Giant Squid

• It can reach up to 13 metres long including the tentacles.
• For all its enormous size it lives only three to five years, breeding once.
• A female can carry more than a million eggs in her ovary.
• anatomíaExcept perhaps for the colossal squid, it has the largest eyes in the animal kingdom, reaching roughly the size of a basketball.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - no bony skeleton, supported by an internal cartilaginous structure (gladius)

Habitat and environment

Deep oceanic waters (200-1,000 m) worldwide

Birth weight

Eggs 0.5-1.4 mm long; paralarvae 6-30 mm of mantle length on hatching

Size at birth

6-30 mm of mantle length as a planktonic paralarva

Sexual maturity

Approximately 3 years

Gestation / incubation

No gestation; development takes place in external eggs after fertilisation

Litter / clutch size

Over a million eggs per clutch (one female examined carried over 5 kg of eggs in her ovary)

Sources consulted: Te Papa Tongarewa Museum; Dimensions.com; Animalia.bio; Animal Diversity Web; AnAge (genomics.senescence.info); SeaLifeBase; Grokipedia (giant squid entry)