A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

For animals that need never surface, obscurity can be even more tantalizing. Consider our knowledge of the fabled giant squid. Though nothing on the scale of the blue whale, it is a decidedly substantial animal, with eyes the size of soccer balls and trailing tentacles that can reach lengths of 18 metres. It weighs nearly a tonne and is Earth’s largest invertebrate. If you dumped one in a small swimming pool, there wouldn’t be much room for anything else. Yet no scientist—no person, as far as we know—has ever seen a giant squid alive. Zoologists have devoted careers to trying to capture, or just glimpse, living giant squid and have always failed. They are known mostly from being washed up on beaches—particularly, for unknown reasons, the beaches of the South Island of New Zealand. They must exist in large numbers because they form a central part of the sperm whale’s diet, and sperm whales take a lot of feeding.1