Earrings - Vampire Squid - Blacklight Reactive Acrylic Variables with Black Paint

While I had heard of the vampire squid before, I'd never bothered to look into it- assuming that it was pretty much the same as most of the other squid family. However, when I got a gig vending at a vampire themed event, I wanted to be sure I knew my stuff before making the design... And let me just tell you- this is by far one of the most intriguing species I have yet to find out about!

The vampire squid is a deep, deep sea dwelling cephalopod- but actually is neither a squid nor an octopus! It's it's own family entirely, vampyromorphida, and is more closely related to octopus than squid. One of the things that has it distinguished as its own family is its pair of retractile filaments- which somewhat resemble the two tentacles a squid has-  which it stores in a little "pocket" under its cloak, except when using them to sift for food (primarily detritus) on the deep ocean floor. Besides those filaments, it has eight arms which are connected almost all the way to the tip, giving it the cloak like appearance that had more to do with their name than their diet ever did. The underside of their arms has suckers only at the tips, and from there upwards is covered in cirri- little fleshy spines that look scary but are entirely soft. However, the vampire squid uses this to its advantage, and when it is threatened, it  "pumpkins," rolling its arms up around itself to display all the cirri to look really scary- and if that doesn't work, it will eject a sticky cloud of, no, not ink, but bioluminescent mucus! This mucus lights in a series of orbs, flashing all over the place, like a firework show that can last for a full ten minutes- just enough time to make an escape into the darkness. The bioluminescent traits are also used at the tips of the arms to attract prey, or even be used as photophores all over its body as another way to disorient predators. Beyond that, however, it does not have the chromatophores that most other cephalopods have and therefore cannot change the color of its skin by very much- but that's not very necessary when you're somewhere with no light anyway! Additionally (yes, I am still going on about this creature, how sweet of you to notice!), vampire squids are much smaller than one would think- having a maximum length of only one foot. However, their eyes are the largest proportionately to any other animal we know of so far! They get around by flapping their "ear" fins, and not by water propulsion, can live in oxygen saturations as low as 3%, and loves to roll its food into a ball of mucus before eating it.

Overall, it is truly an unusual creature- which means that naturally, it's immediately booted up into my top ten favorites list.

An original Siren Emylie design, these earrings are not only unique but made entirely in house. Created by a mermaid, these are meant to encourage you to cast aside the weight of humanity and live life with whimsical confidence.