That’s what this here critter is called.
No kidding! It’s Latin name is Vampyroteuthis infernalis.
And it really exists! Here on Earth and all!
It lives (as you might guess) deep in the ocean. In fact, it lives really deep, down at a level where the oxygen content in the water is so low that most creatures can’t survive there.
We’ve only known about them for about a century. There’s still a lot about them that we don’t know, but here are some interesting facts about the vampire squid from hell:
- Unlike other squids, it can’t expel ink in order to create a distraction while it jets away.
- Instead (this is sooooo cool) it expels glowing snot filled with blue balls of light in order to distract its opponent!
- It only grows to a foot long, but it has the biggest eyes of any creature proportionate to the size of its body (it needs big eyes, living at the depths it does).
- Unlike other squids, it normally doesn’t move by jet action but by flapping the two fins on its head.
- During a certain stage of its growth from infant to adult, it has four fins on its head, which led people to think that the different body forms represented more than one species.
- It’s covered with little dots that it can cause to glow and flash in order to confuse opponents.
- It uses its light-generating ability to obscure its outline so predators can’t spot it.
- It can’t change color as well as similar critters, but its skin and eyes look different colors depending on the circumstances.
- It has blue blood!
- (We think that) the females guard their eggs for like 400 days before they hatch.
- They have a defensive move they do called "pumpkin posture" in which they turn themselves inside out (sort of) so that their head is down inside the bell-shaped part of their body. When they assume this position they stick their legs way up away from their heads and make the ends glow to distract the opponent from where their vital organs (their head) are. If a predator bites one of the ends of their legs off, they regenerate it!
Cool!
If only we could tell H. P. Lovecraft about these things!
