page_title: Cephalopod size
section_title: Mass estimates
hierarchical_section_title: Cephalopod size / Maximum size / Historical claims / Giant squid / Mass estimates
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo from In Search of Giant Squid - 1999 Expedition Journals, Smithsonian Institution.
context_page_description: Cephalopods vary enormously in size. The smallest are only about 1 centimetre long and weigh less than 1 gram at maturity, while the largest—the giant and colossal squids—can exceed 10 metres in length and weigh close to half a tonne, making them the largest living invertebrates. Living species range in mass more than three-billion-fold, or across nine orders of magnitude, from the lightest hatchlings to the heaviest adults. Certain cephalopod species are also noted for having individual body parts of exceptional size. The giant and colossal squids, for example, have the largest known eyes among living animals.
  Cephalopods were at one time the largest of all organisms on Earth, and numerous species of comparable size to the largest present day squids are known from the fossil record, including enormous examples of ammonoids, belemnoids, nautiloids, orthoceratoids, teuthids, and vampyromorphids. In terms of mass, the largest of all known cephalopods were likely the giant shelled ammonoids and endocerid nautiloids, though perhaps still second to the largest living cephalopods when considering tissue mass alone.
  Giant cephalopods have fascinated humankind since time immemorial.
context_section_description: It is now accepted that the giant squid has a maximum mass of several hundred kilograms (O'Shea, 2003a; Roper & Jereb, 2010a:121), but the literature is rife with claims of much greater weights. Clarke (1966), for example, put the mass of the largest giant squid specimens at around 1 tonne (2,200 lb) (Alexander, 1998:1233). Similarly, Ellis (1998a:106) wrote: "Where [giant] squid carcasses have actually been weighed, it appears that the longest ones—in the 50-foot [15 m] range, for example—weigh about a ton [910 kg]." Much greater estimates of giant squid mass can be found in, for example, Natural History of Marine Animals by MacGinitie & MacGinitie (1949): "two arms of Architeuthis that were 42 feet [13 m] long were found, and if one reconstructed a body [...] the squid to which these arms belonged was 4.6 feet [1.4 m] in diameter and 24 feet [7.3 m] long, with an overall measurement of 66 feet [20 m]. It would have weighed about 42½ tons [38.6 tonnes]." They added that a 55-foot (17 m) specimen, such as the one reported from Thimble Tickle, "would have weighed 29¼ or 30 tons [26.5 or 27.2 tonnes] including the tentacles—a truly noble animal, being a little more than one-fifth the weight of the largest whale and larger than the whale sharks and basking sharks, the largest of all fishes" (MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 1949). Ellis (1998a:106) characterised these estimates as "unfounded exaggerations". In the revised edition of Natural History of Marine Animals, published in 1968, the authors reduced their estimate to less than 8 tonnes (MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 1968; Wood, 1982:190).
  Bernard Heuvelmans believed that "there must be Architeuthis weighing more than 5 tons, and some even larger ones which must weigh between 2 and 27 tons, the normal weight being around 8 tons. There are good reasons to believe that there may even exist specimens twice as long as that of Thimble Tickle, which, depending upon their girth, might have weighed between 16 and 216 tons, but more likely around 64 tons." (Heuvelmans, 1958). Ellis (1998a:107), who considered these estimates "utterly ridiculous", wrote:
  Heuvelmans commits a fundamental error in calculating the weight of some of these monsters when he writes that "the density of living creatures is only slightly higher than that of water ... a decimetre of living flesh weighs about as much as a litre of water." That may be true for some other living creatures, but the flesh of Architeuthis, saturated with ammonium chloride, is lighter than water, and the giant squid is neutrally buoyant. (This is believed to be the reason that dead or dying squid are found floating at the surface or washed up on the beach.) His assumption, therefore, that the 55-foot-long [17 m] Thimble Tickle squid would have "probably weighed near 24 tons" is patently erroneous.
  On the subject of the Thimble Tickle specimen's mass, Wood (1982:190) referred to the work of Soviet zoologist and writer Igor Akimushkin:
  According to Dr Igor Akimushkin (1965), the Russian teuthologist, a 12 m [39 ft] long giant squid will weigh 1 tonne [2,200 lb] if the head, mantle and arms combined make up half the total length. Since there is a cubic relationship between the linear dimensions of Architeuthis and its volume or weight, this means the Thimble Tickle monster must have scaled about 2.8 tonnes [6,200 lb] (i.e. the weight of a large bull hippopotamus), although 2 tonnes [4,400 lb] is probably a more realistic figure.
caption: A dozen people attempting to move a giant squid weighing in excess of 200 kg (440 lb) (see Feldman, 1999 for more on this specimen)
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