Researchers aboard the research ship Nautilus were combing the sea floor off the California coast last week when they swept their camera across a startling sight some 3,000 feet (900 meters) below the surface: two prominent eyes staring right back at them.

The tiny, bright purple cephalopod with large “googly eyes,” as one of the observers on the video put it, soon had the researchers and crew of the vessel laughing uncontrollably and joking that its eyes looked “weird” and “fake.”

The creature that cracked up the researchers was the so-called stubby squid (Rossia pacifica), also known as the bobtail squid, a cephalopod native to the northern Pacific Ocean. While it may look like a Muppet, the stubby squid is real