{"id":2189657,"date":"2026-01-08T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T05:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=2189657"},"modified":"2025-12-18T14:52:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T13:52:29","slug":"scientists-extract-dna-from-vampire-squid-from-hell-and-uncover-300-million-year-old-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/scientists-extract-dna-from-vampire-squid-from-hell-and-uncover-300-million-year-old-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists extract DNA from ‘vampire squid from hell\u2019 \u2013 and uncover 300-million-year-old secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Half a mile beneath the ocean\u2019s surface, a secretive creature drifts in the dark. It has eight tentacles with glowing tips, and a \u2018cloak\u2019 of webbed skin that it can wrap itself up in.<\/p>\n

It is the vampire squid, and it looks like something out of a nightmare.<\/p>\n

Scientists must have thought the same: the creature\u2019s Latin name, Vampyroteuthis sp., means ‘vampire squid from hell’.<\/p>\n

But, despite its ghoulish name, the vampire squid doesn\u2019t suck blood and doesn\u2019t hunt prey. Instead, it catches floating food particles on two long, sticky threads that wave around in the water.<\/p>\n

So while the vampire squid might have the fiercest name of all cephalopods (the group containing squids and octopuses), it is actually one of the gentlest species.<\/p>\n

\"The
The vampire squid has enormous eyes, compared to its body size, allowing it to detect food in the darkest depths of the ocean. Credit: Steven Haddock | MBARI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But the vampire squid\u2019s gentle nature isn\u2019t the only reason its name is misleading.<\/p>\n

Ten-armed squids (Decapodiformes) and eight-armed octopuses (Octopodiformes) are two separate evolutionary groups, and the vampire squid, despite its name, actually belongs with the octopuses.<\/p>\n

Squids and octopuses split from a common ancestor around 300 million years ago, before dinosaurs or mammals roamed the earth. But, until now, we haven\u2019t had many clues as to whether this ancestor was more squid-like or octopus-like.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the big questions in cephalopod evolution was to understand \u2026 which body plan was ancestral,\u201d Dr Oleg Simakov, an author of a new study investigating cephalopod evolution, tells BBC Wildlife.<\/p>\n

The study found that the vampire squid genome (its complete set of DNA instructions) is about four times larger than the human genome and the largest known cephalopod genome. This gigantic genome has surprising structural similarities to squid genomes \u2013 despite the vampire squid belonging with octopuses, in Octopodiformes.<\/p>\n

What this tells us is that the 300-million-year-old ancestor of squids and octopuses was probably more squid-like than octopus-like.<\/p>\n