Vampyroteuthis infernalis' aka 'Vampire Squid from Hell' or more accurately, from Deep Sea! April 29, 2006 At first I wasn't much inspired by the Friday Illo theme, Under the Sea. But after I settled down to watch Aliens of the Deep, the movie we'd seen part of at that Mensa gathering, I knew what I wished to draw. In the deepest depths, boiling water heated by the earth's core bubbles up through hydro thermal vents. It is an extreme environment. No sun ever reachs these depths, yet creatures manage to thrive here. They don't do it by photosynthesis but rather by chemosynthesis. When I explored further on the web, I learned that one of the diverse 'aliens' is called 'Vampyroteuthis infernalis'. It has similarities with both squid and octopi, making use of the 'suck power' of its tentacles. It moves about gracefully, using two fins. Its large eyes, the largest proportionately in the animal kingdom, can detect even the faintest of gleams. Meanwhile, it has bioluminescence, using that as one of its defense mechanisms, which confuses predators about its location. The name 'vampyre' certainly wasn't given to it for its eating habits, which include copepods, prawns and cnidarians. That's what inspired me to draw a prawn on the ocean floor, soon to be its dinner. His diet isn't so strange, for that prawn looks very much like something I had earlier for supper at Mandarin Palace's Friday night fish buffet!