Vampyroteuthis gazes at you with its terrible ancient eye…
Close it, please, for the love of heaven, close it!
Vampyrotheuthis infernalis
JEBUS! It’s got a sphincter for an eye! OPEN IT AGAIN! OPEN IT AGAIN!
Figure from The Deep(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Claire Nouvian.
That’s as close as it gets to matching gaze with Cthulhu and living.
It looks like a plush toy (with a veined crystal eye).
I swear, that looks like Ken Ham winking at his congregation!
I swear, that looks like Ken Ham winking at his congregation!
Sorry, I clicked twice:)
Look at the reflection! It looks like it’s staring into the depths beyond time and space.
PZ, you have a great sense of humour!
Yes, yes that is a sphincter.
Way to start my Friday.
just… wow.
I can has SAN loss?
Holy crap that looks freaky when closed.
There once was a squid named BILL
Who really loved to hunt and to KILL
He searched each night for his favorite FOOD
It truly put him in the perfect MOOD
In fact, when he ate those who say CREATION
From the other squid he’d get a standing OVATION
There once was a squid named BILL
Of religion, he got his daily FILL
His eyes were as blue as a moon-lit NIGHT
And his most deadly feature was his atheist BITE
But Bill the squid took life pretty EZ
In fact, he loved to read his early morning PZ
Awesome.
Gotta love the vampire squid from hell!
WOW, that eye looks like a sapphire. I must admit that I have always found the cephalopods interesting but no more so than many others. However, I now look forward to the Friday cephalopod with eager anticipation to see what jewel you will present us and I have to say that they just get better and better.
Am I the only one who noticed that ‘for the love of heaven’ was included in the original post? Does atheism take a holiday when cephalopods are mentioned?
Awesome creature!
Any one else see the scuba diver’s reflection bottom left of the first eye picture? It seems unlikely as this was more likely taken in an Aquarium or some such.
I’m glad I’m seeing this in the morning. Looking at that before going to sleep would NOT be good.
Incidentally, it would be cool if someone who is good with morphing software made an animation from those two images.
That’s not a scuba diver being reflected in the eye– it’s what’s for dinner!
Really cool cephalopod!
Stupid question:
what do vampire squid feed on, i.e. as a source of blood? Whales? Fish?
How big is this thing? (feet or meters)
PBC.
This is, without a doubt, for me, one of the funniest commentaries PZ has ever given on this site. I literally LOL’d.
I’m lazy on Friday mornings….
The internet tells me it’s about 13 cm long (approx. 1/2 a foot for the rest of you),
and from Wiki: “Copepods, prawns and cnidarians have all been reported as prey of Vampire Squid”.
I promise never to site Wiki again…..lazy Fridays…
PBC.
and that’s how to shut kids up when you’re babysitting.
Lepht
I am a horrible nerd: when I saw what PZ wrote under the second photo, my thoughts turned to Star Wars:
CLOSE THE BLAST DOORS!
OPEN THE BLAST DOORS! OPEN THE BLAST DOORS!
That reflection in the eye, therefore, isn’t a scuba diver, it’s a droid.
Exaptation or adaptation?
This has to be the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. There might be some use for you yet.
Laugh out loud funny! Now It’s just a matter of cleaning up this spill…
#16 – There may indeed be atheists in foxholes, but never when confronted with sphincter-eyed, submarine, widdle-in-your-wetsuit horrors.
Or maybe PZ’s suffering SAN loss like #10 suggested?
Are you flirtin’ with me? You flirtin’ with me? You flirtin’ with me? Then who the hell else are you flirtin’ with?
Are you flirtin’ with me? You flirtin’ with me? You flirtin’ with me? Then who the hell else are you flirtin’ with?
“It’s got a sphincter for an eye”
PZ Clearly, you have been dealing with way too many arseholes on your blog recently.
Vampyroteuthis nothing. That there is a Third Stage Guild Navigator.
He who controls the spice controls the universe!
That is at once one of the most beautiful things and the most heeby-jeeby-what-the-hell-IS-that-thing horrors I’ve ever seen.
It’s really neat how you can just make out the diver (?) in its eye in the first photo.
Pretty pictures! Where did you find them online?
I didn’t find them online! There are these amazing things called “books” that contain huge amounts of quality information, more and better stuff than you’ll usually find on the web. I recommend them as a source to all bloggers.
Pfft. “Books”. What are you, Amish? No one reads books anymore.
You’re probably still eatin’ “food” and breathin’ “air” too, PZ.
Uh, like, welcome to the 21st century, people.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Vampyroteuthis_illustration_2.jpg
Vampyroteuthis infernalis. I like it :)
Damn. Someone beat me to the obligatory ‘Dune’ reference. Nice job, Brownian.
PZ’s commentary reminds me of nothing more than Yosemite Sam, as the Black Knight, shouting at Bugs Bunny in the castle: “Open that drawbridge! Open, I say!” (Drawbridge slams open, crushing Sam into a tin can) (Muffled:) “Close it! Close it! Close it up again!”
Except, you know, in reverse.
This from one of the commenters at Barry’s site. He can to Dave Barry, but Pharyngula is blocked?
Oh do I love Vampy. Thanks, PZ.
Wow, suddenly all that anti-wrinkle eye cream I’ve been using seems like money well spent.
You mean like this plush toy?
http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/plush_cthulhu.html
Or how about this one:
http://www.vikingsquidcomics.com/commission/deluxesquid.jpg
No, like itself – just the look of its surface and details.
I do have a MIB Cthulhu though – and a Nyarlathotep (which is cuter). Unfortunately the pair of plush octopus toys I got a while back (and only opened the other day) turned out to have smiles stitched onto the back of their mantles instead of having beaks in the proper place. I had to explain to the sproglets how they weren’t anatomically accurate.
Books? BOOKS? Those things that look like a bunch of blog posts printed and glued together?
i dont think this is real …
I made an animated gif on gickr.com slick link to see.
http://arbyn.blogdrive.com/archive/264.html
PZ, I just came across your blog and now, my friend, you are my new hero.
A veritable cephalolpod.
Cool, only problem now that you’ve published this is that some of those body modification freaks are going to take this idea and run with it. Show some social responsibility, Please!
Here’s a youtube video on the creature.
Well, at least the eye isn’t brown
See, atheists can be smug about getting off lines like that because we know we won’t burn in hell for them…
Anyway, Arbyn, here’s a different version animated. Needs an appropriate sound effect, squeegee or balloon animal kinda thing, but MS Gif Animator doesn’t offer that option.
And another, what I imagine actually happened.
@ Brian Macker, thanks for that vid. Great stuff.
Awesome¡¡¡¡
Are common the circular-closing eyelids on cephalopods?
I guessed they haven´t any at all……
Actually, the human iris contains a sphincter aswell.
Yes, but humans have the decency to keep it on the inside. ;-)
That youtube video was cool! The sphincter is part of the animal’s defense mechanism (providing the illusion of escaping the predator). Even cooler is that upon contact with a potential predator, the octopus releases glowing particles. Ummm… could those be precursors to star spawn?
Ia Ia Cthulhu Ftaghn!
I think it’s cool that both PZ and Schnier on security are into cephalopods. Schnier had a great sculpture robot of a squid recently. Mind you he also had a recipe for squid. Is this squid really that colour tho’ or has it been enhanced?
Another video about them
OK, I’ll get banned for this but…
“reverse goatse!”
I love my Elder God overlords!