Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb Here. The ocean is mysterious, arguably even
Speaker 1: more mysterious than space. But unlike space, the ocean is
Speaker 1: teeming with a stupendous array of living things. We haven't
Speaker 1: described even a fraction of these organisms, but luckily we
Speaker 1: are familiar with the vampire squid, the vampire squid Latin
Speaker 1: name vampera tooth. This infra analis isn't actually a squid,
Speaker 1: and it definitely isn't a vampire squid from Hell, which
Speaker 1: is what that scientific name translates to. It is a
Speaker 1: cephalopod like octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish, but the vampire squid
Speaker 1: has a taxonomic order all to itself, and that's because
Speaker 1: it shares traits with both squids and octopuses, not because
Speaker 1: it's a blood sucking undead creature of the night. Although
Speaker 1: it is blood red in color and does have a
Speaker 1: dark webbing between its arms that looks a little bit
Speaker 1: like a cape, and where it lives it's always pretty dark.
Speaker 1: The ocean, like the atmosphere, has strata. Vampire squid live
Speaker 1: in the mesopelagic zone of the open ocean, which starts
Speaker 1: where the sunny productive epipolagic zone of the surface ends.
Speaker 1: This is down at around six hundred and sixty feet
Speaker 1: that's two hundred meters where that surface zone gives way
Speaker 1: to the dim, deep twilight zone of the mesopelagic which
Speaker 1: extends to around thirteen thousand feet or one thousand meters
Speaker 1: below the surface. Like many other mesopelagic animals, vampire squid
Speaker 1: dyne on bits of dead plant and animal matter that
Speaker 1: filter down from above. Though these crimson be caped misfits
Speaker 1: look threatening with their dark, spiny underbellies, they're not hunters
Speaker 1: and have very few defenses. Their self defense options are
Speaker 1: to turn themselves into a squishy, black spiny ball, like
Speaker 1: a particularly dirty pair of socks, or to spray junk
Speaker 1: at their enemy. The cephalopods living in shallower water protect
Speaker 1: themselves with jets of dark ink, but since vampire squid
Speaker 1: already lived in the dark, they squirt out a colorless,
Speaker 1: bioluminescent fluid to confuse potential predators. Vampire squid also have
Speaker 1: little lights at the end of their eight long sectionless arms.
Speaker 1: Nobody's completely sure what they're for, but they might use
Speaker 1: them to communicate with other vampire squid that they meet,
Speaker 1: and what we do know for certain is that they're
Speaker 1: not using them to hypnotize anybody and suck their blood probably.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: mysterious topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com