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Octopus giganteus

From: Terry Harpold <tharpold~at~acm.org>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 10:41:32 -0400
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

Those following news reports of the bizarre animal remains recently washed ashore in Chile -- it may, several experts have suggested, be the carcass of a giant octopus -- may find of interest Michel Raynal's excellent article re. evidence pointing to the existence of *really big* octopi (%Octopus giganteus%) still unknown to modern science:

   Raynal, Michel. "The Case for the Giant Octopus." Fortean Studies 1 (1994): 210-34.
   
The article is a serious, well-documented piece of cryptozoological work, including a detailed analysis of the best known case of found remains, the huge "globster" that washed ashore near St. Augustine, Florida in 1896.

(The article includes some remarkable photographs -- long thought lost -- of the globster. The identity of that pile of protoplasm is still debated. Modern histological data gathered from a few, poorly-preserved specimens seem to clearly show that it was *not* the carcass of a whale or basking shark, as many news reports about the recent Chile find have suggested.)

Raynal also describes numerous documented sightings of live giant octopi, dating back to the early 16th c. Verne's _20M_ gets a brief nod as a well-known fictional account.

TH

--------------------------------
Terry Harpold
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Florida

tharpold~at~acm.org
tharpold~at~english.ufl.edu
http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~tharpold
Received on Fri 04 Jul 2003 - 18:38:27 IDT

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