With Stuart Blackman Email your questions to wildquestions@immediate.co.uk
Q&A
Strange things lurk in the planet’s deepest, darkest corners. And it doesn’t get much deeper and darker than the bottom of the ocean, or stranger than Vampyroteuthis infernalis – the ‘vampire squid from hell’.
This 30cm-long cephalopod may have the largest eyes, compared to body size, of any animal – all the better for detecting what little light is available at depths of 600-3,300m. Despite its name – inspired by its dark colour and the cloak-like webbing between its arms – the vampire squid is neither vampire nor squid. It is the sole member of its own cephalopod order. Like the octopus, it has eight legs, but is equipped with a pair of thin trailing filaments, which may be derived from the two extra arms possessed by squid.
Coated in sticky mucous, these filaments trap ‘marine snow’ – faeces, dead invertebrates, shed skin and other debris that drifts down from the surface waters. It is the only known cephalopod that doesn’t consume live prey.
If disturbed, it pulls its cloak over its head to expose spiny projections on its arms. It also exudes bioluminescent, blue mucous from the tips of its arms. This may dazzle potential predators or function as a burglar alarm to attract their predators’ predators.
Is there such a thing as an elephant graveyard?
The story goes that an elderly or sick elephant, knowing that death is near and not wanting to be a burden to its family and friends, will slip quietly away from its herd and head off alone to a special place, where many others have gone before, to end its days amongst the bones of its ancestors. Other elephants are said to take great interest in these sites, which they will go out of their way to visit, to pay respect to their loved ones.
The idea of elephant graveyards is a romantic one. It resonates with our own sense of mortality, our fascination with a noble death, and with our understanding of elephants as intelligent, social, empathic, cooperative animals that never forget. Little surprise that it is a recurring theme in popular culture, from the Tarzan films of the 1930s to Disney’s The Lion King.
There is little evidence, though, that it is anything more than a legend. Yet it contains
