Lonely Little Guy Doesn't Want to Eat You After All, Just Be Friends

According to National Geographic:

Despite its ghoulish name and looks, the vampire squid (pictured, an individual in 2004) isn't a bloodthirsty terror of the deep after all, a new study says.

Instead, the nightmarishly named species browses on "marine snow"—dead plankton, algae, fecal matter, goo, shells shed by tiny crustaceans, and other detritus.

That's so cute! He just wants to eat fecal matter.  According to Wikipedia, "[a]s a phylogenetic relict it is the only known surviving member of its order, first described and originally classified as an octopus in 1903 byGerman teuthologist Carl Chun, but later assigned to a new order together with several extinct taxa." Also, "[t]he vampire squid is almost entirely covered in light-producing organs called photophores. The animal has great control over the organs, capable of producing disorienting flashes of light for fractions of a second to several minutes in duration." And, "the vampire squid is able to live and breathe normally in the [ocean's oxygen minimum zone] at oxygen saturations as low as 3%; a feat no other cephalopod, and few other animals, can claim. ...  If threatened, instead of ink, a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus containing innumerable orbs of blue light is ejected from the arm tips."

Vampire squid are the coolest animals ever. I will be your friend, little vampire squid.