Each spring, thousands of firefly squid gather in Japan’s Toyama Bay and light up the water with their neon-blue bioluminescence. After laying and fertilising their eggs, they die. A year later, their offspring will return to do the same.

The Japanese pygmy squid — one of the world’s smallest cephalopods with a mantle length of just 16 mm (0.6 in) — hunts crustaceans up to twice its size. It paralyses them, then slips its mouthparts inside their exoskeletons to slurp out their insides, leaving their shells intact.