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.
