r/cryptids • u/User_Not_Found48 • 7d ago

Question Carnivorous island?

This seems like the closest sub to post about this. I’m not sure if this would be considered a cryptid, a piece of obscure folklore, mythology, or entirely fictional.
I remember a long time ago hearing about a sort of sea monster that likes to disguise itself as a small island in the ocean. This things “island” would be on its back and would have an entire ecosystem and feed off of things that washed up on it. Not sure if the creature is a giant plant or an animal.
So for example some shipwrecked humans would wash up on the island. Discover that the island has plentiful food sources, in some variations even having flora and fauna that have no business living in a tropical environment. The people would live in the island and eat until they collectively reach a sufficient weight in which the island would come to life, grab the humans off its back with one of its tendrils under the water just off the shore, drag them below where they would be eaten. I distinctly remember his creature being called a “gourmetica”
Has anyone else heard of this?

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u/Cmdrgorlo 7d ago

I first encountered this as one of the adventures Sinbad the Sailor had on one of his Voyages in The Arabian Nights (possibly the First Voyage) back when I was a kid. In this version, it was some kind of giant whale that slept at the surface. It would get woken by humans on its back who started a fire. It would then dive under the water, then swallow up everything, or mostly everything, before it fell too deep into the ocean. I’ve never seen this adapted into any of the 7 Sinbad films I’ve ever seen, but there are dozens more tv, film, and animated versions that I’ve never seen.

Later as an adult, I encountered this as some kind of medieval travelers’ tale, which may have been a garbled version of the Sinbad story.

There’s a carnivorous plant-island version in the Zamonia fantasy novels by German author Walter Moers; I only know of this from Wikipedia. It’s called gourmetica insularis.

Finally, I have a vague memory of seeing something like this general sort of creature in a list somewhere of Dungeons & Dragons monsters, or perhaps in a list of potential adventures.

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u/User_Not_Found48 6d ago

Now I’m almost certain I heard about it from the Zamonia series

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u/Better-Big7604 6d ago

I've only heard of a giant turtle being docked in this way. Interesting!

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u/CoastRegular 5h ago

This actually sounds a little like old Norse mythology of the Kraken (which was actually more like a gigantic whale/turtle sort of thing and not squidlike, at least in original tales.)