Top 10 Creepy Creatures of the Deep

Ah, the ocean. Bottomless, beautiful, and home to a wide diversity of life: from the spunky dolphin to the majestic whale. Also, the source of endless amounts of nightmare fuel! There are plenty of creepy, dark back roads evolution has taken in the big blue, almost all of them ready to haunt your dreams. Here are just ten of them: (There are plenty more!)

10. The Hagfish

Say hello to the hagfish, a creature of the class Myxini. The hagfish has many unique qualities: it’s the only creature with a skull but without a spinal column, and it excretes massive amounts of slime as a defense tactic. But even that disgusting little factoid pales to the worst characteristic ever, of any animal in the animal kingdom, even the candiru*.

You see, the hagfish enters other creatures and then eats them from the inside out. And that’s not even the absolute worst part. The hagfish has no way to penetrate the skin, so it has to find some way to get into the fish. That would be the fish’s orifices. And all orifices are up for grabs.

That’s right, the hagfish will not only eat its prey alive, it’ll anally violate it first.
(*The Candiru is a small parasitic catfish that reportedly enters the human body via the urethra.)

9. Tiburonia Granrojo

Better known as the Big Red Jellyfish and, since it’s on this list, you know that doesn’t have anything to do with the chewing gum. It’s three feet wide, fulfilling the “big” part. It’s also “red”. And we bet you think we’re going to tell you it’s got stinging tentacles that’ll kill you. But no, no it doesn’t. It has “oral arms.”

The Big Red doesn’t give a crap about actually paralyzing its prey. It just grabs whatever the hell it wants to eat and puts it in its mouth. Alive. Quite possibly screaming about the Great Old Ones.

In fact, we’re pretty sure these are just little Cthulus, waiting to burst free. Kill on sight, gentlemen.

8. Snakehead Fish

No, that is not, in fact, a cartoon character. Nor was it exposed to nuclear waste. It’s just the Snakehead, which is commonly found in Asia and Africa. How it got the name is pretty obvious.

So why are we mentioning it here, beyond it being a creepy fish with fangs? Because it can come out of the water to say hello, and maybe even eat some rats! Yes, the Snakehead can come out of the water for short periods of time, as it has a primitive lung near its gills.

Oh, by the way, they’ve been spotted all up and down the Eastern Seaboard, they’ve been seen in the UK, and they’ve even been spotted in Canada. They might be what’s called an “invasive species”, which can take hold in other locations.

Happy swimming!

7. Promachoteuthis Sulcus

The Promachoteuthis is a fairly undistinguished squid. Only one has ever been caught in the wild, thanks to (who else?) the Germans. Of course, we only need one to haunt your freakin’ dreams.

You see, this squid has teeth. Not pointy little fangs, not a beak… it’s got a mouth under there. You half expect this thing to start speaking to you, reciting an eldritch language and summoning Nyarlathotep to ensure terrible vengeance for its death.

You have to wonder what the guys who hauled this thing up thought when they first saw it. If it’s anything other than ‘DEAR LORD IT HAS TEETH!’ maybe we should feed them to the hagfish.

6. Deep Sea Lizard Fish

We like how this is called a “lizard fish,” named either by somebody who misses the points of jokes an awful lot or somebody who didn’t want this immediately fished to destruction because nobody thinks something like that should exist. Because it shouldn’t.

Are we being judgmental? Well, yes. On the other hand, things that big with mouths full of needle teeth make us that way. These things need to die. We’d recommend eating them if we weren’t sure their very flesh was coated with spines to gouge your mouth open and kill you while the dead-eyed lizardfish looks on laughing. (Deep Sea Lizard Fish is at 2:49 in video above.)

So we nuke them. The lack of whales is a small price to pay.

5. Vampire Squid

The name “vampire squid” is misleading, although it’s easy to understand why a squid that’s jet black with red eyes and webbed tentacles topped with wicked spikes would be mistaken for a creature barfed up out of hell. Especially since the inside of the creature shows its tentacles are covered in spines! That’s to stick in your mind for when the bad dreams come.

Oh, but wait, there’s more: it can also trigger all sorts of flashes across its body. Scientists say that it has light-generating organs under its skin called “photophores”, but we’re pretty sure it’s witchcraft. After all, these are the same scientists who gave this thing a Latin name that means “vampire squid from hell,” so you know they’re hiding something. (Vampire Squid shows up 51 seconds in to above video.)

4. Pelican Eel

Eels in general are disgusting creatures that societies have spent centuries trying to eradicate on the basis of “that ain’t right.”  Eels can bite, they can electrocute you, but there was one advantage we had over them: they couldn’t eat parts of us whole.

Well, say hello to the Pelican Eel, who can do that. Just how big is this cute little guy’s appetite? So big they’ve actually caught a specimen with a whole squid in its stomach. Yes, a whole squid. It just slurped it up alive, like you’d eat calamari.

On the other hand, the squid is related to some of the freaks on this list, so he maybe deserves a little less sympathy.

3. The Elbowed Magapinna Squid

Squid, as you might have noticed, are creatures with a wide variety of evolutionary branches on the old tree of life. In fact, squid have evolved in many, many unique ways- resulting in freaky features, such as elbows.

Why elbows? Why not elbows? After all, squid have to develop an ability to take over the earth somehow, and at least some of the humans will figure out that the squid, in their reverse scuba suits, have trouble with doors and pull ups, since they lack joints. Leave it to the Magapinna! It’ll open those doors and pull itself up the sides of buildings lickety split, and eat the few remaining humans that have been able to defend themselves against the squid hordes.

Isn’t evolution beautiful?

2. Stargazer

The Stargazer fish doesn’t have incredible dreams that life in a small town are holding back, nor does it have any particular interest in astronomy. It just happens to sit on the bottom of the ocean a lot, and since it needs to eat, has its eyes on the top of its head. Or maybe on stalks, because “eyes on top of the skull” wasn’t quite unnerving enough.

But it gets better! You see, Stargazers aren’t just kind of ugly, they’re actively dangerous! They’ve got poison spines and some can even turn out a pretty nasty electric shock. Yes, this may be the slacker of the “things that can really hurt you” category, but that doesn’t mean it won’t put in the effort if you get close enough.

1. Blue-Ringed Octopus

OK, so the blue-ringed octopus might be the cutest animal on this list, not that that’s particularly hard, but we concede the point. It’s just a tiny little octopus covered in polka dots. A tiny little octopus that’s more fatal than Rambo suffering a bout of ‘roid rage.

The blue-ringed octopus, you see, is from Australia, and no animal in Australia is allowed to exist without some horrible form of venom that will kill you slowly. This particular octopus, though, is an overachiever even by Australian standards, with a painless bite that will slowly paralyze your entire body until you die from being unable to breathe.

The only way to survive is to have people doing CPR on you until medics arrive. And put you on a ventilator to keep you alive. Oh, and you’ll be fully aware most of the time. Yep, no anti venom- you’re just going to have to sweat it out. Luckily, most people make a full recovery.

We just want to know this: what the heck was eating these things that they evolved defenses that powerful?

by Dan Seitz

Other Articles you Might Like