Everybody loves the Dumbo octopods, named for their resemblance to Disney’s cartoon elephant. Also known as flapjack octopuses, these deep-sea cephalopods have webbing between their arms. And those adorable ear flaps? They’re actually fins.
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These Beautiful Creatures Spend Their Entire Lives in Darkness
From blind salamanders to glowing squid, a new book explores the incredible biodiversity found in places where the sun doesn’t shine.
Snipe eel, phantom anglerfish, cockatoo squid. Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of these creatures, because even the scientists who study such things hardly ever see them.
“When people think of biodiversity, they think of big things like lions on the African savanna and polar bears in the Arctic,” says Danté Fenolio, a biologist at the San Antonio Zoo. “But in fact, the bulk of biodiversity is really small.”
Really small, and really well hidden.
Fenolio is the author of a new photo book called Life in the Dark that features tiny, bizarre creatures found in places where the sun never shines. He has taken photos of animals that live everywhere from deep-sea trenches to the subterranean networks beneath termite mounds.
Even in relatively shallow rivers and lakes, Fenolio says, turbidity
