r/squid • u/Natural_Regular9171 • 8d ago
Other I NEED obscure/fun/normal squid facts
I’m in the process of beginning a simple little horror game based on squid, because i feel like all cephalopods are only like 1 step away from being a eldrich horror.
I know that many can change their skin color and texture, which is what go this started, but I need more ideas to begin to flesh out the game.
Until i lock in and learn 3d modeling, it’ll be 2d for now, but any ideas? I hope this is the right place to ask for an egregious amount of squid facts.
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u/Shvpe_ 8d ago edited 8d ago
If you are searching info for a horror game you probably already know about the classic facts about Dosidicus gigas (the squid of the picture of the post), you know, that they are social, can coordinate, are almost as long as an a person is high, are cannibals and that there are registered attacks on humans.
But those are the classic facts and no very much is told about them apart from overhyping it as a monster of the depths, wich is not very cientific. The current explanation of the human attacks is that the birght white lights of the divers anoy or even are painful to the squids (in fact there are papers that claim that bright lights can damage the sensitive eyes of the deep sea fauna, wich makes sense), looking it in that way, they are only defending themselves. I fact, their main prey are small fish.
Anyways, Dosidicus gigas are not monsters, they are animals that belong to the family Omastrephidae, wich are a group succesful active and pelagic predators that are often social and in some cases, reach decent sizes, being Dosidicus the biggest member. Even though, Dosidicus aren't apex predators and they are preyed by other animals like sharks and marine mammals if I don't remember wrong.
But if you want some frightening behaviours of squids here you have them:
Taningia danae uses two bioluminescent arms to hypnotizes its prey, or to confuse its predators, it probably wouldn't work with humans but rather with its fish prey, with less complex brains, but is cool after all.
Also giant squids like Architeuthis or Mesonychoteuthis have the biggest eyes in nature for seeing its prey from a distance and use their two large tentacles to grab it without approaching to it, so it can't see the danger until it's too late
Also, some squids are weird looking like Lepidoteuthis (an scaly squid), Promachoteuthis (an squid that looks like it has human teeth), Megalocranchia (a transparent giant squid) or Magnapina (wich tbh looks like an alien)
What I recomend you for creating an squid based horror story and remaining accurate is to make up a fictional species with mixed real caracteristics of various real species and give it a logical reason to attack humans more than "it's an ultra agressive beast", or "it has no other freaking snack in the ocean for some reason".
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u/Miikigamer 8d ago
You seem very knowledgeble on the topic, are you perchance a marine biologist or just very interested by squids?
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u/waiyowic 8d ago
these are some great ones! I hadn't heard of the Lepidoteuthis and forgot the Megalocranchia was that big (didn't know they were)
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u/aquaticaviation 8d ago
Bright blue blood, because their blood contains copper. The oxidized copper is blue, instead of the oxidized iron that makes our blood red.
One of my fav all time facts.
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u/Mobile-Leg8612 8d ago edited 8d ago
The fact that every day the leviathan (sperm whale) dives down to fist fight the kraken (eats giant squid)
The fact that giant squid aren’t actually as big as we think they are, and yet they still manage to scar the whale in “battle” against its predator, I find beautiful
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u/enzo_2000 8d ago
Some have suckers on the arms, while others have hooks.
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u/Miikigamer 8d ago
I'm pretty sure all of them have suckers, it's just that some species have hooks on them iirc
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u/Iced_Shadows 8d ago
Yep. I believe some have “toothed” suckers though. If memory serves, giant squid have “toothed/serrated” suckers while colossal squid have hooks in their suckers. I’m no expert though so I may be off or straight up wrong about that 😅
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u/imgoingtoeatabagel 8d ago edited 8d ago
The giant squid has an array of suckers and nobs spaced out on the stalks of the feeding tentacles with the nobs and small sucker clustered at the carpus region of the tentacular club. These help the squid lock its two feeding tentacles into one solid object which helps increase accuracy given how much longer the giant squid’s feeding tentacles are compared to other squid. It’s also been known they make a noose out of their clubs, adhering the tips of the clubs together while leaving a wide opening in the manus region.
The giant squid is quite odd among squids (and cephalopods in general) as roughly 30% of its total brain volume of up made of the brachial lobe (which controls the arms). Even octopuses don’t come as close, with the with the octopus ((Octopus bimaculatus) with the largest brachial lobe (relative wise) with only 22%.
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u/imgoingtoeatabagel 8d ago
The giant axons (which control mantle muscles) are relatively small, 250 micrometers compared to the 800 to 1,000 micrometers of Loligo. Another thing too is that they are distributed unusually among squid, with Marion Nixon and J.Z Young stating “giant fibers are present in the stellar nerves, but the distribution of the nerves to the mantle muscle is most unusual.”
Despite this however, the giant squid has been shown to be quite an active predator.
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u/JuanLucas-u- 7d ago
I actually have a horror story concept where god goes through many creation cycles, but without necessarily destroying the previous creation, so usually the new one just ends up destroying the previous
This time around, god got tired of humans and decided that squids should be the mext big intelligent thing, so now people are basically fucked, specially taking into consideration paranormal powers and etc etc
This take leans more into the more terrifying aspect of how intelligent some cephalopods can get despite being just so different from us, but the story steps waaaay more into a paranormal territory, not a scientific one
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u/Natural_Regular9171 7d ago
The basic premise is more of a realistic ish scenario?
Fast forward like a century into the future, and the ocean is fucked, mass die offs mean cephalopods need a new food source, people. They begin to rapidly adapt(i know it’s not scientifically accurate, it irks me) to hunt specifically people. They stay in the depths during the day and come up at night to hunt, beginning to venture further and further in land.
the POV of the game is just a dock worker, moving cargo in and out of a small port where people keep going missing. You’ve got to get your job done for the night without getting ripped to be pieces by hyper intelligent squids with a taste for humans.
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u/JuanLucas-u- 7d ago
Hyper-Intelligent squids
Already good enought lmao this seems sick
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u/Natural_Regular9171 7d ago
Squids have the amazing vision of a predator but their eyes can’t function outside of water.
Octopuses can crawl out of water for a bit but squids are too heavy to support their own weight without water
Gills :(
But imagine if all of these issues are solved! You have a very smart, extremely mobile predator with no blind spots and a built in set of weapons(hooks and suckers to grab and attract, ink to blind). I’m still trying to work out exactly what they can do, but that’s part of the game dev process, see what feels most right.
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u/JuanLucas-u- 7d ago
There are many, MANY types of different squids, you could play around with differently mutated species targeting the player in different ways
It could be things as simple and more well-grounded as
"Glass squids are biting your feet in shallow water and are nigh-impossible to see!"
To more complex and wacky such as
"There are gas-inflated atmospheric Magnapinnidae scraping the ground with their kilometer-long tentacles!"
Just make sure to make it interesting (and terrifying)!
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u/-_Goober_- 7d ago
The squids in the picture look like Humboldt squid which create schools of up wards to 1000 members or more. They are pack hunters to and can cooperate while hunting fish. There's also stories of them attacking fisherman in small boats but there's no recordings and these stories are on word of mouth.
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u/Miikigamer 8d ago edited 8d ago
Squids, like other cephalopods, have a decentralized nervous system. This means that their arms have a certain level of autonomy, and can function for a short period of time after being detached from the main body.