Deep Ocean Dweller Ram's Horn Squid Caught in Video for the First Time

The secretive Ram's Horn Squid which lives in deep ocean habitats has been caught in the video for the first time.

The viral video

The video shows the rarely seen squid species in action for the first time. The footage shocked scientists because it overturned their previous misconceptions about the creature.

The video has been posted on Twitter.

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Spirula spirula

The squid's scientific name is Spirula spirula, and its common name is Ram's Horn Squid. This species is already known to science for a long time. It is the only extant representative of its family.

This squid is not vulnerable or endangered. However, it is quite cryptic. The video provided scientists with new and surprising observations about the squid's behavior.

Upside down orientation

The video shows the squid in a completely upturned orientation against how scientists previously viewed the creature based on existing specimens.

The Schmidt Ocean Institute's scientists took the video.

In the video, the animal's buoyant organ faces downward, while the light-up organ, the organ used to blind prey by predators located above them, points upward.

This was a shocking revelation to the scientists who observed the animal. It has completely changed science's understanding of the squid.

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The squid's characteristics

The animal has a total of 10 tentacles, which is similar to other squids. However, it is not considered to be a valid species of squid. Instead, it is a cephalopod that is only squid-like. It has qualities that are also found in other cephalopods such as the nautilus.

The shells that people see comes from the internal shell, which functions as a skeleton.

The "final frontier."

The deep ocean or sea is very poorly understood. Due to this, it has been considered a second "final frontier," with the first being space.

It is challenging to bring observational and other scientific instruments to extreme depths because of the need for specialized equipment to withstand extreme pressures in these areas.

For the squid in question, the shallowest depth where it can be naturally found is 300 feet below the surface.

The video was shot through a vehicle that was remotely operated and brought almost 3,000 feet below the surface at the Great Barrier Reef.

Adaptations in the deep ocean

Due to the extreme pressures of the deep sea, which makes it inhospitable to surface creatures and organisms living in shallower waters, certain specialized adaptations have been developed by deep ocean dwellers. These creatures have surprising and incredible adaptive abilities.

The spiral-shaped skeleton-shell of the ram's horn squid is an organ used for buoyancy. It helps the animal change its locations at depths ranging thousands of meters per day.

Human SCUBA divers utilize the combined functions of inflatable materials and weight belts to float and sink at will, depending on their diving needs. However, even with such equipment, the human anatomy is not capable of changing depths at the extreme range that the ram's horn squid is capable of. It would be fatal to our terrestrially-adapted bodies.

The shell of the Ram's Horn Squid in the new video is also much lighter compared to the calcified and more massive shells of shellfishes that do not live in deep ocean habitats and is even more delicate than the spiral-shaped shells we find on beaches.

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