Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb. In today's episode is
Speaker 1: another classic from the archives. In this one, we return
Speaker 1: to a favorite subject of mine, cephalopods, to talk about
Speaker 1: the not actually very scary vampire squid, which is neither
Speaker 1: a squid nor a vampire that we know of. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb. Here, the ocean is mysterious,
Speaker 1: arguably even more mysterious than space. But unlike space, the
Speaker 1: ocean is teeming with a stupendous array of living things.
Speaker 1: We haven't described even a fraction of these organisms, but
Speaker 1: luckily we are familiar with the vampire squid. The vampire
Speaker 1: squid Latin name vampira tooth, this infer analis isn't actually
Speaker 1: a squid, and it definitely isn't a vampire squid from hell,
Speaker 1: which is what that scientific name translates to. It is
Speaker 1: a cephalopod like octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish, but the vampire
Speaker 1: squid has a taxonomic order all to itself, and that's
Speaker 1: because it shares traits with both squids and octopuses, not
Speaker 1: because it's a blood sucking undead creature of the night,
Speaker 1: although it is blood red in color and does have
Speaker 1: a dark webbing between its arms that looks a little
Speaker 1: bit like a cape, and where it lives it's always
Speaker 1: pretty dark. The ocean, like the atmosphere, has strata. Vampire
Speaker 1: squid live in the mesopelagic zone of the open ocean,
Speaker 1: which starts where the sunny productive epopolagic zone of the
Speaker 1: surface ends. This is down at around six hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty feet that's two hundred meters, where that surface zone
Speaker 1: gives way to the dim, deep twilight zone of the
Speaker 1: mesopelagic which extends to around thirteen thousand feet or one
Speaker 1: thousand meters below the surface. Like many other mesopolagic animals,
Speaker 1: vampire squid dyne on bits of dead plant and animal
Speaker 1: matter that filter down from above. Though these crimson be
Speaker 1: caped misfits look rettening with their dark spiny underbellies, they're
Speaker 1: not hunters and have very few defenses. Their self defense
Speaker 1: options are to turn themselves into a squishy, black spiny ball,
Speaker 1: like a particularly dirty pair of socks, or to spray
Speaker 1: junk at their enemy. The cephalopods living in shallower water
Speaker 1: protect themselves with jets of dark ink, but since vampire
Speaker 1: squid already live 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 is based on the article Vampire squid don't
Speaker 1: actually suck blood on housetu works dot com, written by
Speaker 1: Jescelin Shields. Brain Stuff is production of Heart Radio in
Speaker 1: partnership with how stuffworks dot com, and it's produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang and Ramsey Young. Four more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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