Why Do Squids Turn Into Nightmares The Deeper You Go? — Transcript

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1. 0:00Picture this. You're snorkeling over a
2. 0:02reef at night and a squid hovers right
3. 0:04in front of your mask. It's quick. It
4. 0:07flickers through colors like a tiny
5. 0:09billboard. And honestly, it's kind of
6. 0:11cute. Now take that same kind of animal
7. 0:14and sink it. A few hundred meters down,
8. 0:17its relatives grow one giant eye and one
9. 0:19tiny one. Further down, they glow. They
10. 0:22snap off their own arms. And one of them
11. 0:24eats dead flakes falling from above with
12. 0:27long sticky threads. And near the bottom
13. 0:29of the deepest trenches, there's one
14. 0:31that looks like it crawled out of a
15. 0:33nightmare and decided to stay. Same
16. 0:36family tree, completely different
17. 0:38animals. So today, we're going to find
18. 0:40out why squids get creepier the deeper
19. 0:42you go. And why every one of those
20. 0:44creepy features turns out to be a really
21. 0:47smart answer to a really nasty problem.
22. 0:50When most people see a deep-sea squid,
23. 0:52they assume the pressure did it.
24. 0:54Something squeezed by that much water
25. 0:56must get bent into a strange shape,
26. 0:58right? But pressure barely bothers a
27. 1:01squid. Its body is mostly water, and it
28. 1:03has no air pockets to crush. So a squid
29. 1:062 km down is about as squashed as a
30. 1:09water balloon at the bottom of a pool.
31. 1:11Others say it's camera bias, that we
32. 1:13only film the freaky ones. Fair, except
33. 1:16scientists have measured the change, and
34. 1:18it shows up inside their bodies, not
35. 1:20just on the outside. So what actually
36. 1:23changes on the way down? Three things
37. 1:25run out, one after another. First, the
38. 1:28light. Then, the food. And in some
39. 1:31places, the oxygen. Every time one of
40. 1:34them disappears, squids have to rebuild
41. 1:36themselves around the gap. And that's
42. 1:39where it gets weird.
43. 1:40Start at the top. In the sunlit zone, a
44. 1:43squid lives like a sprinter. It hunts by
45. 1:45sight, flashes color to talk and to
46. 1:48hide, and escapes with a blast of ink.
47. 1:51Then, you sink past 200 m and enter the
48. 1:54twilight zone. There's still a little
49. 1:56blue light coming from above, which
50. 1:58sounds nice until you realize what it
51. 2:00means. From underneath, anything with a
52. 2:02body casts a shadow, and down here
53. 2:05everything that hunts is looking up. So,
54. 2:08squids start turning invisible. Glass
55. 2:11squids are see-through with a big
56. 2:12chamber inside them full of ammonia
57. 2:14fluid that's lighter than seawater, so
58. 2:17they float without paying for it. Others
59. 2:19carry lights under their eyes and bodies
60. 2:21that glow at the same strength as the
61. 2:23faint sunlight above, which erases their
62. 2:25silhouette. Basically, they turn
63. 2:28themselves into the ceiling. And look,
64. 2:30I've tried to blend into a room before.
65. 2:32It's harder than it sounds, and nobody
66. 2:34down there gets a second try. And then
67. 2:37there's the cock-eyed squid, and it
68. 2:39looks like this. One eye is huge, the
69. 2:42other is small. After going through
70. 2:45about 30 years of deep-sea robot
71. 2:47footage, researchers found the big eye
72. 2:49usually points up to catch shadows
73. 2:52against the faint light, while the small
74. 2:54one points down to catch flashes from
75. 2:56below. Two eyes, two jobs, zero
76. 2:59symmetry. It's like wearing reading
77. 3:01glasses on one eye, but that raises a
78. 3:04creepy question. If the only light
79. 3:06coming from below is made by animals,
80. 3:09then who's making it? Keep sinking, and
81. 3:12by about 1,000 m the sunlight is
82. 3:14basically gone. Red light actually
83. 3:17vanished way back at around 100 m, which
84. 3:19is why so many deep-sea animals are red.
85. 3:22Down here, red looks black. It's the
86. 3:25cheapest invisibility cloak in the
87. 3:27ocean. From now on, the only light
88. 3:30anywhere comes from living things, and
89. 3:32squids start using it as a weapon. The
90. 3:35Dana octopus squid, which is a squid
91. 3:37despite the name, carries light organs
92. 3:39on its arms that are among the largest
93. 3:41in the entire animal kingdom, about the
94. 3:44size of lemons. When researchers filmed
95. 3:46it going after bait, it spread its arms
96. 3:49and fired off blinding flashes as it
97. 3:51struck. Think of a camera flash in a
98. 3:53pitch-black room, except the
99. 3:55photographer is trying to eat you. Then
100. 3:57there's Octopoteuthis. If something
101. 4:00grabs it, the hooks on its arms dig in,
102. 4:02the arm snaps off, and the squid jets
103. 4:05away. The piece left behind keeps
104. 4:07thrashing, and its tip keeps glowing.
105. 4:10So, the predator ends up wrestling a
106. 4:11light-up souvenir, while the real squid
107. 4:13disappears. Around a quarter of the ones
108. 4:16seen in the wild were missing part of at
109. 4:18least one arm. So, this trick gets a lot
110. 4:20of use. But, all of it costs energy, and
111. 4:24energy is the next thing to run out.
112. 4:26Almost everything down here lives off
113. 4:28whatever drifts down from the sunlit
114. 4:30water above, and most of that gets eaten
115. 4:33long before it arrives. The deeper you
116. 4:35go, the less there is to go around. And
117. 4:38here's the wild part. Scientists
118. 4:40measured how fast different squids burn
119. 4:43oxygen, and the deeper a species lives,
120. 4:45the slower it tends to run. The fastest
121. 4:48one they tested burned oxygen more than
122. 4:50a hundred times faster than the slowest.
123. 4:53Same basic body plan, completely
124. 4:55different engine. It's the difference
125. 4:57between a race car and a lawn mower that
126. 4:59somehow runs for a year on one tank. One
127. 5:02leading theory is pretty simple. In the
128. 5:05dark, you can't spot a predator from far
129. 5:07away, and it can't spot you either. So,
130. 5:10there's no reason to be built for long,
131. 5:12fast chases. The deep squid stops being
132. 5:15a sprinter and starts playing a waiting
133. 5:17game. Remember the colossal squid from
134. 5:19our last video, burning about 45
135. 5:22calories a day? Same rule. Cold and dark
136. 5:25makes slow pay off. And the slowest
137. 5:28animal on that list was the vampire
138. 5:30squid. It isn't even a true squid. It
139. 5:32sits in an order all by itself, the last
140. 5:35[snorts] survivor of an ancient line. It
141. 5:37lives around 600 to 900 m down in water
142. 5:41so low in oxygen that most animals would
143. 5:43suffocate. And it doesn't hunt. It lets
144. 5:46out two long, sticky threads, up to
145. 5:49eight times its own body length,
146. 5:51collects the dead flakes and poop
147. 5:53drifting down from above, rolls it into
148. 5:55a ball with mucus, and eats it. They
149. 5:58call it the vampire squid from hell, and
150. 6:00it lives on leftovers. How terrifying.
151. 6:04So, if things get that strange a
152. 6:06kilometer down, what's waiting at the
153. 6:08very bottom? Meet the bigfin squid. Its
154. 6:11body is only about a foot long, but its
155. 6:14arms bend out at sharp elbows and then
156. 6:16hang straight down like long white
157. 6:19strings, stretching the whole animal to
158. 6:21around 6 m. And it looks basically like
159. 6:24this. Nobody is sure how it eats. One
160. 6:28idea is that it just hangs there with
161. 6:29those arms dangling and waits for
162. 6:31something to bump into them, like a
163. 6:33spider that's also the web. Nobody has
164. 6:36ever collected an adult. In 2021, a
165. 6:39submersible filmed a young one 6,212
166. 6:43m down in the Philippine Trench, the
167. 6:45deepest any squid has ever been seen.
168. 6:48Even having babies slows down to a
169. 6:50crawl. In the cold dark, mothers of one
170. 6:53species, Gonatus onyx, carry up to 3,000
171. 6:57eggs in a sheet held in their arms,
172. 6:59possibly for as long as 9 months,
173. 7:02because cold water makes eggs develop
174. 7:04slowly. Imagine holding your groceries
175. 7:06for 9 months straight. So, you've got
176. 7:09invisibility, light weapons, and engines
177. 7:12that barely run, which makes you wonder
178. 7:15how a normal squid would do down there.
179. 7:17Now, I know the question we're all
180. 7:19thinking. What if you were that cute
181. 7:21squid from the reef and you got dropped
182. 7:23a kilometer down? Well, let's break it
183. 7:26down. Your first move is probably color,
184. 7:29since that's how you hide and talk at
185. 7:31the surface. Except color needs light,
186. 7:34and down here nobody can see your
187. 7:36outfit. So, you try your eyes, but
188. 7:39there's nothing to look at except the
189. 7:40odd spark. Running away sounds smart
190. 7:43until you remember you're a sprinter
191. 7:45with a sprinter's appetite, and the next
192. 7:47meal could be a long way off. Fine. You
193. 7:50squirt ink, a black cloud in black
194. 7:53water. Brilliant. The deep squids worked
195. 7:56this out a long time ago. The vampire
196. 7:58squid doesn't even have an ink sack.
197. 8:01When it's threatened, it can release a
198. 8:02cloud of sticky glowing mucus from its
199. 8:05arm tips instead. Down here, the smart
200. 8:08move is to throw light, not darkness.
201. 8:11The verdict? Everything that makes you a
202. 8:13great squid near the surface makes you
203. 8:15the hungriest, most obvious animal at
204. 8:17that depth. And that probably doesn't
205. 8:20end well. It's really easy to look at
206. 8:22all of this and decide the deep is full
207. 8:24of monsters. But most of these animals
208. 8:26are small. A vampire squid tops out at
209. 8:29about 30 cm, roughly the length of a
210. 8:32school ruler. And plenty of their
211. 8:34weirdest tricks are about escaping. Like
212. 8:36a squid that would rather lose an arm
213. 8:38than fight. Thin, soft, slow bodies are
214. 8:42simply cheaper to run when there's
215. 8:43almost nothing to eat. They aren't
216. 8:45creepier because they're meaner. They're
217. 8:47creepier because they're running on
218. 8:49almost nothing. Meanwhile, the deep is
219. 8:52changing. Low oxygen zones in the
220. 8:55tropical oceans have been growing.
221. 8:57When scientists compared the 1960s and
222. 9:0070s with the years from 1990 to 2008,
223. 9:04they found the area of low oxygen water
224. 9:06at 200 m had grown by about 4 and 1/2
225. 9:10million square kilometers. That's bigger
226. 9:12than the entire European Union.
227. 9:15Animals that need lots of oxygen get
228. 9:17squeezed into thinner layers of water,
229. 9:20while specialists like the vampire squid
230. 9:22are already built for the worst of it.
231. 9:24Nobody knows yet who wins that trade.
232. 9:27And we're still meeting these animals.
233. 9:30The vampire squid's genome was only
234. 9:32sequenced in 2025,
235. 9:34and it turned out to be about four times
236. 9:36bigger than ours. So, it's slow, it eats
237. 9:39garbage, and it still has more DNA than
238. 9:42you.
239. 9:43Rude.
240. 9:44If you've been watching Apex More for a
241. 9:46while, you probably already know that
242. 9:48the scariest-looking animals are usually
243. 9:50the ones solving the hardest problems.
244. 9:53Every creepy feature on these squids is
245. 9:55an answer. The giant eye is an answer to
246. 9:58the dark. The glowing arm is an answer
247. 10:01to being grabbed. The slow body is an
248. 10:03answer to hunger. And together, these
249. 10:06animals are a big part of how the deep
250. 10:08runs, turning falling scraps into food
251. 10:11for whales, fish, and seabirds. So, that
252. 10:15cute squid flickering on the reef isn't
253. 10:17the normal one. It's just the one that
254. 10:19got the easy version of the ocean.
255. 10:22Anyway, that's it for this one. Thanks
256. 10:24so much for watching. Let me know in the
257. 10:26comments which animal you want me to
258. 10:28cover next. I do actually read them. And
259. 10:31if you want to see another video like
260. 10:32this one, check it out here.