A deep sea camera has captured footage of a squid devouring another of its kind.
Taken by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the video is an eye-opening window onto the squid-eat-squid world of the deep ocean.
The poor little squid never saw the big squid coming – despite these cephalods having some of the largest eyes in the animal kingdom relative to their size.
CSIRO, an Australian government agency specialising in scientific research, caught the footage from the Investigator – a marine research vessel studying the depths of oceans near Australia.
The vessel is used for tracking the oceanography, geology, and life of the deep sea.
The marine life it studies lives more than 1,500 metres below the surface and the ship can capture water samples as deep as 7,000 metres.
The 94-metre long Investigator can spend up to 300 days a year at sea, accommodating 40 scientists and support staff for up to 60 days at a time – covering a distance of up to 10,000 nautical miles per trip.
Want to find out more? You can take a virtual tour of the research vessel by clicking here.
