So, a bunch of Japanese scientists finally managed to capture the dread Dana Octopus Squid on camera — and it turns out the beast is lit up like Times Square! It’s got rows and rows of bioluminescent photophores along its arms, which the scientists suspect the squid flashes to stun its prey. Quoth one of the researchers:

Dr. Tsunemi Kubodera from the National Science Museum in Tokyo, who led the research, told the BBC News website: “No-one had ever seen such bioluminescence behaviour during hunting of deep-sea large squid.”

Indeed, nobody had ever seen one of these massive, seven-foot long, 134-pound creatures in action. That’s why squidologists had long assumed that the Taningia danae moved and hunted in a sluggish fashion.

Nuh-uh. Check out the video of the squid as it hunts the scientists’ bait. That thing swims eight feet per second and handles like a Porsche. Indeed, the bioluminscent flashes aren’t even the scariest thing. It’s the squid’s body language that made me jump out of my skin. It’s way, way more unsettling than any shark you’ve ever seen. Sure, sharks have teeth — but these things have enough appendages to rip you limb from limb while simultaneously, y’know, solving a Rubik’s Cube. We are so totally not ready.

The more I learn about the greater squid, the more I wonder whether possessing a skeleton is as much of an evolutionary advantage as we suspect. You watch one of these guys cruising around the ocean and they’re totally like, “Vertebrae? Vertebrae are for pussies.”

(Thanks to Steve Emrich and Jeffery David Anderson for this one!)