Vampire squid have eight arms but lack feeding tentacles (like octopods), and instead use two retractile filaments in order to capture food. These filaments have small hairs on them, made up of many sensory cells, that help them detect and secure their prey.

The vampire squid is a small, dark-colored cephalopod that's found at extreme depths, between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. The vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) gets its name from its dark coloring. It does not feed on blood.

The vampire squid wards off predators by pulling its arms up and over its body and shrouding itself in its cloak-like web. This motion hides its mantle and exposes spikey-looking fleshy appendages on the back of its webbed arms called cirri.

Despite their intimidating name, vampire squid are quite harmless creatures. Though they may appear spooky, especially when viewed from a dimly lit submarine in the deep sea, they pose no harm to humans.

Despite its name and similar appearance to a squid or an octopus, the vampire squid is actually neither of the two. It’s a cephalopod that’s found at deep-sea, and is the only surviving species in its order known as Vampyromorphida.

Basic facts about Vampire squid: lifespan, distribution and habitat map, lifestyle and social behavior, mating habits, diet and nutrition, population size and status.

While it does not suck blood like its mythical namesake, the vampire squid is a “living relic” that evolved from an ancestor of the octopus, and its lineage goes back 165 million years in the fossil record.

Vampire squid are cephalopods that are about the shape, size, and color of a football. The name “vampire” was given to these little squid because of the dark blood-red coloration, eye color (sometimes blue in different lighting), and what looked like spines on the tentacles.

It doesn't seem like much food to fuel a foot-long cephalopod, but it's enough for its slow lifestyle in dark, low-oxygen water with few predators.

Vampire squids live deep in the ocean, and while they don’t suck blood, their red eyes, black coloration, and the cloak-like webbing between their arms certainly gives them a very “vampire-y” appearance.