Unusual deep-sea animals sometimes stupor even the most experienced experts in marine biology. In the Gulf of Mexico, the brightest reaction of one researcher to the appearance of a bizzare looking squid, or rather, to the amazing form that it took, was captured.
His posture was so unusual that Mike Vecchione, a research zoologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA ), called this cephalopod “the strangest squid he had ever seen.”
A video posted onYouTube by the Okeanos mission shows how the squid almost turned out, almost at the bottom, at a depth of about 850 m. Despite the fact that the squid’s appearance is difficult to determine from the filming, NOAA representatives suggest that it is Discoteuthis .
In the video, the body of the mystical squid looks like it was turned outward, “arms” are pulled in, resembling a protective pose, but four tentacles were exposed. That small part of the body and tentacles that we managed to examine was a bit like squid of the species Psychroteuthidae, says Vecchione in the video.
But despite the fact that such a squeezed pose is quite common among squids, in this case it was so extreme, that this creature “didn’t even look like a squid”, Vekkione added.
