(The town's current coat of arms still has ammonite fossils on it, but the snake heads have been removed.)ĩ ) The tiny deep-sea squid Heteroteuthis dispar is nicknamed the "fire shooter" because it shoots out a cloud of light-from bioluminescent photophores-to distract predators.ġ0 ) The Hawaiian bobtail squid ( Euprymna scolopes) spends its days buried in the sand and hunts only at night. However, the local people thought they were the remains of coiled snakes and added heads to their depictions of the fossils. (Scientists don't yet know what role dopamine plays in the squid world, though.)Ĩ ) The fossils of ammonites-extinct cephalopods that lived 400 to 65 million years ago-were so common on the southern England coast that the town of Whitby had three of them on its town coat of arms. When Vampyroteuthis feels threatened, it bites off the end of one of its eight bioluminescent arms, which then floats away, luring a potential enemy with its glowing blue light.ħ ) Some cephalopod ink contains the chemical dopamine, the neurotransmitter that, in human brains, produces the sensation of euphoria. Their thick axon, thicker than any human nerves, is easier to start with.Ħ ) Vampyroteuthis infernalis has been given the inappropriate nickname of "Vampire Squid from Hell." Not only is it not a squid (it's an octopus), it's more coward than predator. A single nautilus arm is less powerful than other cephalopods,' but the arms are so numerous they can easily overpower prey.Ģ ) No species of cuttlefish lives on the East Coast of the United States, but there are more than 100 species that inhabit shallow waters in other parts of the world.ģ ) Some species of squid can swim at speeds up to 25 miles per hour, as fast as some sharks, but only in short spurts.Ĥ ) The earliest known ancestor of today's squid is Kimberella, a tiny mollusk that looked like a jellyfish and lived about 555 million years ago.ĥ ) Neuroscientists in training learn the basics of neurosurgery by practicing on Loligo pealei squid. But the nautilus, another type of cephalopod, outnumbers its brethren in terms of appendages: females have around 50 arms while males manage 90 or so. Here are 14 fun and random facts I found while reading about squid:ġ ) Octopuses have eight arms, and squid and cuttlefish have eight arms and two feeding tentacles (making them decapods). But the cephalopod world is huger and more fascinating than the limited taste of the restaurant world, as Wendy Williams demonstrates in her new book Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid. Those tasty fried calamari, for example, are squid, as are the octopuses you sometimes see on a restaurant menu. Most people are familiar with cephalopods, even if they don't realize it.
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