One
look at a vampire squid, and you'd think it was the product of a cheesy
horror/sci-fi movie. Vampyroteuthis infernalis (meaning "vampire squid
from hell") is the sole living member in the Order Vampyromorphida, and
shares characteristics of both octopuses (Order Octopoda) and squids
(Order Teuthida). It first appeared around 300 million years ago and has
changed very little since then, making
it
a living fossil that may represent an ancestral line between octopuses
and squids. They live about a half a mile deep in the tropical and
temperate oceans worldwide, and only grow to about 30 cm long, but their
eyes are huge. In fact, they have the largest eye-to-body ratio of any
animal alive today.
They lack the feeding tentacles and
ink-sacs that their squid cousins possess, but they do have photophores
that can emit clouds of bioluminescent particles. These are useful in
the deep sea compared to chromatophores, or pigment-changing organs,
which the vampire squid possesses but cannot use due to a lack of
specific muscles. When scared, it will fold its body nearly inside out,
pointing its long fleshy spines (or cirri) outwards to ward off
predators.
It had long been thought that the vampire squid was
carnivorous, like all other cephalopods, although there was little
evidence to support this. Since the animal's eight arms are webbed and
lack suckers (except for a few at the end of each arm), the feeding
method was a mystery. That is, until a pair of long sticky filaments
extending from the mouth were discovered by researchers at the Monterey
Bay Aquarium Research Institute. These filaments can be as long as eight
times the vampire squid's length, and are used to catch marine debris
that is later sucked up into the animal's beak. The animal eats "the
dead bodies of crustaceans, moults (shedded outer layers) of
crustaceans, fecal pellets of zooplankton, parts of gelatinous organisms
like the discarded mucus houses of larvaceans, fish scales,
foraminifera (single celled marine organisms), pieces of jellyfish and
salps, eggs, micro algae, radiolarians (another type of singe celled
aquatic animal)," as well as other marine debris, according to Henk-Jan
Hoving, a postdoctoral researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research
Institute. This makes the vampire squid the only non-predatory
cephalopod alive today. Rather, it is more of a scavenger.
So
you can sleep without worry tonight; the vampire squid will not sneak up
on you at the beach and devour you. Instead, it will happily eat the
waste at the bottom of the sea. This also means that whatever pollution
enters the ocean will someday float down to the vampire squid's domain,
so please be wary of what you put in our oceans.
Sources: http://news.discovery.com/
http://marinebio.org/
Image source: http://www.scitechupdate.com/
One
look at a vampire squid, and you'd think it was the product of a cheesy
horror/sci-fi movie. Vampyroteuthis infernalis (meaning "vampire squid
from hell") is the sole living member in the Order Vampyromorphida, and
shares characteristics of both octopuses (Order Octopoda) and squids
(Order Teuthida). It first appeared around 300 million years ago and has
changed very little since then, making
it
a living fossil that may represent an ancestral line between octopuses
and squids. They live about a half a mile deep in the tropical and
temperate oceans worldwide, and only grow to about 30 cm long, but their
eyes are huge. In fact, they have the largest eye-to-body ratio of any
animal alive today.
They lack the feeding tentacles and ink-sacs that their squid cousins possess, but they do have photophores that can emit clouds of bioluminescent particles. These are useful in the deep sea compared to chromatophores, or pigment-changing organs, which the vampire squid possesses but cannot use due to a lack of specific muscles. When scared, it will fold its body nearly inside out, pointing its long fleshy spines (or cirri) outwards to ward off predators.
It had long been thought that the vampire squid was carnivorous, like all other cephalopods, although there was little evidence to support this. Since the animal's eight arms are webbed and lack suckers (except for a few at the end of each arm), the feeding method was a mystery. That is, until a pair of long sticky filaments extending from the mouth were discovered by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. These filaments can be as long as eight times the vampire squid's length, and are used to catch marine debris that is later sucked up into the animal's beak. The animal eats "the dead bodies of crustaceans, moults (shedded outer layers) of crustaceans, fecal pellets of zooplankton, parts of gelatinous organisms like the discarded mucus houses of larvaceans, fish scales, foraminifera (single celled marine organisms), pieces of jellyfish and salps, eggs, micro algae, radiolarians (another type of singe celled aquatic animal)," as well as other marine debris, according to Henk-Jan Hoving, a postdoctoral researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. This makes the vampire squid the only non-predatory cephalopod alive today. Rather, it is more of a scavenger.
So you can sleep without worry tonight; the vampire squid will not sneak up on you at the beach and devour you. Instead, it will happily eat the waste at the bottom of the sea. This also means that whatever pollution enters the ocean will someday float down to the vampire squid's domain, so please be wary of what you put in our oceans.
Sources: http://news.discovery.com/
http://marinebio.org/
Image source: http://www.scitechupdate.com/
They lack the feeding tentacles and ink-sacs that their squid cousins possess, but they do have photophores that can emit clouds of bioluminescent particles. These are useful in the deep sea compared to chromatophores, or pigment-changing organs, which the vampire squid possesses but cannot use due to a lack of specific muscles. When scared, it will fold its body nearly inside out, pointing its long fleshy spines (or cirri) outwards to ward off predators.
It had long been thought that the vampire squid was carnivorous, like all other cephalopods, although there was little evidence to support this. Since the animal's eight arms are webbed and lack suckers (except for a few at the end of each arm), the feeding method was a mystery. That is, until a pair of long sticky filaments extending from the mouth were discovered by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. These filaments can be as long as eight times the vampire squid's length, and are used to catch marine debris that is later sucked up into the animal's beak. The animal eats "the dead bodies of crustaceans, moults (shedded outer layers) of crustaceans, fecal pellets of zooplankton, parts of gelatinous organisms like the discarded mucus houses of larvaceans, fish scales, foraminifera (single celled marine organisms), pieces of jellyfish and salps, eggs, micro algae, radiolarians (another type of singe celled aquatic animal)," as well as other marine debris, according to Henk-Jan Hoving, a postdoctoral researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. This makes the vampire squid the only non-predatory cephalopod alive today. Rather, it is more of a scavenger.
So you can sleep without worry tonight; the vampire squid will not sneak up on you at the beach and devour you. Instead, it will happily eat the waste at the bottom of the sea. This also means that whatever pollution enters the ocean will someday float down to the vampire squid's domain, so please be wary of what you put in our oceans.
Sources: http://news.discovery.com/
http://marinebio.org/
Image source: http://www.scitechupdate.com/
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