So, because I was late in writing this, I have decided to honor someone on SARImag, and I challenge you to guess who it is. The animal of Issue 7 is none other than Vampyroteuthis Infernalis – or, for the clueless of us, the Vampire Squid. Did you guess the member yet?

Despite its intimidating name, I found this cephalopod to be quite interesting. You would think that it is a large creature, but it really isn’t. The biggest it gets is 28 CENTIMETERS, and it feels like a jellyfish – squishy and slimy. Ew. It actually is not a “true” squid, but sort of a mix between the family of octopi and the family of squids and cuttlefish.

How? Well, they have eight tentacles – two less than a true squid – and two strange appendages that are way longer than the length of the body. At first they were thought to be tentacles, but further study showed that they differed in structure and arrangement. Also, Vampire Squids haven’t got the muscles that control color change. The poor things can’t squirt ink either! Good thing it lives toward the bottom of the ocean. (It is bioluminescent – there are big, circular organs in certain areas all over its body that make glowing clouds of particles, and they stay lit for anywhere from 2 – 9 minutes.)



On the dorsal side of the mantle (the arrow-shaped part of the head) are two fins. One of the things that amazes everyone so much about the squid is its metamorphosis of the fins that occurs as the animal grows. When the mantle gets to be about 15-25 millimeters (still tiny!), another pair of fins grows in front of the first pair! And when the new pair is fully developed, the old pair disappears, absorbed back into the body. Is that not crazy? The new pair of fins switches the squid’s method of swimming from jet propulsion to fin propulsion.

Anyway, why is it called a VAMPIRE squid? It was named for its blue eyes (which are gigantic – in fact, it is the biggest eye to body ratio on earth!), red-brown skin, and webbing between its tentacles – but I don’t really see what that has to do with a vampire. Maybe because it’s kind of frightening to look at.



The girls are bigger than the guys, as is the case much of the time in nature. But that doesn’t change the fact that both the guys and the girls have the muscles of a shrimp. Because of the low strength levels, the vampiric squid was considered a slow swimmer – but that is by no means right! For short bursts of time they can dart through the water at the speed of light – okay, not THAT fast – using their spiffy set of fins. There’s this weird organ that helps them stay balanced and have agility, and it’s called a statocyst. It’s sac-like and has tons of tiny sensory hairs that, well, sense things.

But what does a Vampire Squid eat? Meat. They are carnivorous creatures (that may be part of the reason behind their name!). Their metabolisms are very slow because they don’t have to flee for their lives, or flee to catch their meals, very often. Catching food isn’t really that hard. The little lights and sensory filaments on the end of the squid’s tentacles serve a double purpose: they both attract and find prey. The squids, oddly, use only ONE TENTACLE AT A TIME to find its victim, then swims around in a circle in hopes of actually catching it. Just because they live deep under the surface doesn’t mean they aren’t in danger though…their beaks (because cephalopods have beaks, but not the same kind as birds of course) have been found in the stomachs of big fish that dive way down deep in the ocean, whales, and a few other creatures that I don’t know what they are.

That pretty much sums up the information about the Vampire Squid. They don’t have a sound that I can try (and probably fail) to describe. So I will leave all of you with a word of advice: don’t go swimming deep in the ocean, and if you do, don’t follow the mysterious lights.

But they are pretty mesmerizing.