Colossal octopus by Pierre Denys de Montfort

Pierre Denys de Montfort, also sometimes spelled "Pierre Dénys de Montfort", (1766–1820) was a French naturalist, in particular a

malacologist Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (mollusks or molluscs), the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams, ...

, remembered today for his pioneering inquiries into the existence of the

gigantic octopus The kraken () is a legendary sea monster of enormous size said to appear off the coasts of Norway. Kraken, the subject of sailors' superstitions and mythos, was first described in the modern age at the turn of the 18th century, in a travelog ...

es. He was inspired by a description from 1783 of an eight-metre long tentacle found in the mouth of a sperm whale. Montfort was author of ''Conchyliologie systématique, et classification méthodique de coquilles'' (2 vols., Paris 1808–1810) and of ''Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques'' (2 vols., Paris 1801–1802) published as an addendum to the comte de Buffon's '' Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière''. He appears also to have been the author of ''Petit vocabulaire à l'usage des Français et des Alliés, renfermant les noms d'une partie des choses les plus essentielles à la vie en plusieurs langues: français, Latin, hébreu, hollandais, allemand, anglais, espagnol, italien, etc par M. Denys de Montfort'', which appeared in 1815, as Paris filled with the polyglot armies of the Allies, after the fall of Napoleon in 1814. Montfort later advanced more sensational claims. He proposed that ten British warships that had mysteriously disappeared one night in 1782 must have been attacked and sunk by giant octopuses. The British knew what had happened to the ships, resulting in a disgraceful revelation for Montfort. His career never recovered and he died starving and poor in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

around 1820. Sjögren, Bengt (1980). ''Berömda vidunder''. Settern. Many of his sources for the "kraken octopus" probably described the very real giant squid, '' Architeuthis'', proven to exist in 1857.

Taxa

Montfort named some taxa of gastropods including: * ''

Lanistes ''Lanistes'' is a genus of freshwater snails which have a gill and an operculum, aquatic gastropod mollusks in the family Ampullariidae, the apple snails.Bouchet, P.; Neubauer, Thomas A. (2015). Lanistes Montfort, 1810. In: MolluscaBase (2015) ...

'' Montfort, 1810 - a genus of freshwater apple snails * '' Scutus antipodes'' Montfort, 1810

References

* * 1766 births 1820 deaths Conchologists Cryptozoologists French malacologists French naturalists Teuthologists {{France-zoologist-stub