Vampire Squid From Hell

“a very small but very terrible octopus, black as night, with ivory white jaws and blood-red eyes.”

— William Beebe

We refer to space as the final frontier, but, for large stretches of human history, the oceans presented a challenge beyond our comprehension. These scary bodies perplexed us in two dimensions: outward and downward. Until the Age of Exploration, oceans marked the boundaries of the known world; when ships finally started to breach the vast unknown, we discovered the vast unknown was vaster than we imagined. The sea monsters that adorned oceans on early maps represented not just dark spots on the globe but also what lurked beneath. Perhaps as horrific as what might lie beyond the horizon was what might lie just beneath one’s ship.

Once we began to probe beneath the surface, we found a second world on Earth, a realm teeming with life. After we mapped the surface of the planet, scientists began to poke below. When we learned just how deep the oceans are, another zone of the unknown emerged. Could life exist beyond a certain depth?

By the 1830s and 40s, survey ships had begun to dredge for life at deeper and deeper measurements. They discovered, as they got lower and lower, that the creatures became smaller and the diversity of the discovered fauna decreased. This observation led to a view, called the Azoic hypothesis or the Abyssus theory, which purported that life might not be possible beyond a certain point in the oceans. One popular guess for this point was 550 meters (or, as it was known at the time, 300 fathoms).

Today, we understand the Azoic hypothesis to be erroneous. A huge amount of life thrives in the great depths of the oceans. Just before the turn of the 20th century, a zoologist named Carl Chun outfitted the Valdivia Expedition, which sought to prove critters persisted below 550 meters.

During this expedition, Chun uncovered a denizen of the deep so nefarious they named it the vampire squid from hell.

This sobriquet is not just a nickname; the vampire squid’s scientific nomenclature is Vampyroteuthis infernalis, which literally translates to “vampire squid from hell.”

Unfortunately for fans of gnarly animals and fortunately for those who derive nightmare fuel from gnarly animals, the squid is not a blood-sucking monster that lurks in the dark, though you might imagine it to be vampiric based on Chun’s illustration above. The name arrives thanks to its coloration and, likely, because of the recent explosion in vampire imagery; Chun found the squid in 1903, just six years after the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

This relatively small mollusk can be jet black but sometimes presents as dark red. Though originally termed an octopus and now called a squid, it is, in reality, neither. Instead, it fits into Dracula’s loner mold, as the only being in the order Vampyromorphida. Though other members of the order might have existed in the past, the vampire squid is the only extant member to date. Unlike octopuses and squids, the vampire squid features a pair of filaments between its first two pairs of arms.

The vampire squid lives in the oxygen minimum zone, a part of the ocean at least 600 to 900 meters deep (2,000 to 3,000 feet), though they can live at greater depths. The vampire is the only cephalopod to live this low, sometimes surviving in waters with just 3% oxygen saturation. To survive there, they developed several attributes, including slow metabolism, superior oxygen transportation, and large gills. As a side benefit, they avoid large predators, who cannot persist in the OMZ.

In addition to the unique name and habitat, the vampire squid touts some other notable qualities.

As you can see in the image above, it has orb-like eyes. These peepers are proportionally the largest in the entire animal kingdom. Though most vampire squids top out at 30 centimeters in length, their eyes are the size of those in a full-size dog! These big organs probably help them see in the dim areas of the ocean.

Perhaps more incredibly, the animal’s body is covered in organs called photophores. These glandular spots produce flashes of light that can disorient potential predators. The squid can control the duration of the flashes, ranging from partial seconds to minutes. The photophores cover their arms, which can produce dazzling, moving displays. Some scientists speculate this adaptation might make one animal appear to be multiple to a predator that cannot see well in aphotic zones, potentially confusing the aggressor.

Ironically, unlike other cephalopods, the vampire squid is not a hunter. Instead, it’s a detritivore that feeds on so-called marine snow. This interesting phenomenon is a continuous shower of “snow” from the upper layers of the ocean, composed of organic detritus from other living beings. Yes, the vampire squid eats fecal matter or the discarded cells of the meals of other creatures.

Renowned naturalist William Beebe, responsible for some of the most interesting articles in this project, such as the Army Ant Death Spiral, called the vampire squid a “terrible octopus, black as night, with ivory white jaws and blood-red eyes.” This description sounds like something out of a nightmare, but watching the creature move on video captured by remote-operated vehicles is closer to adorable, just what you expect from a vampire.