Adorable ‘Stubby’ squid caught on video off the coast of California

The little sea creature looks exactly like a drawing of a squid, and the biologists that were watching didn’t fail to appreciate the joy of it

You might be overjoyed to see this cartoon-looking, adorable sea monster. But you’re probably not quite as joyous as the biologists that found it.

New footage captures a rare sighting of the “Stubby” squid – a purple creature that looks like a drawing. And it also captures the delighted scientists’ reaction as they stumbled over the google-eyed creature.

The video was shot from a camera on the board the E/V Nautilus research vessel. That expedition is being streamed live by scientists who’ve also captured bizarre orbs as they drive around the ocean floor.

At the time, scientists thought that they’d captured some kind of cuttlefish. But they later identified it as a Stubby squid, or Rossia pacifica, which are very rare to see in the wild.

The Stubby squid belongs to a family called bobtails, or also known as dumpling squids. They get that name because of their strange shape, as well as their small bodies.

As with the newly-spotted one, stubby squids tend to rest on the bottom of the seabeds. They move around either by waving their fins or pushing out water from a funnel just under its head.

They can be found in the northern Pacific ocean all the way from Japan across to California.