by Underwatertimes.com News Service – September 26, 2012 22:21 EST
MONTEREY, California— About 100 years ago, marine biologists hauled the first vampire squid up from the depths of the sea. Since that time, perhaps a dozen scientific papers have been published on this mysterious animal, but no one has been able to figure out exactly what it eats. A new paper by MBARI Postdoctoral Fellow Henk-Jan Hoving and Senior Scientist Bruce Robison shows for the first time that, unlike its relatives the octopuses and squids, which eat live prey, the vampire squid uses two thread-like filaments to capture bits of organic debris that sink down from the ocean surface
This close up view shows a vampire squid using its arms to scrape food off of one of its filaments. Image: © 2008 MBARI
into the deep sea.
It’s easy to imagine the vampire squid as a nightmarish predator. It lurks in the eternal midnight of the deep sea, has a dark red body, huge blue eyes, and a cloak-like web that stretches between its eight arms. When threatened, it turns inside out, exposing rows of wicked-looking “cirri.” Even its scientific name, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, means “vampire squid from hell.”
In reality, the vampire squid is a soft-bodied, passive creature, about the size, shape, and color of a football. A “living fossil,” it inhabits the deep waters of all the world’s ocean basins at depths where there is almost no oxygen, but also relatively few predators.