Linnaeus' Systema Naturae and Denys de Montfort Histoire Naturelle (Denys de Montfort and de Roissy, 1802), among others, occasional observation, tale, and myth are by rule conflated (see Caillois, 1973;Salvador and Tomotani, 2014). ...
... People just do not seem to know which is which. Many biologists have bemoaned this and tried to set things right in popular works for quite a while (e.g., Lee, 1883;Salvador & Tomotani, 2014). Since these animals are our main theme here, we feel obliged to explain what, after all, are the differences between a squid and an octopus. ...
... Cephalopods usually do not get much attention in conservation efforts, but they do have some charismatic species that can serve such purpose (and should definitely be used). Among the squids, the semi-mythic giant squid Architeuthis sp., the animal who originated the legend of the Kraken, is the most obvious choice (Guerra et al., 2011;Salvador & Tomotani, 2014). Among the octopuses, everyone should remember Paul, the "clairvoyant" cephalopod who predicted the results of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and the little octopus Opisthoteuthis sp. that made the news everywhere this year just for being so damn adorable (Fig. 16). ...
... Diagrams of a squid (above) and an octopus (below), accompanied by the proper scientific terminology of their body parts. Image reproduced fromSalvador & Tomotani (2014). ...
Article
In A Theory of Adaptation , Linda Hutcheon considers Darwinist claims that some animal stories survive more readily than others. Just as natural selection drives evolution, genetic selection and memetic cultural transmission drive the evolution, mutation and flourishing of adaptations in ever-changing narratives and technological environments. In the telling and retelling of stories, it invites a state of hyperreality, where copies of copies are believed to be real. Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality describes a condition wherein the boundaries between reality and its simulated representations become indistinguishable. He states that ‘[i]t is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality’. In a state of hyperreality, adaptations and representations can assume greater significance and authenticity than the actual reality they depict. Consequently, the simulated experiences and images are perceived as more real and authentic than the tangible reality from which they originate. The hyperreality of film adaptations has been explored through the telling of historical narratives, nation-building and authenticity. Modern adaptations of historical events, especially when delivered through a contemporary lens, have the ability to reshape our understanding of the past. Art and entertainment permeate our consciousness, moulding our identities. Consequently, we become a reflection of what we engage with, and in a dialectical process, we subsequently reshape the world according to our transformed selves. Thus, entertainment facilitates tangible changes in the real world. These are the key ideas examined in this article.