Vampire Squid
By: Destiny Pemberton
Interesting facts
- The scientific name for a vampire squid is Vampyrotheuthis Infernalis.
- Vampire squids have weak muscles and because of this people thought that they would swim really slow, but they can actually swim very rapidly in a short period of time using their fins.
- They also have the largest eye-to-body ratio of any animal in the world.
Diet
- Recently, it has been discovered that Vampire Squid eat "Marine snow".
- In other words they eat feces, other fish that are dead, and snot that sinks from above.
- Whenever they eat they open their tentacles and gather food into their mouths, which is in the center of their tentacles, and when they get enough they close their tentacles.
Appearence
- The squid is a reddish blackish color.
- It also has 8 webbed tentacles and each of them have spikes in two rows called cirri.
- They have large eyes that are red or blue depending on the light.
- They have white,beak-like jaws.
Habitat
- Vampire Squid live 2,000 to 3,000 ft. deep in the ocean
- They are mostly found in tropical oceans.
- They live in the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) which is a place where oxygen saturation is too low to support higher organisms with aerobic metabolism
Reproduction
- When Vampire squid reproduce, the male deposits sperm into the sac of the female.
- The female doesn't lay many eggs, but the eggs are large.
- The female takes care of the eggs needs until they hatch, which is about 13 months.
- Once the offspring are born the female dies.