Giant Squid Have Eyes Twice the Size of Your Head

By Jamie Condliffe on at

Giant squid are massive creatures, growing up to 14m in length. But if that size is difficult to imagine, maybe you can picture this; their eyes are up to 28cm in diameter. That's bigger than a football.

Talking to the BBC, scientist Dan Nilsson explained that a unique dissection of a giant squid revealed that the eyes grow astonishingly large — helping them spot enormous shapes like sperm whales in the murky depths. Even the lens of a giant squid eye is significantly larger than a human eye.

"It's the predation by large, toothed whales that has driven the evolution of gigantism in the eyes of these squid," commented scientist Soenke Johnsen to the BBC. Regardless of why they got that big, the fact that a squid has eyes bigger than a basketball is pretty mind-blowing. Imagine holding one. Actually, on second thoughts, maybe don't. [BBC]

Image credit: Squid from Shutterstock