The Barraki are rather infamous for their squid launchers. They were really flimsy, and delicate, and they rarely even worked like they were supposed to. Thankfully, I never had any of my squid launchers or sea squid break, but I’m sure many people did.
However, the sea squid themselves. Even my seven-year-old self thought they were a bit odd. They’re called “squid,” but…
They look NOTHING like a real squid. They look a lot more like the Skreemers from Ninjago. Clearly the Bionicle universe’s definition of “squid” is very different from ours.
But wait a minute. In the story, there were also “giant squid” that were part of the Barraki’s army. Again, the giant squid didn’t bear much resemblance to our world’s giant squid.
On the other hand, the MU’s giant squid does at least appear to have qualities that cephalopods have: a prominent head/mantle and a bunch of tentacles. And they live in the really deep ocean, like many real cephalopods do. But the “sea squid…” How does the MU’s scientific classification even work? What is it that the giant squid and the sea squid have in common that they can both be called “squid?” It can’t be that they both live in the ocean, because by that logic, then a fish and a crab are in the same taxonomy.
The same designers, ones who take creative liberty. Authors that cared more about what sounded cool than what made sense. Writers that focused more on story than worldbuilding.
But still, those examples you listed do have some resemblance to the thing that they share a name with. Like, for instance, koalas are mammals, like bears, and they walk on either all fours or on two legs. And they have a somewhat similar facial structure.
Cheesecake has several layers like a cake.
Green beans have those little bean-like things inside of them.
Sea squid have virtually nothing in common with real squid.
That long thing at the back is just a tail. And those little appendages on the tops and bottoms of their bodies…judging by their shaping and positions, I’d say they look more like fins that help steer themselves while swimming. They’re nowhere near big enough to grab onto anything like real tentacles do.
Guess the Barraki are better warlords than biologists
IRL I assume the squid looked more like real squid at some point in the development stage and were later changed. In other countries they were referred to as “polyps,” though I don’t think that helps the taxonomy. The alliteration of “Sea Squid”* also played a non-small role I’d assume.
I agree with the point, though in-story those appendages are the tentacles through which they channel their appetite (personally, I’ve always ignored that and just imagined them attaching via their mouths). They’re even noted as having suckers on the appendages, although those haven’t visually appeared anywhere, be it the sets or the media portrayals.
*“Sea Squid… Sea… Squid… Sea-Squid.” … Does the Bionicle universe have Land Squid? Or Air Squid?
Consider this: most of Bionicle is theoretically “translated” into English from a fictional language. “Sea Squid” could reasonably be the closest possible equivalent in English to a description of an animal that doesn’t closely resemble any real animal.
This is a bit of a ridiculous question coming from the same universe where spiders have four legs and giant metal mandibles or pearly whites and where one species of fish is literally just a very angry gnome person.
Bionicle does not follow real world logic, so don’t compare the two. It’s a squid because the authors wanted you to understand it is comparable in terms of physical makeup since the piece is rubber, and ‘squid’ sounds better than ‘leech bullet’.
Although I would’ve happily gone for leech bullet.
But again: those four-legged spiders weren’t THAT unlike our real-world spiders. The way their bodies were structured, and the fact that they spun webs and could poison their victims…there were fundamental differences, yes, but it’s easy to buy the Visorak (that’s what I assume you’re referring to) as Bionicle’s equivalent of spiders.
I probably could buy the sea squid as the MU’s version of squid, except for the fact that there’s another “squid” that has much more in common with real-world cephalopods.
Spinning webs is the only thing that makes them a spider. Half the legs, two eyes (not primarily forwards facing), a spinning rotor blade in the middle of its abdomen, at most the webs is something thrown in to make them more like a spider. It’d be like if the sea squid could generate a cloud of ink; a completely superficial in-world addition to make it more like the source material.
It’s not an equal comparison and neither is comparing sea squids to real squids. Again, I remind you about angry sea gnome.
Is it possible that, in-story, the creatures used to resemble squids?
According to BS01, “Pit Mutagen causes internal damage to their DNA which will not become apparent until generations to come.” That could mean that they were originally more squid-like, but over time, their bodies changed.
Alternatively, Kalmah could have been responsible for the change. BS01 says that “Kalmah took it upon himself to breed the creatures in this cave,” so perhaps Kalmah selectively bred the squids to better suit his needs, and after a long time, they no longer resembled squids.
Surprising as it is, the only transformation that occurred to Gadunka is solely that of size and nothing else. As per the ever vague Greg:
So yes, there’s an entire species of tiny angry men with big teeth walking on the ocean floor, and we’re questioning why squids don’t look normal.
This is a fair explanation, but the actual amount of physical alterations that occur could be very minimal. Brutaka was altered by the pit mutagen and barely changed at all, and almost all of the physical abnormalities the Barraki possess are explained away as being part of their species (except, of course, Kalmah’s third eye, which was blinded by Pridak before we ever met the character).
Also, on BS01, it cites Kalmah’s abilities and there’s one in particular to pay attention to:
Kalmah had five tentacles on the back of his head which could sense movement in the water. He had a long tentacle on his left hand, which he could use to manipulate objects and to attack. He was able to share memories with Sea Squid by touching tentacles with them.
Kinda sussy, but at the same time, that’s plural. Meaning the sea squid also have tentacles. So… Bizarre comic and set depictions aside, the Sea Squid not being squid due to the lack of tentacles is a moot argument because they very much do possess them,
And on a final note: the BS01 page for the sea squid literally calls them Squid-Like, not squids in an actual sense, so I don’t see why this question had to be asked. It’s the Bionicle universe; real-world rules need not apply.
Look at the Toa and the Matoran. Both are explicitly stated not to be humans; they’re their own species. But they still have a lot of human-like qualities, in that they stand upright, and they have the same number of appendages we do. What’s more, they can think the way we do, and talk to and interact with each other just like humans do. Therefore, we accept them as the MU’s “people.”
Similarly, the Visorak are as close as anything in the Bionicle universe is to a spider. While you are right in that they have four as opposed to eight legs, they still have a very spider-like stance. Their legs are all bent in much the same way as a real spider’s, and their bodies are held close to the ground. Watch any clip from Web Of Shadows and tell me they don’t walk like spiders.
Is that all? Far from it. I specifically remember a 2005 Lego catalog showing the Visorak “minifigures” having little green “stings” where you could clip them to a strand of green webbing. No doubt that was meant to represent a set of spinnerets. And in the commercials, the movie, and even the Bionicle Heroes video game, we saw the Visorak using their back legs to pull the webbing out from their butts spinnerets like a real spider would.
(And yes, Fenrakk doesn’t spin any webs, but there are some species of spiders that don’t spin webs, such as the tarantula.)
Also in WOS, we see that in between the Visorak’s mandibles, there’s a little mouth there. Similarly, real spiders have small mouths, and many have protrusions called “palps” on either side of the mouths-kind of like the Visorak’s mandibles. Granted, they both have very different functions, but the point still stands.
Kinda unrelated, but at one point in WOS, Roodaka orders a group of Visorak to “throw yourselves off the edge” to demonstrate her control to Vakama. The idea is that the Visorak are so afraid of Roodaka, they’ll commit suicide if she asks them to. But honestly, I don’t think it’s as bad as they make it out to be. Humans can deliver more than enough force to squish spiders, but spiders are still really strong relative to their size. I’ve seen spiders fall from heights that would be dangerous even for a human and show no signs of injury. Since the Visorak are biomechanical creatures, surely their exoskeletons are even more durable than a real spider’s, and they could survive the fall.
No, the Visorak cannot be scientifically classified as arachnids, but they are as comparable to a spider as a Kane-Ra is to a bull.
Oh come on. When was it ever said that Gadunka was a “fish?”
…because they’re called exactly that: tiny angry green men. The “squids,” on the other hand, are about as comparable to real squids as the 2001 Tarakava set is to a real lizard. Although…
As Ghid pointed out, the Pit’s mutagens seem to affect different people to different extents, and for some reason it didn’t affect Nocturn at all. But given how drastically the Barraki changed, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that the Pit altered the sea squids into the lamprey-like shape they have now.
I know what I said earlier about the small appendages on the top and bottom of the squid not being tentacles, but perhaps I was wrong. Maybe they’re just vestigial.
