Kenna Hughes-Castleberry is the Content Manager at Space.com. Formerly, she was the Science Communicator at JILA, a physics research institute. Kenna is also a freelance science journalist. Her beats include quantum technology, AI, animal intelligence, corvids, and cephalopods.
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'Intelligence comes at a price, and for many species, the benefits just aren't worth it': A neuroscientist's take on how human intellect evolved'An extreme end of human genetic variation': Ancient humans were isolated in southern Africa for nearly 100,000 years, and their genetics are stunningly differentScience news this week: A human population isolated for 100,000 years, the biggest spinning structure in the universe, and a pit full of skullsExtraterrestrial Lifeand discovered its chromosomes still resemble those of squids and cuttlefish, suggesting it has changed very little in millions of years.Cephalopod evolution has long had a missing chapter in its story: how did squid-like ancestors give rise to today's octopuses? The answer, it turns out, was floating in the deep sea all along.and discovered its chromosomes still resemble those of squids and cuttlefish — despite belonging to the octopus order. This discovery hints at what the common ancestor of modern squids and'Very novel and very puzzling': Unknown species of squid spotted burying itself upside down, pretending to be a plantScientists find rare tusked whale alive at sea for the first time — and shoot it with a crossbow On the cephalopod evolutionary tree, the vampire squid belongs to the group that includes octopuses, but underwent a"very ancient split" from the rest of the clade, study lead author, a researcher at the Department of Neuroscience and Developmental Biology in the University of Vienna, Austria, told Live Science in an email. After acquiring a tissue sample from a vampire squid collected as bycatch in the West Pacific Ocean from a research cruise, the researchers used a genetic analysis platform called PacBio to sequence the DNA of the sample. Unfortunately, there were no other vampire squid samples to compare it to, due to their rarity. Using PacBio, the researchers compared the vampire squid's genome to that of other cephalopods like the Argonaut (While modern octopuses have DNA that consistently gets reshuffled, resulting in some chromosomal mixing, the researchers found that the vampire squid's genome kept much of its ancestral, squid-like chromosomal arrangement. Essentially, it's an octopod that genetically looks like an ancient squid.Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors, it was thought to be a cirrate octopus due to its unique webbing between its arms. In the 1950s however, scientists reclassified it as its own group, belonging to neither octopus nor squid but in the orderThe finding is welcome news for cephalopod scientists as it is"nice to have resolved" why vampire squids retain much of their ancestral, squid-like traits, saidPart of what makes the fully sequenced genome so valuable is how hard it is to study vampire squids, mainly"because they live in a habitat that is difficult to access, they are solitary, rare, and do not survive well in captivity," Robison said."Some people think that we can just dive into deep water, and find one whenever we like, which is definitely not the case." He added that the findings"reinforce the notion held by some of us that vamps would be the key to the puzzle. They are interesting to study because they are such cool animals, and because they just look like they are hiding secrets." Kenna Hughes-Castleberry is the Content Manager at Space.com. Formerly, she was the Science Communicator at JILA, a physics research institute. Kenna is also a freelance science journalist. Her beats include quantum technology, AI, animal intelligence, corvids, and cephalopods.Ancient DNA reveals mysterious Indigenous lineage that lived in Argentina for nearly 8,500 years — but rarely interacted with others 'An extreme end of human genetic variation': Ancient humans were isolated in southern Africa for nearly 100,000 years, and their genetics are stunningly different Science history: Norwegian explorer wins the treacherous race to the South Pole, while British rival perishes along with his crew — Dec. 14, 1911
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'Very novel and very puzzling': Unknown species of squid spotted burying itself upside down, pretending to be a plantKenna Hughes-Castleberry is the Content Manager at Space.com. Formerly, she was the Science Communicator at JILA, a physics research institute. Kenna is also a freelance science journalist. Her beats include quantum technology, AI, animal intelligence, corvids, and cephalopods.
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Space.com headlines crossword quiz for week of Dec. 8, 2025: NASA lost contact with which Mars spacecraft this week?Kenna Hughes-Castleberry is the Content Manager at Space.com. Formerly, she was the Science Communicator at JILA, a physics research institute. Kenna is also a freelance science journalist. Her beats include quantum technology, AI, animal intelligence, corvids, and cephalopods.
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