So there's this big art competition in Grand Rapids, MI. Artists make art, show it in one of numerous venues, and everyone who wants to can cast a vote. The piece winning the most votes lands the artist a $250,000 prize.

One of the pieces is a life-size drawing of a giant squid. The artist's statement is surprisingly comprehensible:

Large animals captivate like few other beings can. They are deified, hunted, consumed and catalogued. While our culture has seemingly amassed a working knowledge of all living species on the planet, one of the world’s giants has successfully eluded the scientific community for centuries. Save for a few partially decomposed specimens virtually nothing is known of Architeuthis dux, the Giant Squid. Architeuthis is a 60 foot ghost, moving unnoticed through deep and dark. . . . At life size, the true scale of Architeuthis becomes clear, a massive, unfamiliar animal deserving of the same fascination and wonder owed to any whale, elephant or dinosaur.

Honestly, we're still pretty far from a "working knowledge of all living species on the planet," but because the sentence includes the word "seemingly" I can't quibble too hard. It must "seem" that way to the artist, and probably to a few other people as well.

On the squid biology front, apart from pointing out that the giant squid Architeuthis may actually comprise several species--A. martensi, A. dux, and A. sanctipauli--I don't have much to add. Richard Ellis would be proud! The author of Search for the Giant Squid and Monsters of the Sea, among many other delightful titles, has pointed out that the paucity of data about giant squid is no excuse not to pursue them as a subject:

There's not that much known, but there's a lot you can write about what's not known, why it isn't known and who doesn't know it.

Hee!