Cuttlefish are one of the most extraordinary creatures on the face of the planet. Infamous for their brain to body weight ratio which is the highest of any invertebrate including the octopus. Their outstanding intelligence allows them to outwit each other in curious manners.
Cuttlefish have short life spans which range about 1-2yrs. At the end of this time period the males duke it out over a very lucky female. A specialized male tentical is used to impregnate the female through an orifice called the buccal on the ventral side close to the cuttlefish beak. The sperm is transported in packages called spermatophores. Because many males may mate with one females the males cuttlefish will often flush the females buccal with a jet stream of water from their siphon before doing the deed. Cuttlefish are in determinant growers; as such, they grow until they have a chance to mate or until they are eaten by their prey – sharks, seals, other cuttlefish, etc. The smaller males are often not strong enough to battle against the heavyweights and require another year of growth before mating with a females. Alternatively, some eager youngsters use deception to thwart off the attacks of their fellow hermanos.
The cuttlefish have a plethora of chromatophore cells across the body which can be used in over 30 different color schemes. In addition to color cuttlefish can change shape, size and texture in mind bending manners. The young guns are savy and can deceive a rival male by cloaking themselves as a non sexually receptive female. Once past the bigger badder boy, the game is off and the eager beaver has his chance. But wait, what happens if the bigger male comes back around to check in on the female? In that case the young males works to jobs at once. The side of his body facing the mega male looks female while the side closest to the female is male.
Cuttlefish have the ability to expand their bodies to 500% of their smallest size in a fraction of a second. They can dust their predators in a cloud of ink which acts as a both a smoke screen and a decoy for the predators palate. The ink is densely packed with amino acids which to the predator taste just like the cuttlefish. Some can even change the shape of the ink cloud as a psuedomorph of their bodies.
The eyes of the cuttlefish are shaped as a W which they used to be able to process different gradients of light, although they cannot see color, they do have the ability to see polarization. Their eyes are believed to be the product of convergent evolution and are quite similar to mammalian eyes; however, their eyes differ drastically in their mechanism of focus. Cuttlefish eyes focus by moving the lens in an out relative to the retina while mammalian eyes alter the shape of the lens itself.
All in all cuttlefish are one of the grooviest members of the Mollusca phylum!
Generalism 