by H2O Nyck Mon May 16, 2011 10:15 pm
My first entry is the Vampire Squid,
Helping it stay true to its name, the Vampire Squid comes complete with its own cape, made from arms connected by black webbing. The webbing help propel it through the water and almost fly like—you guessed it—a bat. But by far, the coolest/weirdest thing about this sea creature is its ability to hypnotize its prey using what's knowns as "photophores" on its arms. So basically it's a living, breathing dance club.The Vampire Squid is a tiny (6 inches) cephalopod that lives at depths ranging from 2,000-3,000 feet or more. At such great depths, there is very little oxygen. So little that most organisms would not survive. The Vampire Squid is able to live and breathe normally in this oxygen depleted environment as it has a low metabolic rate and blue blood which binds and transports oxygen more efficiently than in other cephalopods. In addition it has gills with a very large surface area.
The Vampire Squid has the largest eye relative to its size of any living organism allowing it to detect even the faintest of movements. It can also generate its own bluish light (bioluminescence) which effectively "cloaks" its presence from any watchful eyes that might be lurking below it.
Bioluminescence can also be used to ward off would be predators. If threatened, instead of ink, a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus containing blobs of blue light is ejected from the arm tips. This confuses would-be predators and allows the Vampire Squid to disappear into the blackness without the need to swim far. Another response it has when threatened, is to invert itself, making it appear much larger and allowing it to show off some fearsome looking spines. These spines (called cirri) are actually harmless. In this inverted position, its vital organs are protected and if a predator bites off an arm,the squid can just regenerate it.
The Vampire Squid is also covered entirely in light-producing organs called photophores (see above). With these photophores, the squid can produce disorienting flashes of light for fractions of a second to several minutes in duration.Unlike it counterparts in more shallow depths, the vampire squid cannot change its colors to match its surroundings. This adaptation is unnecessary in the pitch blacks depths where it lives.
Last edited by H2O Nyck on Mon May 16, 2011 10:40 pm; edited 1 time in total