The Vampire Squid: We Named It After Hell And Got It Completely Wrong

Its name means "vampire squid from hell." It lives in eternal darkness, thousands of feet down, in a layer of ocean so starved of oxygen almost nothing else can survive there. It has a cloak-like web, glowing eyes, and turns itself inside out to reveal rows of spines. It looks like a nightmare. And it might be the single gentlest animal in the entire ocean, a creature that refuses to hunt, eats falling specks of "marine snow," defends itself with light instead of violence, and has outlived nearly everything else in the sea by being patient and gentle. This is the story of the most misunderstood creature in the deep. CHAPTERS 0:00 The monster you imagine 0:38 Why we named it after hell 1:32 It's not a squid (or an octopus) 2:22 The impossible home 3:12 Surviving where nothing should 4:11 The one cephalopod that refuses to hunt 5:07 How it catches falling snow 5:58 The inside-out disguise 6:47 A defense made of light 7:47 The largest eyes on Earth 8:31 Older than the dinosaurs 9:24 How we got it so wrong 10:14 Still down there, right now ━━━━━━━━━━ HADAL HOUR - Lost worlds beneath the waves and behind us in time. New story every week. ━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES & FURTHER READING MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) - Vampire squid, Animals of the Deep Hoving, H.J.T. & Robison, B.H. (2012) - "Vampire squid: detritivores in the oxygen minimum zone," Proceedings of the Royal Society B Animal Diversity Web (University of Michigan) - Vampyroteuthis infernalis Sci-News - coverage of the 2012 MBARI feeding discovery #vampiresquid #deepsea #marinebiology #cephalopod #oceananimals