Which Bizarre Deep-Sea Creature Are You?
Dive into a 9-question personality scan and discover which strange resident of the deep matches your character. Then meet the real animals behind the results, from glowing anglerfish to the ear-flapping dumbo octopus.
Far below the waves, where sunlight never reaches, live some of the strangest animals on Earth. Fish carry glowing lures on their heads. A squid with a vampire’s name dines on drifting specks of debris. A fish peers up through a see-through forehead.
Each of these creatures survives in cold, crushing darkness with its own clever strategy, and those strategies make surprisingly good personality types. Are you a patient survivor, a curious observer, a laid-back floater or a magnetic leader who draws everyone toward your light?
Sonar Personality Scan
Answer honestly. With every question your submersible sinks deeper, and the sonar closes in on your creature.
Loading…
Analyzing sonar echoes…
The deep sea, zone by zone
Scientists divide the open ocean into layers based on how much sunlight reaches them. The “deep sea” generally means everything below about 200 meters, where there isn’t enough light for plants or algae to grow. It is, by volume, the largest living space on the planet.
Food is the biggest challenge. With no plants, deep-sea animals depend on marine snow, a slow drizzle of dead plankton, waste and other debris sinking from above, or on eating each other. That scarcity shapes nearly everything about how they look and behave.
Meet all six creatures
Here are the real animals behind every possible result, with the personality each one represents in the quiz.
Deep-Sea Anglerfish
Order Lophiiformes (deep-sea species)
- Depth
- Mostly the midnight zone; varies by species
- Personality
- The Magnetic Leader
Female deep-sea anglerfish carry a fishing rod on their heads: a modified fin spine tipped with a lure that glows thanks to light-producing bacteria living inside it. Curious prey swim toward the light, and a huge, stretchy mouth does the rest. In some species, tiny males fuse permanently to a much larger female.
Myth buster: not every anglerfish lives in the deep. Monkfish are anglerfish too, and many live in much shallower coastal waters.
Blobfish
Psychrolutes species
- Depth
- About 600–1,200 m off Australia and New Zealand
- Personality
- The Chill Floater
The blobfish has no swim bladder. Instead, its soft, fatty body lets it hover just above the seafloor with little effort, gently eating small crustaceans and other creatures that come close. It was voted the world’s ugliest animal in a 2013 public poll by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society.
Myth buster: the famous droopy face is decompression damage from being hauled to the surface. At home under high pressure, it looks like a fairly ordinary fish.
Vampire Squid
Vampyroteuthis infernalis
- Depth
- Low-oxygen waters of the twilight and midnight zones
- Personality
- The Misunderstood Softie
Its scientific name means “vampire squid from hell,” but it’s neither a true squid nor a hunter. MBARI researchers found it extends two thin filaments, up to eight times its body length, to collect marine snow, then wraps the food in mucus and eats it. When threatened, it can flip its webbed arms over its body like a cloak.
Myth buster: it doesn’t drink blood. The “vampire” part comes from its dark coloring and cape-like webbing.
Barreleye Fish
Macropinna microstoma
- Depth
- About 600–800 m
- Personality
- The Curious Observer
This small fish, about 15 centimeters long, has a transparent, fluid-filled shield over its head. Inside sit two glowing-green, tube-shaped eyes that MBARI scientists showed can rotate to look straight up for prey or forward while feeding. It may pick food from the tentacles of jellies.
Myth buster: the two dark spots above its mouth look like eyes but are actually its nostrils, called nares.
Giant Isopod
Bathynomus species
- Depth
- On the seafloor, often hundreds of meters down
- Personality
- The Patient Survivor
Picture a garden pill bug grown to more than 30 centimeters. Giant isopods are distant cousins of woodlice with 14 legs and long antennae. They scavenge whatever sinks to the bottom, and their metabolism is so slow that one captive giant isopod in Japan reportedly went about five years without eating.
Myth buster: despite looking like insects, they’re crustaceans, more closely related to crabs and shrimp.
Dumbo Octopus
Grimpoteuthis species
- Depth
- Usually thousands of meters; filmed at 6,957 m
- Personality
- The Graceful Dreamer
Named for the cartoon elephant, the dumbo octopus “flies” through the deep by flapping ear-like fins on its head. These are the deepest-living octopuses known: in 2019 an expedition led by Alan Jamieson filmed one at 6,957 meters in the Java Trench, a record published in 2020.
Myth buster: unlike many octopuses, dumbos don’t squirt ink. In the dark deep sea, an ink cloud would be of little use.
Why do deep-sea creatures look so bizarre?
What looks strange to us is usually brilliant engineering for life in the dark. These are the main adaptations behind the six creatures in this quiz.
Is this personality quiz scientific?
No, and we want to be upfront about that. This quiz is for entertainment. It matches your answers to creatures using a simple point system we designed, not a validated psychological test. Your result can change if you answer differently on another day.
Psychologists who study personality typically use carefully tested tools, such as questionnaires based on the Big Five traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Treat your creature match as a fun conversation starter, and the animal facts as the real takeaway.
Frequently asked questions
How deep is the deep sea?
Most scientists consider the deep sea to begin around 200 meters, where sunlight becomes too weak for photosynthesis. It extends to nearly 11,000 meters in the deepest ocean trenches.
Does the blobfish really look like a blob?
Only out of water. The well-known droopy blobfish photos show fish damaged by the sudden pressure change of being brought to the surface. In its natural deep habitat, it looks like a fairly normal fish with a large head.
Do vampire squids drink blood?
No. Research from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute showed vampire squids eat marine snow, the drifting particles of dead plankton and waste that sink from above. They collect it with long, sticky filaments.
What is the deepest-living octopus?
Dumbo octopuses hold the record. One was filmed at 6,957 meters in the Java Trench in the Indian Ocean during the Five Deeps Expedition in 2019.
Why do so many deep-sea animals glow?
Light is a powerful tool in total darkness. Animals use bioluminescence to attract prey, signal to mates, hide their silhouettes and confuse predators, which is why it is so widespread in the deep sea.
Surface for another challenge
A brand-new topic is waiting in today’s daily quiz.
Sources
- Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. MBARI researchers discover what vampire squids eat (2012).
- Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Researchers solve mystery of deep-sea fish with tubular eyes and transparent head (2009).
- Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. New study shows that three quarters of deep-sea animals make their own light (2017).
- Natural History Museum, London. Giant isopods: curious crustaceans on the ocean floor.
- Live Science. Scientists capture the world’s deepest octopus on video (2020).
- BBC Science Focus. The blobfish: a bloated guide to the world’s ugliest animal.
- Martini, S. & Haddock, S. H. D. (2017). Quantification of bioluminescence from the surface to the deep sea demonstrates its predominance as an ecological trait. Scientific Reports.