Strange things lurk in the planet’s deepest, darkest corners. And it doesn’t get much deeper and darker than the bottom of the ocean, or stranger than Vampyroteuthis infernalis – the ‘vampire squid from hell’. As such it is one of the world’s weirdest sea creatures What is a vampire squid? Despite its name – inspired by its dark […]
Tag: squid
These Rare Whales Had Never Been Seen Alive, Then Scientists Saw Two Near California
A lifelong whale researcher recently encountered a living pair of gingko-toothed beaked whales for the first time ever in the wild. The encounter advances the science of beaked whales enormously, for in addition to confirming the whole genome of the animal, it also linked this elusive species to a well-recorded whale song that can now […]
Scientists extract DNA from ‘vampire squid from hell’ – and uncover 300-million-year-old secret
Half a mile beneath the ocean’s surface, a secretive creature drifts in the dark. It has eight tentacles with glowing tips, and a ‘cloak’ of webbed skin that it can wrap itself up in. It is the vampire squid, and it looks like something out of a nightmare. Scientists must have thought the same: the […]
Three-metre giant oarfish, ‘palace messenger’ of doom, washes up on Tasmanian beach
It was a beautiful warm day in north-west Tasmania when a fish with a reputation as a harbinger of doom washed ashore. Tony Cheesman, who lives in the seaside town of Penguin, was walking his two dogs, Ronan and Custard, along the beach at Preservation Bay on Friday morning when something silvery and surrounded by […]
This bizarre Galápagos bird hunts giant deep-sea squid at night. How it does it is astonishing
Ghostly white forms drifted like white handkerchiefs on the brisk night breeze, dipping, rising, flapping, turning and tumbling over an inky black ocean. My small sailing boat rocked gently on the waves, while a handful of stars blinked between the clouds above. The shoreline lay some 30km ahead, just visible as a faint smudge on […]
Live colossal squid captured on video in wild for first time ever
The colossal squid, the heaviest invertebrate in the world, has been filmed alive in the wild for the first time since it was identified a century ago. Growing up to 23ft (seven metres) long and weighing up to half a tonne, the squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, is the heaviest invertebrate on the planet. The individual captured […]