Collossal SquidTe Papa, the nat­ur­al his­to­ry muse­um of New Zealand, is now hous­ing the Colos­sal Squid.

That’s right, it’s a COLOSSAL SQUID. Squidzil­la! Squid-Ra!

It’s become quite a draw card, so of course the Welling­ton­ista had to check it out.

The Colos­sal Squid

This lady-squid is housed in a pur­pose-built tank. Some may find it awe-inspir­ing, oth­ers may find it revolt­ing. The squid has a sort of pinky out­er lay­er of squid­skin which is peel­ing off.

Did you know that squids have a beak like a par­rot. Uug­gh!

3D AV Squid­tac­u­lar

Off to the side is a the­atrette show­ing a com­put­er ani­ma­tion of how the squid was acci­den­tal­ly caught by a fish­ing boat. I know what you’re think­ing: “Bor­ing, grand­ma! I am gen­er­a­tion Y or even Z! I don’t use vow­els, I have a two sec­ond atten­tion span, car­ry three cell­phones and can’t watch a bor­ing old 5 minute video about a squid!”

Well, for­tu­nate­ly Te Papa have tak­en care of this and made the video in 3D. Yes, so you get to strap on a pair of glass­es and watch the Colos­sal Squid being cap­tured by a fish­ing boat in 3D. In three­eee-deeeee!

Whoa! Trip­py as, man. Etc.

The Oth­er Video

Miss PopularityStrange­ly enough, when I was there the part of the exhib­it that got the most atten­tion was the video doc­u­men­tary about the sto­ry of the squid, from cap­ture to defrost­ing to Te Papa.

A large group of peo­ple gath­ered around it to watch the work­place-safe­ty-style nar­ra­tor enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly tell us how the team were dis­ap­point­ed to dis­cov­er that the squid was a lady and not a gen­tle­man. Bloody sex­ist sci­en­tists.

So, it is worth a vis­it?

Well, the Colos­sal Squid will bring out your inner 5‑year-old boy, much like the truck­ers’ street protest did ear­li­er in the year.

One thing’s for sure: you are guar­an­teed to hear at least one dad hilar­i­ous­ly joke, “You’d get a few squid rings out of that!”