This creepy little sea creature known as the 'vampire squid' can be found at almost a kilometers under the sea level. Its name vampire doesn't mean that it will come out at night and suck your blood but there's some other reasons for it. The vampire squid shares shares many similarities with both squid and octopuses and in fact it was originally and mistakenly identified as an octopus by the oceanic researchers in 1903. It was then classified as squid due to most of its similarities to the squid.
The length is approximately 30cm, and it has a pair of big globular blue eyes and ear like fins. If you see the whitish string in the picture above, thats its motion detector used to identify incoming objects.
It has eight arms and unlike the squids and octopuses that we see, it has suckers only at the very end of each arms.
Here's the interesting part about the vampire squid. These eight arms are connected with a webbing of skin, which makes it look like a vampire.
Not only that, this 'cloak' of its has a very unique purpose for its survival in the deep sea. Oxygen is very rare in such environment. All thanks go to its 'cloak' that works as an oxygen captor that allow the vampire squid's to live.
When threatened, the squid can draw its arms up over itself and form a defensive web that covers its body. I was like 'what the heck?' after seeing such mechanism.
So this is the defensive mechanism of the vampire squid whenever it feels threaten or senses the danger, the cloak will cover its entire body, making it sort of like vanishes into the dark.
So this little disgusting hole is the main weapon of vampire squid where it excretes confusing phosphorescent particles to allow its escape.
I didn't know such thing survived on earth after watching National Geographic's copyrighted video about vampire squid. There are so many things remain undiscovered and really, there's no doubt that we human have a wonderful planet.
