Jun 7, 2012

Vampire of the deep


Right now there's a post on my other blog about squid, which is something that doesn't happen very often. We don't know enough about their behavior to know the details of their character flaws, I guess.
But we do know a lot about what they look like: they're are wonderfully weird and it's been too long since we saw one here.

That picture is of one of the creepiest species, with a name to suit: the vampire squid. Though called a squid, it's actually a more primitive relative of both the squid and octopus. True to its name, it wears a cape -  its arms are connected by webbing that helps it fly batlike through the water. And while it can't suck your blood, it can pierce you: for defense, it turns that webbing inside out to cover its body and reveal the sharp spikes jutting out of its arms. Check it out:



Next time you eat calamari, hope you never meet one of its relatives looking for revenge.
-Wombat (No Relation)

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Many deep-dwelling squids aren't good to eat, because their physiology includes serious amounts of ammonia -- which is why we don't have Giant Squid calamari.

wombat said...

Just as well they don't taste good, because we really don't want to make those giant squid angry.

Anonymous said...

Heard of these, but never knew they were bio-luminescent. Hey, if you can't survive daylight, just bring your own!

bdwilcox said...

When this one is floating through the inky darkness, I guess we could refer to it as the Night Flier.

Broken Arrow Pest Control said...

Excellent, and I thought the creepy crawly bugs were beasts. This makes the pests I deal with doing pest control in Broken Arrow like playing with pets.