AFO: Sperm whale vs. giant squid - July 20

The final episode of AFO, (but no, this is not the final time that I will talk about this series and shows that are similar to it), was something special indeed – ‘sperm whale vs. giant squid’! Wow!

Indeed, and for several reasons. Not unlike the ‘polar bear vs. walrus’ or ‘African lion vs. Nile crocodile’, the ‘sperm whale vs. giant squid’ episode was based on real life footage – as much as possible, for, unlike the African savanna or even the Arctic, the ocean depths still aren’t readily assessable to the humanity – and that is where the sperm whale and the giant squid dwell.

Next? The giant squid, (and its’ cousin, the colossal squid, of which even less is known than about the giant squid proper), is a squid, of course, meaning that it is a mollusk, a close relative to the smaller species of squid, octopi and cuttlefishes, and a distant relative of the snail, the mussel, the oyster and the nudibranch. The sperm whale, meanwhile, is a toothed whale, meaning that it is, technically, a dolphin, and its’ closest relatives are the so-called pygmy sperm whale and dwarf sperm whale, each being a fraction of the sperm whale’s size. They are shy, timid, retiring creatures who don’t behave anything as the sperm whale does, and some scientists, who specialize in classification of animals, wonder if the three species of sperm whales are actually related to each other or not. But for now, they are classified together, period.

What of the actual face-off? People who traveled the seas saw the sperm whale fight the giant squid irregularly, but they did see it. Plus, many sperm whales, especially the bulls, show the scars caused and created by the beaks and sucker-claws of squids, (though not just the giant ones), so the battles between the two orders of animals happen on a regular basis – the humans just usually aren’t there to see them.

And when they do, it is one of the biggest, not just the rarest, spectacles on Earth – the Biblical Leviathan battles the Kraken of the pagan Norse myths! Ladies and gentlemen, make your bets!

(Note: Jormungandr the World Serpent, while also a Norse monster, is not the Kraken. The two are separate entities, and when ‘Clash of the Gods’ TV series tried to rationalize Jormungandr as the Kraken/giant squid alongside Scylla of the Greek myths, it didn’t work. However, there are reasons why ‘Clash’ failed and did not go beyond a single season, and this is one of them.)

Where does this leave AFO? Well, they know that the sperm whales usually win this fight, so they adjust their CGI face-off accordingly. Their approach was to technically define and experiment with the physical properties of the two combatants, and this was what they did in their last episode. Since the sperm whale and the giant squid have nothing in common, the result was an epic (in scale) examination of the two combatants, because you cannot really compare the sperm whale to the giant squid: the two have nothing in common, not even convergent evolution! As such, AFO’s approach to their combatants transformed from a comparison into a study, two separate studies of the duo, with the show’s scientists studying and figuring out how each element of either combatants would fit into the face-off. AFO had plenty of authenticity and realism in it, and the last episode had showed it to the max. The major aspects of the sperm whale and the giant squid were shown in the most professional light possible…

Yet AFO got cancelled. Well, that is life. JFC, too, lasted for only 12 episodes and 1 season. The aforementioned ‘Clash’ – for just 10 episodes. ‘Beast Legends’, which also featured the Kraken as one of its monsters – 6. AFO didn’t do so poorly in the long run, when you think about; ‘Beast Legends’ wasn’t exactly a bad show in itself, but it was still worse than ‘MonsterQuest’, and RM is a better show still, (though lately it may be preparing to jump a different shark)… yet this is another story that we will talk about at another time.

As for the sperm whale and the giant squid in the real world? They are still around, though the human-based pollution of the environment, as well as of the global oceans and seas in particular, is slowly killing them off; the sperm whales have to deal with the issue of whaling too – nowadays it is less intense than how it was in the centuries past, but it is still there, and still a problem. People are trying to resolve it, (as well as the pollution issue), but with mixed success. I, for one, hope that in the future, they will succeed, before all that is left of the sperm whale and giant squid are live footage and CGI.