When It Needs to Feast, Vampire Squid Is a Softy Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Vampire squid feed on organic slime, marine biologists have learned. What do monsters eat? No one knew in the case of Vampyroteuthis infernalis - the vampire squid from hell. With its blue eyes, dark red body and cloaklike webbing over its arms, experts assumed the worst, that, like its cousins the squids and the octopuses, it enjoyed dining on live prey. Though found in the depths of all the world's oceans, the creature lived in a twilight zone that few other animals could inhabit because the levels of dissolved oxygen were so low. The absence of nearby victims deepened the mystery. Now, marine biologists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California have solved the riddle. Fear not, infants and innocents! It turns out that the monster dines on slime. Hendrik J. T. Hoving, a postdoctoral fellow, and Bruce H. Robison, a senior scientist, report that the vampire squid extends two threadlike filaments like fishing lines to capture organic debris raining down from the surface. The sticky lines are up to eight times the length of the body. Oceanographers refer to the flaky debris as "marine snow": it is composed of decaying bodies, microscopic algae and slimy goo from gelatinous animals that use mucus nets to gather food. Dr. Hoving and Dr. Robison, writing in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, cite much evidence. They looked at museum collections of vampire squids to examine stomach contents. They examined videos of the animals in their deep environment. They used robots to collect live squid and study their feeding habits in the laboratory. Finally, they used microscopes to examine the creature's arms and feeding filaments. The ghoulish animal, Dr. Hoving concluded, thrives by inhabiting a hostile environment where "predators are few, and its food is abundant."