Mondo Knows Facts

Giant squid have eyes the size of dinner plates

Measuring up to 27 centimetres across, giant squid eyes spot bioluminescent glow.

Living thousands of metres down in total dark ocean depths, giant squid possess the largest eyes in the animal kingdom. Their massive pupils gather faint bioluminescent light emitted when large predators like sperm whales disturb surrounding deep-sea organisms.

Giant squid, Architeuthis dux Steenstrup 1857, holotype specimen
Inger Eleanor Winkelmann ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

Smithsonian Ocean

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

Go further

More facts like this

Tags: giant-squid, ocean, eyes

Giant squid have eyes the size of dinner plates: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Measuring up to 27 centimetres across, giant squid eyes spot bioluminescent glow. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Ocean, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a animals fact?
Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.