Posted October 10, 2017
This is the third day of Cephalopod Awareness Days.
We started with Octopus Day on the 8th (for all the 8-armed species), then moved onto Nautilus Night
yesterday (for all the lesser-known cephalopods that are still alive today).
Today is Squid and Cuttlefish Day - aka Squittle Day! It's on the 10th because squids and cuttlefish have two tentacles along with their 8 arms (and 2 + 8 = 10).
Tomorrow will be Kraken Day, for the mythical and fanstastical cephalopods of fiction and legend.
And the next day will be Cephalofossil Day - because that day is also National Fossil Day.
Tentacular species!
Cephalopods are probably the world's smartest invertebrates. (Invertebrates are animals without backbones.) As complex as bee communication is, as amazing as ant societies are, insects and spiders do not show the problem-solving abilities that cuttlefish, squid, and octopuses (or octopi) demonstrate. Maybe it's just a matter of having bigger brains - cuttlefish and octopi have the highest brain-to-body mass ratios of all invertebrates.
Squid have long, torpedo-shaped bodies that are able to shoot through the water at around 15 mile per hour (24 km/hr) - and some squid have been clocked at an astounding 22 mph (36 km/hr)! That makes them one of the fastest invertebrates in the world.
Cuttlefish are masters of camouflage. These might be the same species, despite their different coloring:
Long-ago ancestors of modern squid and cuttlefish had external shells. But these creatures evolved to have stiff supporting structures inside their mantles - a bit more like internal skeletons that vertebrates have. Squid have "pens" and cuttlefish have "cuttlebones."
Learn more about the cuttlefish's camouflage ability here. And here is a long documentary about cuttlefish.
Did you know that there are giant squid? Check out this and this other video.
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