A bizarre creature has been caught on film for the first time ever, miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
Researchers spotted the rare creature while filming with an uncrewed submersible to explore underwater mountains off the coast of California.
The animal, a multi-limbed bigfin squid, was spotted more than 10,000 feet, or 3,000 metres, in the depths by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Olívia Soares Pereira, a deep-sea ecologist and postdoctoral fellow at MBARI, revealed why the squid was in an “elbow pose” with its arms and tentacles at a 90-degree angle.
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“Based on the behavior of other deep-sea squids, we believe this pose could be a part of their feeding tactics,” Ms Pereira told Live Science.
“The arms and tentacles are extended so they do not get tangled up and passively capture prey that sticks to them,” she added.
Bigfin squid are among the deepest-dwelling animals on Earth, and have been found more than 20,000 feet below the surface.
The creatures can reach around 21 feet, around half the length of a giant squid, but most of their length is measured in their tentacles and arms – which are 20 times longer than their bodies.
The specimen in the video was estimated to be around 4.1 feet long.
The non-profit organisation last encountered the strange creature off the coast of Hawaii in 2001, but around 70 have been observed or collected in total.
Ms Pereira said she saw two other bigfin squid on the Atlantic seafloor in a separate expedition earlier this year.
“When we saw this one, I couldn’t believe my luck,” she added.
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The researchers saw the squid at a depth of 10,751 feet during a 10-day Seamount Hotspots expedition between August 3 and 12.
Scientists were probing life around the Davidson Seamount and Sur Ridge, biodiversity hotspots within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, a massive federally protected area off central California.
Monterey Bay inspired John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row and its aquarium was fictionalised in the Pixar film Finding Dory.
Although the area has a huge variety of deep-sea life, the squid was not on the list of animals they expected to see.
“We were looking for thriving communities of deep-sea corals and sponges, brooding deep-sea octopus, and feeding beaked whales,” Ms Pereira said.
“Finding a rare animal that we weren’t specifically looking for highlights the incredible diversity and habitat complexity of this region.”
The first specimen of bigfin squid was collected in 1883, but the species was not identified until 1998.
An adult specimen has never been physically collected, so scientists’ current understanding of the alien-like creature is based only on videos and photographs.
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