![]() It’s been so effective that this tiny animal just walks around on the bottom without a care in the world like a miniature psychedelic tank. Loud colours tell everyone to steer clear. The flamboyant cuttlefish has taken itself off the menu by having incredibly toxic proteins in its flesh. If one of their ten appendages does get bitten off, it can be completely regrown in as little as 40 days. It doesn’t always work but that’s life…Ĭuttlefish have plenty of survival techniques but they do need them? After all they’re just a big protein filled bag with arms and no real defence apart from camouflage. Reducing it’s electrical field by as much as 80%, hoping that the shark will swim on by. When the cuttlefish detects the looming silhouette of a shark or other large predator it will freeze in place, cover the syphons with it’s tentacles and clamp down on it’s mantle. The syphons on each side of the cuttlefish release a small electrical field that is enough for sharks to pick up. ![]() You’d think that being able to instantly change colour, squirt clouds of ink and dazzle predators with light shows would be enough but no the cuttlefish has one more trick up its sleeve. They can secure up to a third of all successful matings. So effectively they slip on a dress, slap on some lippy and tuck away the bulge to sneak past the larger more aggressive males to mate with the females. The sneaker males are wily enough to keep it hidden. Males have a modified tentacle that delivers the sperm. Just like cross dressing human males they also have to hide the extra package. The smaller or ‘sneaker’ males mimic the colours and tentacle patterns of the females. So yeah, in the cuttlefish world if your not blessed with genes that make you big, strong and aggressive the males have little chance to to breed or so you would think…In some species some males don’t grow very large and employ a different tactic to get some action. Pygmy Cuttlefish Perfectly Blending In With It’s Environment Cross Dressing Sneaker Males If you have colour filters for your torch maybe you can try and shine it on a cuttlefish next time you see one. They will also reflect what ever colour the ambient light is, that’s why it appears white near the surface but will turn blue or green as they go deeper. Underneath the 200 chromatophores per square mm they have other cells called leucophores which scatter light making the skin appear white (similar to polar bear fur, their skin is actually black). We’ve already covered how cephalopods use chromatophores to change the colour of their skin in an octopus article. Comparing intelligence of an animal from a completely evolutionary tree from us is not easy and the cuttlefish probably think the scientists are fairly dense for giving it free food everyday. In laboratory tests they’ve solved maze puzzles quite easily. A kind of sign language but nobody has the faintest idea what the other is saying. They also use different tentacle positions to communicate and have been seen to respond to humans imitating these postures. Male cuttlefish have been seen to display a flirty display to a female on one side of its body and threat displays to a rival male on the other side. Cuttlefish are at times social animals, they use chemicals and colour changes to communicate with each other. To be fair that’s not much of a boast, the competition is fairly weak. Largest Brain To Body Ratio Of Any Invertebrate So probably a good idea to stay away from cuttlefish during lightning storms. Cuttlefish blood carries a copper containing protein as well as the iron containing protein that red blooded animals have. The blood that is pumped around is blue/green in colour. ![]() Cuttlefish have three hearts, one each for their two sets of gills and one for the rest of the body. Let’s get the ball rolling with this cardiovascular indulgence. Certainly compared to their simpleton slug cousins but as with all geeks there comes weirdness – lots of weirdness. Unlike most molluscs, the cephalopod branch which includes cuttlefish, squid and octopus are fairly smart. Cuttlefish A Lot Going On For What Is Essentially A Slugs CousinĬuttlefish belong the to the mollusc family and look like something between an octopus and a squid.
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