These environments are made very hostile as hot water rises through vents, releasing a black 'cloud,' or plume, of metal sulfides and other toxic chemicals that result in acidic conditions.

[2] The temperature of the hydrothermal vent in the East Pacific Rise varies from 1-10 degrees celsius depending on its surroundings of seawater or plumes and is around 2640 m deep.

[5] Unlike the digestive systems of this male vent octopus, the females lacked the appearance of dark swelling.

The back arms (III ventrolateral and IV ventral) function to support the weight of the vent octopus and move it forward.

[1] Analyzing the materials within the digestive tracts of Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis, researchers believe that these vent octopuses engage in a foraging behavior and feed on large aggregates of amphipods.

[4] At 2,620 meters depth, the HOV Alvin has captured video evidence of V. hydrothermalis wrapping their arms around these bathypelagic amphipods.

The current hypothesis is that the spires enable the octopuses to effectively grip onto this section of the vent and gain access to the dense aggregations of their prey.

An endoparasitic relationship is characterized by the presence of all copepodid stages, found within the connective tissue beneath the epithelium of V. hydrothermalis ' head and mantle.

[7] The parasitism leads to structural integrity loss in the V. hydrothermalis' tissue, with signs of compression, deformation, and mechanical disruption due to the copepods' presence, which causes significant cell-mediated immune response by cephalopod amoebocytes.