The Vampire Squid, Vampyroteuthis infernalis has the most bad-ass name and has the coolest, creepiest appearance of all the cephalopods — who doesn’t see it and think Halloween? But it’s a little known fact that it actually drifts in deep and nearly anoxic layers of the ocean, surviving by maintaining a very low metabolism, and from what I’ve heard has a soft, flaccid, jelly-like texture (which actually fits with a vampire: have you ever noticed how people in the movies can easily punch crude wooden stakes right into their hearts?)
But now, further disillusionment from an analysis of their diet. It turns out that the vampire squid literally eats shit to live.
Vampyroteuthis infernalis – literally the "vampire squid from hell" – has a pair of thin, retractable filaments. It uses them like a fishing line, letting them drift and collect bits of waste. Wiping the filaments across its arms, the squid combines the waste with mucus secreted from its suckers to form balls of food, which it gobbles up.
Next they’re going to tell me it doesn’t even sparkle. <throws self on bed, weeps into pillow>
39 comments
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Improbable Joe
26 September 2012 at 7:36 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If it is any consolation, the Vampire Squid will still stare at you while you’re sleeping?
Beatrice
26 September 2012 at 7:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
…while vampire squid silently watches form the corner of the room.
Rip Steakface
26 September 2012 at 7:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Vampire squid from hell would make for an *awesome* boss in a video game. Mind you, they’d make it gigantic and supernatural, but it’s a video game, who cares?
Beatrice
26 September 2012 at 7:39 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Damn you, Joe! *shakes fist*
hyperdeath
26 September 2012 at 7:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If the redshirt villains from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are anything to go by, bumping into a convex wooden object is lethal.
Amphiox
26 September 2012 at 7:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
re @5;
Splinters.
Sunnydale carpentry standards being corrupted by the Hellmouth and all.
Sastra
26 September 2012 at 8:11 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No, no, no — this is a feature, not a bug.
jose
26 September 2012 at 8:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Waste with mucus. Mmmm, now I’m hungry.
Beatrice
26 September 2012 at 8:18 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yeah, when someone tells vampire squid to eat shit and die, vampire squid just laughs.
birgerjohansson
26 September 2012 at 8:21 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
“Revealed: Secrets of the Squid from Hell” http://phys.org/news/2012-09-revealed-secrets-squid-hell.html Corpse-eaters? That sounds more like it. A cephalopod ghoul
— — — — —
More scavenger news: “Urban coyotes never stray: New study finds 100 percent monogamy” http://phys.org/news/2012-09-urban-coyotes-stray-percent-monogamy.html
But aren’t big cities supposed to be dens of sin?
donny5
26 September 2012 at 8:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Just learned a cool new word: “anoxic”. Yeah, baby.
Kind of like when Rush Limbaugh enters the room and you fight to breathe because all the oxogen has fled in fear.
slowdjinn
26 September 2012 at 8:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
FTFY
davidw
26 September 2012 at 8:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You missed the chance to teach the word “coprophagous”!
Hurin, Midnight DJ on the Backwards Music Station
26 September 2012 at 9:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
… to swim in idle water, and drink other fishes piss.
/Bauhaus
Sorry. Loose associations.
Glen Davidson
26 September 2012 at 9:19 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What else would there be to eat in hell, its origin?
Souls don’t have calories, you know.
Glen Davidson
marcus
26 September 2012 at 10:32 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
There, there, don’t be sad. We’ll always have the awesome mimic octopus.
earlycuyler
26 September 2012 at 10:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So now I have to change the wordpress avatar I’ve had for the last 2 years? I think not. I’ll just be known as a shit eating jelly belly.
Pyra
26 September 2012 at 10:43 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
WOW! That is a beautiful beast. It serves its own purpose, regardless of our disgust because we should not and would perish if we did the same. I still like it. Not tarnished at all.
Brownian
26 September 2012 at 11:08 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
That learning that a favoured organism is a detritivore rather than a carnivore should somehow tarnish its reputation is a curious stance for a biologist to take, but not surprising, given the cultural investment we’ve made in the myth of “Man the Hunter“
pipenta
26 September 2012 at 11:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Pyra, not purpose but niche!
Glen Davidson
26 September 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Turns out that, before the Fall, vampire bats flew at night to, and ate shit from, Adam’s and Eve’s butts.
Mutualism, you know. No toilet paper in Eden.
Glen Davidson
Gregory Greenwood
26 September 2012 at 12:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
At least in some of the older (and particularly in the pre-Buffy era) vampire stories the protagonist(s) would actually have to hammer the stake into the chest of the ‘living impaired’ party in question.
Apparently, they just don’t make vampires like they used to. Then again, I don’t suppose that this comes as much of a surprise to horror fans, things being as they are with moody, love-sick teenagers and sparkly undead…
chigau (違わない)
26 September 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What do shit-eaters shit and what eats their shit?
Does this go all the way down…
cicely
26 September 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pretty damned awesome in tabletop, too…at least, by the time I was done with it!
Hell yes!
1) FRPG, and
2) the players cared. With great intensity, and a general sense of “Oh, shit!”
*cackling gleefully*
-
leahdoner
26 September 2012 at 1:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m pretty sure “Twilight” fans swallow shit to survive too.
NitricAcid
26 September 2012 at 2:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
When Rush enters the room, the Oxy goes somewhere else…
Artor
26 September 2012 at 4:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Vampire Squid don’t care. He doesn’t give a shit, because he’s not done with it yet. Look at That! Vampire Squid is nasty!!!
sparks
26 September 2012 at 4:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ve been cordially invited to eat shit and die on a number of occasions. Now I can haz a number of witty retorts involving Vampire Squid From Hell.
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
26 September 2012 at 4:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Well played, Old Man!
Amphiox
26 September 2012 at 5:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This thing lives in a deeper darkness devoid of breath, and a rain of toxic waste only makes it grow stronger.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
BrianX
26 September 2012 at 6:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Isn’t that what everything that’s not a predator or vent dweller eats down there?
w00dview
26 September 2012 at 6:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I agree with Brownian, I think this makes the vampire squid cooler in a way, having it’s own specialised niche separate from the other predatory cephalopods. Reminds me of Bagheera kiplingi the only spider that has evolved herbivory (that has been found so far anyway). Another example where a member of a predominantly predatory clade evolves into weird and unexpected ecological niches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagheera_kiplingi
Amphiox
26 September 2012 at 7:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Since the Vampire Squid is, IIRC, a relic member of the stem clade that gave rise to octopi, squid and cuttlefish, it is interesting to wonder if its detritivory is derived or actually primitive to the group.
Merrily Dancing Ape
26 September 2012 at 8:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Woa. You just blew my mind.
Doesn’t the existence of shit-eaters imply that shit must have existed first? Otherwise they would have had nothing to eat! And that leads inevitably to the next question. Who shat that first shit?
The only plausible answer is, of course, Jesus.
John Phillips, FCD
27 September 2012 at 2:37 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You people crease me, this is the best thread ever.
Gregory Greenwood
27 September 2012 at 7:34 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Merrily Dancing Ape @ 34;
Oh, I’m so stealing that – the perfect counter to all the gits who turn up here prattling on about ‘irreducible complexity’.
cicely
27 September 2012 at 11:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Shit happens; and who ya gonna call?
-
Amphiox
27 September 2012 at 11:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Down to the sea floor, where it piles up. Layers upon layers of shit.
And some of it gets turned into limestones and shales.
And some of that gets metamorphosed into marbles and slates.
Which humans later dig up and carve into funny shapes.
To worship as gods.
ralfmuschall
28 September 2012 at 1:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
There’s still hope: Section 3b (p. 4, right column) says “… several food items were held together by mucus, in which red cells were incorporated” (don’t read p. 5, it will spoil the fun.)