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>>JOHN FLYNN: The squid and sperm whale diorama
in the Milstein Hall is really fantastic
because it's capturing a battle royale.
Sometimes you don’t even realize it’s there.
So, you see this dark space on the side of the hall
and you're kind of saying, "What's that?"
>>NEIL LANDMAN: And as you move up to it,
your eyes adjust to the light because it’s in the darkness,
and you recognize the sperm whale,
>>FLYNN: You're focused in on the head area and
what's actually happening in this moment where
the whale's trying to eat the squid
and the squid's trying to say, "I don't want to be eaten."
>>LANDMAN: But none of us have ever witnessed this in real life.
>>LANDMAN: Architeuthis is the scientific generic name for the giant squid.
So it means like, you know, archbishop.
It’s the biggest squid around.
They grow to as long as 60 feet.
The eyes are the largest in the animal kingdom.
They’re referred to as dinner plates.
Size is a refuge from predation,
because if you get too big, who else is going to pick on you?
Squids churn over food and make it into protein very rapidly,
so that’s why we call them the broiler chickens of the sea,
and they’re such good prey because there are a lot of them.
Probably the giant squid has some predators as a juvenile,
because it’s growing.
But as an adult it’s hard to think, other than a sperm whale,
really what does them in.
>>FLYNN: The sperm whale is the largest
toothed predator on the earth's surface.
Even though it has teeth in the lower jaw—
and they're quite large—they don't use that for feeding.
They're what's called suction feeders.
So, you basically open this large mouth and suck everything in.
They can dive to depths of 6,500 feet or 2,000 meters.
That's the equivalent of four and a half Empire State Buildings
one on top of another.
They evolved this capacity to seek food in an environment
where there are not a lot of other large, predatory competitors.
The giant squid represents a very small fraction of the diet
for most sperm whales.
But because they need so much energy
because they're big, they're very opportunistic.
And so, you come across some big meal, you're going to take advantage of it.
Giant squid were only seen live over the last 10 years or so,
so all the evidence that we have of this feeding is from indirect information.
>>LANDMAN: If you examine the skin of a sperm whale,
you’ll see these large circular rings.
And we suspect those are the sucker marks
left by the giant squid as it clings to the sperm whale
and the two have this ferocious battle together.
In addition, when we look at the stomach contents
we discover that the beaks—
that is, the biting apparatus of the giant squid—
in the sperm whales.
And so we know that the battles ended badly for the giant squid.
>>FLYNN: There are two major reasons why it's difficult to study those kinds of things,
and one is relative rarity.
So if you think about a giant ocean, your chances of encountering
a sperm whale or a giant squid is relatively small.
The other is that the sperm whale spends time at the surface
because it has to breathe air.
The giant squid don't.
They can live their entire lives at deep depths, and so we just don't see them at all.
>>LANDMAN: There’s a lot of evidence that’s consistent
with this hypothesis that there’s a battle between them.
There’s nothing like hard data, though,
and that is to say, having captured the scene live on video.
I’m not sure we’ll achieve it any time soon.
But this diorama, the sperm whale and the giant squid
is one of the iconic dioramas in our museum because it’s so mysterious.
And you know there’s still mysteries in natural history,
and that kind of evokes the curious in all of us.
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