Half a mile beneath the ocean’s surface, a secretive creature drifts in the dark. It has eight tentacles with glowing tips, and a ‘cloak’ of webbed skin that it can wrap itself up in.
It is the vampire squid, and it looks like something out of a nightmare.
Scientists must have thought the same: the creature’s Latin name, Vampyroteuthis sp., means 'vampire squid from hell'.
But, despite its ghoulish name, the vampire squid doesn’t suck blood and doesn’t hunt prey. Instead, it catches floating food particles on two long, sticky threads that wave around in the water.
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.
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But the vampire squid’s gentle nature isn’t the only reason its name is misleading.
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.
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’t had many clues as to whether this ancestor was more squid-like or octopus-like.
“One of the big questions in cephalopod evolution was to understand … which body plan was ancestral,” Dr Oleg Simakov, an author of a new study investigating cephalopod evolution, tells BBC Wildlife.
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 – despite the vampire squid belonging with octopuses, in Octopodiformes.
What this tells us is that the 300-million-year-old ancestor of squids and octopuses was probably more squid-like than octopus-like.
The vampire squid genome also reveals that modern octopuses have undergone some pretty whacky evolution since they split with the vampire squid. This evolution involves whole chunks of DNA fusing and moving location within the genome. These processes of genomic reorganisation – rather than the emergence of new genes – seem to have been the main driver of modern cephalopod evolution.
So not only does the secretive vampire squid spend its life in the deep, but its genome holds secrets that have helped scientists unlock deep evolutionary secrets.
They make quite a splash for such a secretive creature!
Find out more about the study Giant genome of the vampire squid reveals the derived state of modern octopod karyotypes, published in the journal iScience.
Top image: vampire squid. Credit: Getty
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