Vampyroteuthis infernalis: Vampire Squid from Hell…..

A mysterious creature living in a dark world.  This animal lives at depths of between 300ft. (90meters) and 3,000 ft. (over 900 meters).  The ability to gather oxygen with its arm webbing enables it to live in the oxygen minimum layer of the ocean,where there is virtually no light penetration.

     Jet black to pale red in color, eight arms lined with suction cups and rows of soft fleshy spines known as cirri., like an octopus. There are two tentacles (filaments) coming from within the webbing, like a squid.  The arms are fully webbed and has no ink sac, which is unlike either one.  The globular eyes are either red or blue depending on the light, and are the largest per body ratio of any animal in the world.

This unique creature has a defense like no other, it flips the webbing completely over its body to protect itself from predators.  This gives it the look of having a cape wrapped around it like a vampire.

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     It has an eye-like feature on the top of its head.  The light glad opens to reveal two luminescent eyes.  The Vampire squid slowly closes them to give the appearance of moving away.  The darkness make this very effective.  If it does get bumped it emits a cloud of luminescent particles that confuses the predator.

There are large fins at the top of its body that look like ears.  They flap these fins to propel themselves through  the water.  It looks similar to a bird in flight.  They also have a specialized siphon jet under its mantle, that expels water and propels them as well.

Its body is gelatinous, much like a jelly fish.  Though it looks slow, it is actually quite fast, reaching a speed of over two body lengths per second.  A small creature only about six inches long, it is the only surviving  member of the order Vampyromorphida, an ancient species and is a phylogenetic relic.  It was first discovered in 1903 by a German marine biologist Dr. Carl Chun, in Japan.

So many of these deep sea creatures live in an undiscovered world of darkness, thriving in ways we don’t quite understand yet.  Travel a few thousand feet below the blue water to a realm of bio-luminescent creatures, a world of beauty and amazing animals.