#anyway. if anyone on here has the first like 20 issues in floppies or knows where else to find scans.... hit me up | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

terrible-tentacle-theatre · 6 years

Text

The Bestiary Revamped: Vampire Squid (HALLOWEEN SPECIAL)

Disclaimer: While this article is founded in scientific fact, it contains hyberbole and conscious exaggerations for the sake of comedy. Do not take my ramblings at face value. You can find the sources at the end of the article and tools for scientific fact-checking under the “Learn more” link on my blog.

The old article can be read here.

(I intended to post this yesterday but stuff came up. Anyway.)

Ahem.

Cue the spooky music.

*threatening organ music plays at unbearable volumes*

That’s right, dear readers, the Spooky Gourd Day has finally, finally come, and with it the nigh-endless Halloween shitposting that permeates this website every October like the smell of pumpkin pie did my house just a few hours ago, immediately before I ate most of it. (I still have like half of it left, but it’s cold now so it doesn’t have that mouthwatering smell unless I reheat it. And I was too busy watching old Betty Boop Halloween cartoons to reheat it. Anyway, I’m getting off track.)

Frankly, the obsession of internet culture with this innocuous holiday has always fascinated me. What it is about a day when you get to dress up all funky-like, go from house to house acting like an idiot, horf down all the candy you can get away with and watch scary movies all night that is so attractive to them youngsters? I simply cannot wrap my head around it.

However, it is a day of great significance to this blog, since this is the day when we celebrate the utter freakiest of the freakiest that can be pulled up from the stygian waves of the planet’s oceans. This is the third Halloween of the Terrible Tentacle Theatre, and for this notable occasion, I have decided to give one of my earliest poster children a much-needed revisit.

Back in the early days of the blog, when it was still called Hectocotylus and my content mainly consisted of spicing up Wikipedia and Cracked articles with swearing for the sick enjoyment of some 30 followers, the article in question was my first big hit among the people of the Digital Blue Hills of Hell. In the days when most of my articles didn’t go above 20 notes, this beast gathered up 300 notes by using its nebulous tendrils to reach into the deepest corners of the ole ‘web. Not only was this creature my first big hit in my career as a marine biology blogger with tone moderation issues, it would also fit in great as the main monster in a theoretical Universal Horror/Syfy teamup, which would be the Halloweeniest shit ever.

Ladies, gentlemen and other fellows, the vampire squid.

Before you even see this thing in full detail you can already gather that I didn’t choose it for this year’s Halloween special for nothing. Everything from the ghoulish dark red color scheme to the bat-like webbing between eldritch tentacles screams “cheesy Hammer Horror movies written by good ol’ Howard Philips”. And it will become even more evident when you see it in its full, glowy, betentacled glory.

This is how it looks like when you stare down a squishy, floppy incarnation of doom. This thing looked so freaky that the dude who discovered it, a certain German biologist called Karl Chun, decided to name it Vampyroteuthis infernalis. That’s Latin for “vampire squid from Hell”. Yep, that’s right. Remember the part where science is hard fact unaffected by emotion? Well you can throw that right out the window, because this fucker freaked its discoverer out so hard that he named it the vampire squid from Hell.

“The shit I’ve seen, kiddo. You wouldn’t believe.”

Even descriptions of this guy sound like they escaped straight from a 19th century gothic horror novel. For example, in 1925 the Arcturus expedition caught one near the Galapagos Islands and described it as “a very small but very terrible octopus, black as night, with ivory white jaws and blood-red eyes.” Even in the years of the Roaring Twenties, merely seeing the vampire squid was enough to bring out anyone’s inner Poe or Bram Stoker, apparently, which isn’t very surprising considering that it looks like Béla Lugosi had an illicit affair with one of the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu.

You’re welcome for that mental image.

While calling it a vampire is more than appropriate, the names “squid” or “octopus” are much less fitting. While intially appearing to be something of an octopus, it’s actually not one of them; and it isn’t a squid either, which left the confused scientists to place it within its own little private taxon, the order Vampyromorphida. If you know a little bit of Latin, that means “vampire-shaped”, which would imply that this is the general shape for vampires. So next time you read Twilight, imagine Edward as a vampire squid flopping around on the ground the entire time and I guarantee you’ll have a blast reading through several hundred pages of sweaty bloodsucker romance.

Unlike Edward however, the vampire squid doesn’t actually feed on blood. Dashing from shadow to shadow in the cover of a snappy opera cape and hunting for innocent young maidens in the night is the kind of energy expenditure that this malevolent mollusk cannot afford. Mainly because it lives (you guessed it) in the darkest, deepest excesses of the oceans, where the eternal darkness creates an all-year-round Halloween mood. In these waters, even beginners have a hard time finding the tiniest scraps of food, and have to resort to drastic measures to get by. But the vampire squid looks at those beginners and goes “yall are scrubs git gud lmao”. Compared to the vampire squid’s lifestyle, virtually any other denizen of the deep sea lives right in the middle of a goddamn cornucopia.

See, the vampire squid doesn’t just live in the deep ocean. It specifically prefers places called Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZ), which sounds more like the hardest Sonic level ever than any serious place which can support life. OMZs are vast sheet-like expanses of water in the deep sea which barely contain any breathable oxygen. Some of these zones can contain as little as 5% of the oxygen that saturates air, and barely anything survives here.

And guess what? The vampire squid lives here. Not only lives, but thrives.

This is the game the vampire squid plays, every day of its life. On hard difficulty.

Obviously, living in a dead wasteland of suffocating water has required the squid to adopt some nifty tools of survival. Do not do so would be like entering the final dungeon of a video game with early game gear.

First off is a pair of sensory filaments, which the vampire squid extends through the water much like a spider does its web. They are super long and flexible, and probably the source of so many dick jokes that the squid will choke a bitch if anyone tells one more.

“No, I’ve never heard that one ever. Ha ha ha. Real fuckin’ original.”

Next up is a pair of membranous wings, used by the squid to travel through the aether of space to “fly” through the water, it’s cape-like arm web billowing behind it. The vampire parallels are getting more and more accurate.

Interestingly this wing isn’t the same in adults and juveniles. At one point in their devlopment they start growing a second pair of fins which eventually fully substitutes the first pair, which then atrophies back into the flesh. Thus if you’re lucky enough to catch a vampire squid, it’s not impossible that it will have four fins. The biologists who first found these four-finned squid nearly went insane trying to describe it (and several other developmental stages) as separate species. It was such a mess it took years to sort out, and nowadays the vampire squid is the sole surviving species of its order. He’s standing in the darkness. Alone.

WAKE ME UP INSIDE

The fins and the filaments aren’t just decorative elements the squid picked out at Hot Topic, either. Used in tandem, they’re a fearsomely effective netting tool and the way this crafty cephalopod earns its daily bread. You think spiders are cool with their webs? Nah, Spiders ain’t shit. They’re lazy idiots and their web does all the work for them. the vampire squid’s filaments is where it’s REALLY at.

See, the vampire squid’s main diet is thankfully not blood but something called “marine snow”. This is basically the shower of discarded tissue, shit and corpses that rains down upon the lower layers of the deep ocean from the upper layers all year round. Having this fall from the sky for “White Christmas” would probably be quite traumatizing.

DECK THE HALLS WITH BALLS OF FECES SHALALALALALALALALAAAAARGH

The vampire squid, however, has had its resolve steeled by years of isolation in the darkness of the deep ocean, and is willing to chug down anything to survive. Bear Grylls is a picky gourmet chef compared to this guy.

That said, it needs to eat something that’s actually of some nutritional worth. It could spend its life scarfing down every chunk of marine snow it comes across, but that would be a waste of muscle movements since most of it does exactly nil to fill up its stomach. That’s where the filaments/fins combo come in, turning the vampire squid into an angry little tripwire trap ready to snap at any moment.

Note the filament. That’s not a parasite, that’s legit a part of the animal. Nobody knows where it evolved from, it’s not a modified arm or tentacle and it’s a fucking enigma.

Mystery tentacles: the quintessential Terrible Tentacle Theatre experience.

Extending its filaments (one at a time) into the mucky waters around, it waits more still then I do when I go to the kitchen for a glass of water during the night and I hear a sudden noise. The filaments come with a plethora of sensitive nerve endings, ensuring that anything bigger than a flea’s asscheeks landing on them will elicit an immediate response from the squid. And if said asscheeks touch the filaments, responds the squid it does. Specifically, it exhibits a surprising burst of speed (considering it just drifts around all day and it is effectively the consistency of Jell-O), pulled entirely by its fins to perform an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle, whipping around in a loose loop and catching its own filament. Millions of dogs around the world enviously sigh in unison.

After this, the squid pulls off its prey from the filament using its arms, which generate a solid slime-like material. The collected chunks of edible whatnot are rolled into a ball of slime, and horfed down by the squid at once. You probably cannot tell but there’s a Michelin star underneath its mantle. “Slimeball à la Vampire Squid” is one gourmet-ass dish.

Molto bene!

Of course, all this fine dining makes the vampire squid itself tasty as all hell. You are what you eat, afterall. But in the deep sea, you do NOT want to be tasty, because everyone is hungry on top of being the most light-deficient gourmet motherfuckers on the planet. So naturally, our subject needs some sort of way to evade the raving food critics hunting him in the deep. And he has this way in the form of a very unlikely tool: bioluminescence.

“But Admin”, I hear you say, “didn’t you just get done telling us last week that glowing in the deep sea will attract everything around you?” That I did, young padawan, and it still stands. However, just like last week’s subject, the vampire squid uses its built-in glowsticks with a very express purpose and doesn’t just flash into the sunset willy-nilly. The glowy parts of this beast have very well-defined places and usages, exquisitely located and timed, just like a laugh track in a sitcom. Underneath its dark-red skin the vampire squid carries clusters of glowing photophores mainly on the tip of its arms as well as in two fake eye-spots on the top of its mantle, ready to flare up in a blue burst of light on demand. The fake eyes even come with their own built-in eyelids, opening and closing as Dracula Jr. sees fit.

Imagine you’re a predator and you see this glowing collection of random bullshit. Now figure out where to bite. Good fucking luck.

These lights are used with great care and consideration in order to troll the fuck out of anybody who is foolish enough to make an attempt on the vampire squid’s life. Upon attack, the squid whips its arms around with the lights on full luminosity, creating a confusing dance of light spots in the otherwise total darkness and messing up the predator’s perception. The false eyes only make things worse, finally creating the illusion that the vampire squid possesses unlimited godlike control over space and time, which may damn well be true.

Question: What way is this vampire squid going? Hint: It’s not facing toward you.

The appearance of the squid as a godlike psychic is surprisingly in line with the whole vampire angle, since Dracula has reknownedly had the ability to charm and hypnotize people. The effect is further accentuated by the squid’s eyes, proportionally the largest of any animal ever discovered. With a diameter a whopping one sixth of the animal’s whole body, this thing's oculars are like if you were walking around with eyes the size of your head. Each.

And for added effect, they glow and change color depending on which angle you’re looking at them from.

DISCO CTHULHU

And finally, if a spooky vampire-looking-ass dark red glowing octopus-squid-thing with hypnotic powers isn’t Halloweeny enough for you, the vampire squid has a final trick up its sleeve that catapults it right into the realm of body horror. This is suspected to be a defensive tactic but who the fuck knows, really. Deep sea creatures are enigmatic as shit, and they guard their secrets jealously.

Alright, I’ll quit beating around the bush and say it outright. Basically the final defensive measure of the vampire squid is turning itself inside out.

Yep.

Of all the stupid shit that Mother Nature could have come up with, she went and decided “alright, it just up and turns itself inside the fuck out. What are you gonna do about it?”

This behavior is known to science as “pineappling” or even more Halloweeny-ly “pumpkin posture” (no, seriously) and it involves the squid taking the webbing between its arms and turning it upside to shield its head and body from harm. Now folded comfortably into a spiky little footbal, the vampire squid knows itself free from harm. The webbings are thin enough for it to see through, but also don’t let its lights to shine around, so doing this effectively means the vampire squid switches into stealth mode. Plus it looks stylishly similar to Dracula popping the collar on his cape.

The vampire squid is every Monster Mash horror cliché come to life and smushed into a vaguely cephalopod shaped package for best user experience. When the stars are right and Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn emerge from the sunken city of R’lyeh to bring the world to ruin once more, these guys will be the first living things they encounter. And then they’ll fuck off back to their stupid city, mumbling things like “what the hell man, that’s plagiarism” and “that’s way too extra, even for us”. The apocalypse is postponed once again, thanks to the vampire squid’s vailant efforts of looking weird as fuck.

Happy Halloween, everybody! I was a day late due to the length of this article, but I hope you don’t mind. Until next Tuesday’s article, have a wonderful time with the aftermath of the day of cheesy horror and confectioneries.

Sources:

Encyclopedia of Life

Tree of Life Web Project

Animal Diversity Web

Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)

Ellis, Richard. “Introducing Vampyroteuthis infernalis, the vampire squid from Hell”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood.

Seibel, Brad. “Vampyroteuthis infernalis, Deep-sea Vampire squid”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood. Retrieved 3 July 2011.

Hoving, H. J. T.; Robison, B. H. (2012). “Vampire squid: Detritivores in the oxygen minimum zone”. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

#bestiary #bestiary revamped #halloween #halloween special #cephalopod #deep sea creatures #bioluminescence #marine snow #vampire squid #spoopy #bela lugosi is spinning in his grave somewhere

988 notes · View notes

drferox · 7 years

Text

20 Questions with Dr Ferox #17

Time for another post of 20 questions and comments I’ve been asked recently. I’m not sure how well the tagging system is working at the moment, so if you’re waiting for a question to be answered I’d recommend checking manually.

@Its-janeway-or-the-highway said: For other useful bits of strine see also: Spitting the biscuit: throwing a tantrum out of sheer frustration, Bitzer: a dog that is of mixed, unknown origin (bits of this, bits of that), blood worth bottling: someone who is such an excellent individual their blood is worth bottling, such as Dr Ferox. I think your Aussie followers could have a field day with this subject.

We probably could, but the lingo also varies from state to state. For example, I didn't know for the longest time that 'Freckle' is also slang for 'anus', which gives a whole new meaning to “wouldn't give a fat rat's freckle” (means I couldn't care less)

Anonymous said: Guinea pigs or Hamsters? Which one is your fav?

I have been asked about hamsters several times, so I say it again. Never seen one. They're not available as pets in Australia.

Anonymous said: Can you tell us more about the issue of cropping and docking dogs ears and tails? Or if you know some good sites to read up on this info, where I might be able to read more about it? Thank you!

We're talked about it before on this blog. There's a handy dandy search function you can use as there's lots of posts that are worth a read, including those tagged with docking and cropping.

Anonymous said: As a Brit, and largely thanks to our celebrity chefs who like to advocate for ethical and sustainable meat-eating practices, I know that our welfare standards for veal calves are better than Europe at large, and also that, thanks to that preconceived notion of milk fed calves locked in a tiny crate, Brits are too horrified to eat veal at all. I wish people knew properly sourced British veal was much more ethical than exporting or simply shooting a male calf at birth :/ I'd support it if I could!

In Australia, a 'veal calf' is just a steer that hasn't been weaned yet, usually 200+kg, so is still being fed by its mother. Then they have one very bad day where they're 'weaned' and slaughtered on the same day, which isn't all that much worse than regular beef, in context.

Anonymous said: My cat passed away from kidney failure earlier this year. He'd been diagnosed very young but last year the vet decided to give him an ultrasound because he was curious and found out that his kidneys were terribly misshapen. He believed they had been like that since birth, and that his kidney function had always been compromised. I decided to cremate his remains, but now I am thinking that over again. Is it weird to tell a vet that they can keep organs as a teaching specimen if they want to?

Yes it's weird, but it's also very welcome if that vet has any connections with a university or teaches students. After death arrangements are a highly personal choice, and I wouldn't judge anyone for the choices they make. Keeping organs as specimens is a difficult conversation for a clinician to have.

Anonymous said: QT: came for mythical animals, stayed for the stories. Question: my dog will sometimes get his ear (not very long, and soft/semi-floppy) flipped/stuck inside out when he rolls around on the sofa cushions (which he loves to do). I flip them back by petting along the ear (it's super easy and there's no resistance, physical or behavioral) but I'm curious: does it hurt? It looks like it should. He doesn't seem to mind, but I don't know if that's just because he knows he can't fix it without help.

It probably causes no pain at all. And I dare say he could flip them back himself by shaking his head, most dogs can.

Anonymous said: What's your opinion on heated cat beds? Worth it if it's an older arthritic cat? Useless? Just curious. Also, Question Tax: Came here for the stories, stayed because I'm an aspiring avian vet.

Cats certainly enjoy them in the colder weather. I don't really like leaving the electrical ones with cords on while they're unsupervised, in case they get chewed or urinated on, and personally prefer the microwavable ones for that purpose. Care should be taken with cats that have mobility concerns to ensure they don't overheat.

Anonymous said: What is your opinion on cats eating bugs? If there is a fly in the house or a silverfish, basically anything non-threatening I can identify, I let my cats get it. However I am increasingly worried about spiders since I can't really identify them beyond daddy long legs and black widows (the only deadly type in my area) and even not so dangerous ones can have pretty painful bites. For the tax: what dinosaur would you have most liked to be a vet for?

Good luck trying to stop them from eating the bugs. I haven't figured out how to stop my boys from eating any bugs they catch.

@bighugmug said: Those capsule backpacks for cats are cute, but they look quite confined! Is there a vet opinion on how comfortable these are for kitty?

I don't know, and it probably depends on the cat. Cat's are not that bothered by being confined in transport, most cats like a box, and they tend to like a good vantage point to survey their surrounds, but it's not a carrier I see a lot of and I imagine would take some getting used to.

Anonymous said: If an animal is overstimulated and/or overly energetic, are they self-aware enough to try and calm themselves down?

Probably not.

Anonymous said: QT: I was actually sent one of your posts on euthanasia by a friend just after I'd had to put my 16yr old cat down & it really helped, so I followed! Anyway: my (~3yr old, 50lb, unknown mix breed) dog is friendly but cries literally continuously at the vet (& ONLY there), to the point that they told us they had to give him a treat to distract him long enough for them to hear his heart beat. How big a problem is something like this? Any stress reduction techniques you'd recommend?

Sounds like positive reinforcement with treats is probably the way to go. Short, consistent training sessions of 'happy vet visits' that allow your dog to associate the vet clinic with wonderful treats should make him feel more positive about the experience.

Anonymous said: feel free not to get to this for a while! i know your inbox must be bursting. i'm just wondering how preventable you think a urinary blockage in male cats is? mine doesn't have one but for some reason i am SUPER PARANOID about him getting one and i wanna do everything in my power to prevent it

I'm super paranoid about it too. Spending Friday night trying to catheterize a tiny, slippery cat penis is not my idea of fun, especially if it ends up being my own cat. Keeping them active and at a healthy weight is the single most important thing you can do to reduce their risk.

Anonymous said: I really hate to bother you, but I was wondering if tumors in a dog's anal glands is very serious. I recently took my dog to the vet for an unrelated reason and she told me that when she went to express his glands, she wasn't able to express anything and the glands felt very hard. She believes that it's either due to scaring or a tumor. If it is a tumor, the surgery is too expensive for me to ever afford. Will my dog be in pain without surgery? Could this be life threatening?

Unfortunately anal gland tumors usually are life threatening, and usually diagnosed too late to prevent spreading to the sublumbar lymph nodes. Malignant anal gland tumors will eventually make the dog sick, and as they grow they may prevent the dog from being able to defecate. You should discuss this with your vet.

Anonymous said: What are your thoughts on when to spay a bitch? We had a German Shepherd who passed away last year of hemangiosarcoma. We always wonder if this cancer was accelerated by the fact she was taking oestrogen- due to being incontinent- which we wondered about being caused by her spay. She was spayed at 4/5months old. I just wondered if you could sum up the possible implications of a spay pre and post the first oestrus, particularly for German Shepherds, but really all dogs. Thank you!

She probably did not develop the haemangiosarcoma (HSarc) from taking oestrogen. She probably developed it because she is a German Shepherd and it's one of the things that they very commonly do. Desexing does increase the risk of certain rarer cancers like HSarc and lymphoma, but not desexing drastically increases the risk of mammary cancer and pyometra. If hip dysplasia is not an issue, I'd consider desexing between 9 and 18 months for a female large breed dog. I am still very pro desexing.

Delayed desexing has also been discussed here.

@animaljunkie said: I'm an American vet student who is seriously considering practicing in either Australia or Ireland. Would you have any advice on career choices or practicing outside your home country?

I've never practiced outside Australia, but I would check what the requirements are for your employment with the national or state vet registration board for your country of choice, and it's probably wise to chat to other expats before committing to that idea.

Anonymous said: Hi Dr. Ferox! My roommate keeps buying her cats different types of food, and I was wondering is this could be harmful to them? The brand stays consistent, but she tends to buy whichever type (senior, weight management, indoor, etc.) is on sale. The cats are ~1 year and 5 years. And she doesn't do the 'wean off one food and onto another' thing. (Question tax: I hc that you -all vets really- look at animals with a mix of "you're so adorable" and "so many things could go wrong with you") Thanks!

If it hasn't caused an issue yet, it probably wont. Most issues from sudden food changes are vomiting or diarrhoea, and I'm sure you'd notice if it was an issue. Some animals have tougher stomachs than others, some are exquisitely sensitive and can only stomach one flavour of one food without gastroenteritis.

And yes, there are so, so many things that can go wrong with every singe animal. When you're trained as a hammer it's hard not to see everything as a nail.

@2goldensnitches said: Doc, we've recently acquired a kitten. Sometimes he knows how to use the litterbox, sometimes he wants to eat the sand. Why?

The whole world is a toybox to a kitten. It's most likely just learning and playing, but I can't guarantee it doesn't have some sort of pica and you should check with your vet.

Anonymous said: What kind of information should a vet be expected to know before I consider seeking help elsewhere? I recently had an avian vet do a house call for some birds, and he seemed knowledgeable. He was detailed and came up with a treatment plan that suggested he knew what he was talking about. Then he said, "Nothing's using the lower part of the aviary. You could put some reptiles in here." Is that a huge red flag? It seemed very wrong to me, but maybe that sort of thing isn't in a vet's wheelhouse?

It might not be part of that vet's knowledge base, though it seems a really odd thing to say. I can't imagine what they were thinking. If you're satisfied with the treatment of your birds then don't feel like you have to change vets, unless you want to of course.

@knikna said:Non-vet question for a bit of fun! If you had the Doctor's Tardis and could travel anywhere in space and time in this universe, where would you go first?

I would chose to go see a Thylacine. Past or future, I don't care. That way I'm unlikely to stuff up any kind of time-space continuum, and my own microflora wont cause any sort of massacre.

Anonymous said: Hi I just wanted to let you know I've been laughing at the fact your cat's name is trash bag for about an hour. I hope you and trash bag have a wonderful day

See, I knew it was a funny name.

Trash Bag has recently learned about the whole new world under the blankets, and how wonderfully warm they are for snuggles.

#20 questions #blog housekeeping #veterinarian

51 notes · View notes