Despite the scary title, fashionable vampire squid are docile denizens of the deep sea — however their Jurassic ancestors might have been so much fiercer.
Analyses of fossilized gentle tissue from three 164-million-year-old specimens of Vampyronassa rhodanica counsel that the traditional cephalopods had some highly effective weapons, researchers say June 23 in Scientific Reports. Unlike its blobby fashionable relative, V. rhodanica had a extra streamlined muscular physique, with two of its eight arms twice so long as the opposite six. Strong suckers on all eight arms might have helped it snatch and maintain onto prey.
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Modern vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) are usually not truly squid; they’re the one surviving members of an historic, various order of cephalopods, the Vampyromorpha. And V. infernalis are fairly passive about discovering meals (SN: 6/25/12). Alongside their arms, they’ve two lengthy, retractable, sticky filaments that they use like flypaper to gather ”marine snow,” tiny bits of lifeless plankton or sinking fecal pellets that occur to float previous (SN: 5/19/15).
Fossilized tissue suggests V. rhodanica had a really totally different way of life, report paleontologist Alison Rowe of Sorbonne University in Paris and her colleagues.
Both the traditional and the trendy creatures have eight arms bearing suckers flanked by hairlike cirri. But the traditional cephalopod’s suckers are connected to the arms by stalks embedded in spherical layers of muscle. That muscular association, the group says, would have significantly elevated the stress differential contained in the sucker — making its suction extra highly effective. The creature’s quite a few, intently packed cirri might have helped it sense prey, just like a method utilized by some fashionable octopuses.
V. infernalis’ suckers, missing that muscle association, don’t have such a robust grip. Instead, its suckers secrete mucus that coats regardless of the creatures have captured with their filaments. The cirri then slide that slippery meals alongside the arms and into its mouth.