#Bizarre squid caught on film in natural habitat for first time ever

A bizarre squid has been caught on camera in the wild for the first time and scientists are very excited.

The ram’s horn squid has never been officially recorded in its natural habitat despite their small shells being a common find on beaches all over the world.

A remotely operated vehicle was sent to the depths of the Great Barrier Reef by researchers at the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

The hour-long footage was live-streamed on YouTube and features the squid around 13 minutes in.

The scientists had no idea what they were looking at when the odd-looking three-inch-long squid first popped up on the camera.

The creature, with its bulging eyes, eight arms and two tentacles, was found 2,790 feet below the surface, where the sunlight just about reaches.

Beneath its cylinder-shaped outer body is a shell with gas chambers that help it to stay buoyant.

The Schmidt Ocean Institute excitedly shared its findings on Twitter.

It wrote: “Exciting news! This appears to be the FIRST observation of Spirula, aka ram’s horn squid, alive + in its natural environment.

“Very rarely seen or captured, they have many extinct relatives, but are only living member of genus Spirula, family Spirulidae and order Spirulida.”

Cuttlefish and ram’s horn squid are the only creatures known to have an internal chambered shell for buoyancy purposes.

The way the squid orientates itself in the water is now leading scientists to question what they thought they knew.

In aquariums, captured squid tend to swim with their heads hanging down but in the video the squid is doing the opposite.

Zoologist Michael Vecchione told Science Alert: “A lot of people are freaking out because the head is up.

“And the reason they’re freaking out is because the shell with its buoyancy is at the other end of the squid. So you’d think the head, which is heavier, would be hanging down.”

There’s also been some buzz around the ink that the squid leaves behind when it dashes away.

This could be part of their defense mechanism and has given researchers more to think about.