Blood-sucking 'vampire' creature with mouth full of swirling teeth found on Devon beach

Will Miles, 26, encountered the bizarre creature and said: "It was very noticeable, lying in the centre part of the beach near the tideline – I was on a walk after work.

“It was like a hugely oversized leech with a sucker full of sharp, inward-pointing teeth.”

Once widespread in the UK, the sea lamprey are now rare, with their decline blamed on low water quality and man-made barriers in the rivers where they breed.

Miles, a warehouse worker from Bovey Tracey, estimated it was about 80cm long – just short of the height of an average two-year-old.

“I was very surprised,” he said. “I’d never seen one washed up before and expected I never would.”

Keen to share his strange discovery, Will posted a photo on a Facebook page for naturalists.

And though some correctly identified the elusive species, others thought it looked like something out of the blockbuster Dune films, based on Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novels.

“Looks like the sandworm from Dune,” wrote one person.

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“So that's where Frank Herbert got his sandworms from,” added another.

“Only just seen the film and that’s where my head went straight away,” replied a third.

One person, referring to the fictional world where the series is set, asked: “Is this on Arrakis?”

While others called the creature “Shai-Hulud” – using the name given to the sandworms by the indigenous people of Arrakis, the Fremen.

One joker asked: “Any spice around? I could do with some interstellar travel coming up to the elections.”

For others, the creature was more horror than sci-fi, with one comment writing: “When I say I love the ocean, I really mean I love the surface. What goes on underneath is terrifying, and none of my business.”

“I'm never swimming in the sea again,” said another.

It was also described as a “fish of nightmares” and a “terrifying looking creature”.

Marine biologist Jarco Havermans, who made headlines last year when he became the first person in six years to find a sea lamprey on the Dutch island of Texel, described their life cycles.

He said: “For five years they live embedded in the bottom where they filter-feed detritus. After these five years they metamorphose into an adult sea lamprey which migrates to sea to live as a parasitic fish species on larger fish species and whales.”

The lamprey’s victim does not usually survive the encounter.

“For reproduction they migrate back to the rivers,” he added.