The Mollusk Vampire of Hell

Black demon of the realm of everlasting dark is Vampyrotouthis infernalis. Most nightmarish of living animals, this “vampire of hell” has a midnight-black body about two inches long, red-brown round face on a head almost as large as the rest of the body, red eyes an inch in diameter encircled by narrow bands of pinkish-orange, rows of ivory white teeth, ten wriggling, ever-probing tentacles extending from the head. On the sides of the neck are two powerful, flashing lights each of which is a cluster of about 50 tiny phosphorescent nodules. The entire body is covered with hundreds of tiny lights.

Fortunately nobody is likely to meet this horror of an hallucination-damned maniac’s ravings on a lonely road passing a graveyard at night. It is a mollusk, a close relative of the octopus and the squid but belonging to neither family, which lives in abysses of sub-tropical seas all around the world, far below the depths reached by the most penetrating green rays of the sun. Only its relatively small size and restricted habitat prevent it from being the most fearsome, loathsome creature on this planet.

The “vampire” is a living fossil, survivor out of the demonic seas of 200,000,000 years ago which found shelter from the inexorable scythe with which time mows down demons by retreating further and further into the dark. Imprints of quite similar sea animals, probably denizens of warm, shallow waters, have been found in English rocks.

Up to now about a hundred individuals have been taken from the deep sea, mostly by scientific expeditions. Of these, nearly two-thirds have come from the Atlantic off the Florida coast and near Bermuda. There are several in the Smithsonian collections. The fantastically terrible little mollusk was first taken in the Indian Ocean by Dr. Carl Cuhn of the German Valdavia expedition about 75 years ago. Until quite recently all specimens obtained have been in poor condition and there has been considerable difficulty in classifying them. The job has been complicated by the fact that the vampire apparently undergoes a series of metamorphoses which have been mistaken for different species. During the past ten years, however, they have been studied intensively by Dr. Grace Pickford of the Bingham Oceanographic Laboratory of Yale and their fearsome reality has been established beyond question.

Naturally, since the living animal cannot be observed, essentially little is known of its habits and ways of life. Certainly it is a voracious carnivore like all others of its race and preys upon every other creature of the depths in its size range. It seems to be confined exclusively to a depth of about 1,500 meters. This is the level of the sea where, for some reason oceanographers are unable to fathom, the oxygen content of the water is lowest. It goes up immediately both above and below. The vampire, apparently, cannot stand too much oxygen. Its eggs sink to about 2,000 meters where they reach their suspension level. As soon as the little mollusks hatch they rise to their natural habitat.

The vampire has powerful tentacles but its fin muscles indicate that it is a weak swimmer. It probably lurks in the abysmal darkness for its prey to come within reach of the probing tentacles. Even with its enormous eyes and its many lights it hardly can distinguish moving objects very well and presumably is not particular about what living things it eats. Its usual victims probably are fishes and smaller mollusks. It is unlikely that the creature has many natural enemies it need fear. Unlike the octopuses, its nearest relations, it has no ink sac from which to discharge a black cloud around its body for its own concealment.