Dive Into Halloween With Today’s Google Doodle

by 24USATVOct. 31, 2020, 9 a.m. 83
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The 2020 Halloween Google Doodle takes you on a deep dive into the darkest depths of the ocean to fight ghosts and sea monsters. The best part, however, is that every creature you encounter (except the ghosts) is real. Read on for a more in-depth look at the science of today’s Google Doodle.

The sunlight zone, also called the photic zone, is the top layer of the ocean, from the surface down to about 200 meters (660 feet) deep. Most of the ocean’s life is here, in these bright, bustling waters where the sunlight still reaches. But the deeper you swim, the less light pierces the gloom.

Here in the photic zone, the Google Doodle introduces you to one interesting little creature in particular: the immortal jellyfish. The first thing you need to know about these ghostlike cnidarians is that they’re cannibals, of a sort; they eat other jellyfish species. And if they find themselves near death, they sink to the sea floor and make themselves young again.

To do this, the jellyfish reverts back to its adolescent form, a vase-shaped polyp that attached to the sea floor and produces a whole colony of other polyps. Each of those new polyps is a genetic clone of the first one, and they swim off into the ocean as new jellyfish clones. It’s pretty much the real-life equivalent of being able to start a video game over again if you don’t like how your character is doing.

As you swim below 200 meters, you’ll notice that the water around you is much darker. You’ve entered the Twilight Zone, where only a tiny amount of sunlight filters down through all the water above you. It will get darker and darker as you swim down toward 1,000 meters (3,300 feet).

And here in the twilight gloom, you’ll meet a wide-eyed seabream whose actual scientific name is Boops boops. In reality, the scariest thing about this fish is the massive load of parasites it usually carries around. The swarms of flatworms, roundworms, and tiny parasitic cnidarians crawling around inside the fish’s body are the stuff of horror movies (although they’re also terribly interesting in their own right, to be fair).

If you escape the dreaded Boops boops, you’ll swim down past 1,000 meters and into the midnight zone, where no light reaches. There’s also very little oxygen at these depths, so the creatures who live down here have evolved unique ways of surviving.

One of them, for instance, became the world’s laziest vampire. Zoologists gave the vampire squid the formal name Vampyroteuthis infernalis, which means "vampire squid from Hell," but the little squid doesn’t live up to its monstrous name. It’s just 30 centimeters (1 foot) long, and the only thing vampiric about it is its cape – a membrane between its arms. Well, there’s also its incredibly slow metabolism, which allows it to live in waters with too little oxygen for most creatures. There’s definitely something a little suspicious about that.

The vampire squid just drifts along in the darkness, letting the ocean currents carry it where they will, until it bumps into the remains of plankton or small marine animals falling slowly downward through the water column. That’s right; the vampire squid is a scavenger. It does have a proper movie vampire’s flair for the dramatic, however; when frightened, the squid pulls its cape over its head, squirts a cloud of bioluminescent mucus, and frantically flashes more bioluminescence at its attacker.

If you choose to flee the vampire squid by swimming even deeper into the black water, you’ll find yourself 2,000 meters (6,500 feet, more than a mile) beneath the sunlit surface. Welcome to the Abyssal Zone. Most of the ocean’s volume lies in this endless darkness, broken only by eerie flashes of light from the strange, glowing creatures who lurk in these depths.

And the final level of the Google Doodle game will bring you face to extremely toothy face with one of the most iconic of the abyssal denizens: the anglerfish. Like a kid holding a flashlight up to his face to tell a scary story at a sleepover, the anglerfish dangles a bioluminescent lantern, mounted on a piece of dorsal spine, in front of its head to lure potential prey. If you get close enough to the light, the last thing you see might be a gaping mouth full of very pointy teeth.

Only female anglerfish hunt their prey this way; the much smaller males latch onto the females and live as parasites, without internal organs or even eyes. It’s a weird reproductive strategy, but apparently it works; scientists know of at least 30 distinct species of anglerfish. Even in the lightless depths, and even among the strangest creatures on the planet, we can find surprising biodiversity.

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