Why Animals Get Creepier the Deeper You Go

Not all of the darkest and strangest corners of the universe are found in some distant galaxy millions of light years away; In fact, the most mysterious of these dark places is right here on Earth, a place with no sunlight, crushing pressure, and near-freezing temperatures, not the desolate Wasteland. As one might expect, it is instead populated by a great variety of life taking shape in ways our Earthly Minds can barely comprehend. Some creatures of the deep have huge piercing eyes, some have no eyes at all, and some still have eyes. Within their transparent domed heads, others glow for defense or predation, and at these depths where photosynthesis cannot occur, the food chain becomes a bit unpredictable.

Some creatures typically classified as filter feeders have even evolved to become unlikely and terrifying carnivores, others become such effective predators that their mouths are larger than the rest of their body or have teeth that pierce the darkness in all directions, from the ethereal to the point of eerie. The Dark Sea contains a world of adaptations that shake the imagination and the

deeper

you go, the

creepier

it seems to get. Is it exactly the deep, dark sea that creates some of the wildest creatures ever discovered? Is there some reason we can't help but find them chillingly creepy?

The upper layer of the deep sea is the mesopelagic, also known as The Twilight Zone and extends from 200 meters to a thousand meters. A little light still penetrates these depths but not much. The first color to disappear is red because it has the longest wavelength and lowest energy of the visible spectrum and many creatures that spend time in the Twilight Zone use this to their advantage and evolve into shades of red that make them virtually invisible at these depths enter the vampire squid glimpse it at lights of a submersible, you may understand why it received such a frightening name.

Its red skin has enormous eyes that seem to glow and the spine-like protuberances on its tentacles give it a much scarier appearance than cephalopods in shallower waters. deep, but just as its red color seems creepy to us, but it has a vital meaning. Its evolutionary purpose is also served by its other sinister-looking features despite its creepy name. Vampire squids are not actually bloodthirsty hunters. Unlike almost all other cephalopods, this creature is a detrivore. It gets almost all its calories from sea snow. Marine snow is particulate matter that drips from marine snow. higher up in the ocean and is made of decaying crustaceans zooplankton larvae houses diatoms and fecal matter the vampire squid has four pairs of arms with finger-like tendrils called siri plus two long retractable filaments sits virtually motionless at depths of 600 to 900 meters by slowly collecting sea snow into its mucus-laden filaments and slurping it up, scientists were surprised to discover that sea snow has quite a high nutritional value, but the vampire squid still doesn't have much energy to expend, they get by thanks to having a suppressed capacity.

The metabolism is much lower than that of any other cephalopod of comparable size, but as you descend

deeper

, cephalopods become even scarier. The genus magnapina or bigfin squid is believed to be the deepest genus of squid, with sightings as deep as 6,212 metres, making the bigfin squid the only squid known to occupy the hadle zone. , the deepest region of the ocean, its arms and tentacles can measure up to eight meters long and are usually held at disconcerting right angles, the squid is given the appearance of having elbows and its translucent glow The mantle makes the creatures appear completely natural. another world.

Little is known about the feeding behavior of these squid. Scientists have speculated that they might use their long arms to drag them along the sea floor and grab any edible organisms they can. Alternatively, the arms could passively grab food such as zooplankton or chunks of marine snow, but in an environment without plant life forming the base of the food chain, being a detrivore is far from the only strategy; In fact, there are a number of organisms that are herbivores or filter feeders in shallower parts of the ocean. They become carnivores in the depths of the sea, that is the case of the predatory tunicate.

It belongs to the family of acids, which are also known as sea squirts, a class of colorful stationary filter feeders that generally live in shallow water, but the predatory tunicate lives much deeper, between 600 and 1100 meters and perhaps even deeper, These tunicates are perhaps less terrifying than large-fin squid, but just as strange they look almost like an eyeless sock puppet with an open mouth, but this strange design serves an important purpose: to help them catch prey such as small invertebrates and crustaceans. and sometimes they enter the open mouth of the predatory tunicate, which quickly closes and the prey is trapped and faces a slow death by digestion.

This is also the case for an entire family of organisms known as carnivorous sponges that generally begin to appear at 200 meters. They become quite common between 400 and 500 meters and remain dominant until the Hadle zone below 6,000 meters. Shallow water sponge species are filter feeders like sea squirts and live on bacteria and phytoplankton. They are even collected as loofahs for the shower and their porous bodies. It's a good mechanism for holding and forming soap bubbles, but you definitely don't want to wash with a carnivorous sponge and that's because they are covered in little spears and hooks that are used to passively catch small swimming creatures, sponges don't have to do it.

They do a lot of work, whether it's the harp sponge with its long rows of spines or the ping pong tree sponge with its bulbous spheres, these stationary organisms are highly effective predators, they simply wait for ocean currents to sweep the creatures toward their spines and then they feast despite this. Passive carnivores abound, there are many hunters in the depths of the sea and a surprising specimen is the devouring eel found at depths of more than 1800 meters in the midnight zone. Its mouth is larger than the rest of its body and is loosely hinged so that it can swallow

animals

much larger than itself, its proportions may be unpleasant, but in an environment with limited food, being able to gorge on a large meal when you have the opportunity is crucial.

His huge mouth can also be used to appear intimidating. rises to a hilarious degree, but the most infamous among the deep sea. Hunters can be anglerfish, most of which live below 300 meters, but some can be found up to the abyssopelagic zone, up to 6 000 meters, there are hundreds of species that fall under The general term anglerfish that comes from the way they generally hunt with a decoy attached to their heads to attract their prey. It is made up of an Elysium, the modified spine that acts as a fishing rod, and an eska, the bioluminescent bulbous fishing lure that gets its glow from symbiotic bacteria and by using these lures, the anglerfish attracts a variety of prey species to Their mouths open and they are known to consume absurd amounts of food at a time, researchers once captured a black sea demon that weighed 8.8 grams, but its stomach contained 12.3 grams of eels - in other words, only Their stomach managed to hold one and a half times their body weight in food so they could consume whatever they found.

Anglerfish have very flexible jaws and generally have teeth that point inwards, meaning that when they catch their prey, there is little chance of the creature escaping and, like the gulping eel, their strategy of gorging themselves whenever they can Getting food is a huge advantage in an environment where food is scarce, while some creatures use bioluminescence to prey, others use it to disguise themselves with a strategy called counter-illumination, the lights on their bellies help to obscure their outline against very dim light. spots of light coming from above, but there are some predators that have found ways to see their prey by camouflaging themselves in this way and perhaps the most incredible of them It is possible to say that the macro Penna microstoma or the Pacific barilai fish is the fish with the craziest look in the entire ocean.

These fish have huge tubular eyes that point upwards, allowing them to see their prey swimming above their heads and these eyes are encased within their head closed by a transparent shield. The vision is so good that they can not only distinguish the silhouettes of their prey even if using bioluminescence, but also measure the depth at which they swim and therefore the distance to them, but initially scientists were confused about how this could be done. hunt effectively when their small mouth is pointed in a different direction than their eyes, they would not be able to keep their eyes on the prey while moving their mouth to eat it, but scientists were surprised to discover that the eyes can turn forward and see through the front of his eyes. heads as well as the top for a maximum arc of 75 degrees for comparison, we humans can only move our eyes about 45 degrees at most so we can do what the Barrel I fish does, we could essentially look directly at our brain this strange adaptation. allows barrel-eye fish to keep their prey in sight at all times, even when moving their body vertically to catch food swimming above them, but barrel-eye fish live in the Twilight Zone, where there are still a little bit of light available so they can produce.

What about fish found even deeper in bathydic or even abyssopelagic pelagics down to 6000 meters with no sunlight penetrating these depths and little need to detect bioluminescence? Some deep-sea creatures give up vision altogether such as the tripod fish. Instead, relying on sight, they balance on the sea floor like small tripods waiting for other creatures to swim by. Their elongated pelvic fins extend to the ground keeping them still and upright while they use their pectoral fins as hands. spinal nerves that help them sense water currents and any object that may float in their path from small crustaceans to fish.

This way, they can essentially sit and wait for food to come to them even though they can't see it and while these fish are certainly deep, they are by no means the deepest. Recently, scientists exploring a sea trench near Japan were stunned to find a fish living 8,336 meters below the surface, the deepest fish anyone has ever found, and they are likely to find what they found. a type of hadal snail fish a translucent, scaleless tadpole-like creature little is known about this ghostly ethereal fish that thrives in a place named after Hades. It's the deepest fish, the creepiest, maybe not, although it certainly doesn't win any beauty contests, but from the beginning. from the depths of the ocean just as the sunlight disappears into the crushing depths of the deepest trenches, there is no denying that the creatures that live here look like characters from the darkest corners of our imaginations, and yet each strange Adaptation is something created by millions of years of evolution to live in such an unusual environment, it's not hard to see why deep sea creatures invoke eerie feelings in us.

The creatures are nothing like the ones we see in our daily lives and without the arrival of robotics we would never be able to see them in their natural habitat. Their habitat is so far from us that we compare it to the underworld and for some reason humanity subscribes. to the archetype that the sky contains possibilities, euphoric clouds, and the sky itself, while the depths hold fears, secrets, and eternal death, perhaps this is No wonder, as intelligent air-breathing mammals, that what is bright and known may be safe for us and the unfathomable, mysterious, dark and otherworldly sea may not be, but our ancestral Consciousness perhaps never understood that the world is all connected and that the Abundant Rivers ensure that we depend on it.

They are directly related to the deepest parts of the sea, what seems strange is actually a vital part of our world and deserves our consideration, care and protection like any other part of our planet. The evolution of ocean creatures is undeniably fascinating for all the strange and foreign adaptations that excite our imaginations, but some of the most surprising adaptations on Earth occur right here on earth and in our own species. Human sight is one of thehuman sonar allows people without sight to see with sound and other people who have lost their sight due to damage. in their visual cortex they can still complete obstacle courses without knowing they did it.

These phenomena are the subject of the study. The next real science video that you can watch now two weeks early on Nebula Nebula is the streaming platform created by me and several other YouTube educational content creators. It's a place where we can take more risks. Upload early videos and post original content that doesn't. necessarily fit on YouTube, there are so many original series like Becoming Human, which was my passion project about the incredible story of human evolution, or the real engineering Battle of Britain, which is an engineer's version of one of the moments most transcendental events of the Second World War, the final episode. was released the other day, nebula has even produced a feature film called Coconut Night and an award-winning, genre-bending play called The Prince, which you can watch in its entirety on nebula and now if you sign up with the link below.

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