evidence: This female (the bigger of the two) was caught in a fisherman’s net off the coast of Spain in 2005. It was probably 2-3 years old and, when alive, 11 meters (36 feet) long with tentacles that extended 6.7 meters (22 feet). Since then it has shrunk considerably, but at 7.6 meters (25 feet) long, it is still an impressive sight. [...] The giant squid has captured the human imagination for more than 2,000 years. For a long time, people who spotted them floating, dead, at sea or washed up on beaches couldn’t figure out what they were. Were they monsters or sea serpents? Mermen? Rare glimpses of this huge sea creature inspired both fear and fascination. People came up with fantastic explanations for what their astonished eyes saw—or thought they saw. Movies, books, and popular lore featured encounters with huge, hungry sea creatures brandishing many tentacles. It turns out that the giant squid of myth is not a monster at all. But only since the late 19th century has enough scientific evidence accumulated to replace the myths with fact. [...] The first known record of Architeuthis comes from Denmark in the 1500s, when several "curious fish" were found afloat by the sea. Historians of the time did not associate these "fish" with cephalopods; instead, they conflated their looks with those of humans, describing these creatures as having "a head like a man... and a dress of scarlet like a monk's cloak," and calling them Sea Monks.