The manta-shaped object glides like a ghost in the darkness illuminating its surroundings with a hypnotic display of twinkling lights around its periphery. After mesmerizing its intended prey, it suddenly strikes, extracting what it requires to survive. What is being described here? Is it a cruising UFO or a bioluminescent sea creature? Both hypnotize and immobilize their intended targets. Cephalopod mollusks are the closest thing on earth to alien life. Can we better understand the nature of UFOs by studying these ocean dwelling earth forms?

Near Dulce, New Mexico a huge manta ray- shaped UFO craft with wrinkled gray leathery skin was seen flying over what was once the bottom of a prehistoric sea. Years before the gray alien type was known, one of the grays was seen there with similar gray wrinkled skin. To the witness, they appeared to be connected and the ship appeared to be a prehistoric sea creature itself.

On Skinwalker Ranch Tom Gorman spotted a black manta craft one night, its synchronized colored lights sparkled on the snow as it searched the ground. As he stretched after being still for so long, his bones cracked. The UFO lights immediately blinked off as the dark ship turned towards him a mere twenty feet off the ground. It seemed to Tom that the craft reacted to him as if it were a living creature. He advised the paranormal researchers on his land to be subtler in their approach, to hunt the phenomenon as if it were a wild animal.

In Earth's dark oceans swim creatures that are surrounded by a similar transparent frill of running pastel colored lights. These bioluminescent beings survive without the protective shells of other mollusks. They use an amazing array of chromatophores in their layers of skin to disguise themselves. What their acute vision perceives is immediately transmitted by their large brain and complex nervous system of giant nerve fibers to produce a camouflage pattern. In mating season, one of these, the cuttlefish, can use one side of its body to display a calming courtship pattern to a female while at the same time flashing a strong warning with the other side of its body to any rival males. This shows impressive control and communication. When stalking prey, the cuttlefish utilizes its specialized network of iridophores and leucophores to reflect ambient light, it can transform itself into a floating neon sign while extending its eight arms and two tentacles up and out to the sides. It flares its body and manifests pulsing horizontal bars of neon colors like a Las Vegas electric sign. The stunned prey is then struck with lightning speed.