'Vampire Squid from Hell' Reveals the Ancient Origins of Octopuses

Scientists just cracked the DNA of the deep‑sea vampire squid and found a monster genome—over 11 billion DNA letters, bigger than any squid or octopus. Despite not being a true squid (or a vampire), its DNA layout looks “squid‑like,” offering clues to how squids and octopuses split from one ancestor. It was snagged as bycatch in Japan’s Suruga Bay, and here’s the kicker: 62% of that mega‑genome is repetitive fluff.

But the real bloodletting? The comments. Accessibility hawks pounced first: the dramatic headline reportedly trips up screen readers, making it “move the ‘s’” and garble the title—proof, they say, that splashy phrasing can be hostile to assistive tech. Then the pitchforks came for science writing itself. One commenter slammed the article style as “bad on purpose” to keep readers confused, dropping the mic with a spicy “LLM could do better.” Meanwhile, coders turned the 62% repeats stat into instant meme material, comparing the squid’s genome to bloated, copy‑pasted code. Comic relief aside, the crowd did clock the core idea: octopuses likely did an early DNA reshuffle (chromosomes fused and mixed), while the vampire squid kept the old school layout and just ballooned in size. Living fossil? More like living Git history—messy, revealing, and wildly entertaining to argue about.