mi cuaderno

1971 radio poster.

as with octopodes, cuttlefish have donut shaped brains. the esophagus passes through the center, which is why they straight up die if they try to swallow anything too big! stretched out the brain :(

cuttlefish are filled with love, as demonstrated by their 3 hearts

but they are also filled with venom. good for them!

oh and also blue-green blood. yes they have teal blood, i love that for them

smaller male cuttlefish will disguise themselves as female in order to mate with females who are guarded by large males. sometimes they even use fake egg sacs as props. let's hear it for transfem lesbian cuttlefish!

btw their eggs look like boba, which is why mermaids add them to beverages

their pupils look like this:

they have an internal shell called the "cuttlebone." (it is not an actual bone, as cuttlefish don't have bones.) they use it to control buoyancy, and it's freaky:

multiple people replied with "cuttlefish are fish." they're not. they! are! mollusks!

and of course by far the most important cuttlefish fact, they change color for hunting, camouflage, and disguise purposes.

I will also add:

- They have 8 shorter arms (the ones you see) and two long tentacles that are normally kept hidden except for when they burst out to grab their prey like this:

- after they catch their prey successfully they will occasionally do a little flash of a different colour. It's currently uncertain why they do this, but one theory is that it's an involuntary response to being happy at having food!

- many sources, including the BBC, have claimed that they rapidly flash different colours before catching prey to "hypnotise" them. The current scientific consensus is that that's probably not really true. Instead, it's likely that they do it to break up their silhouette and so the prey isn't really sure what they're seeing - think like zebra stripes but strobing!

- they can change texture as well as colour. Since their skin is almost entirely muscle, they can make elaborate shapes and patterns out of their skin by retracting some muscles. That's why they sometimes look very spiky and sometimes very smooth

- Some of the smallest species of cuttlefish, particularly the flamboyant cuttlefish, Ascarosepion pfefferi, are so small that their cuttlebone doesn't even work as a flotation device, so they have to waddle around on the seafloor instead and it's so so cute

The first image is my favorite, the iconic oldowan hand axe, but you'll note there's a wide range of other tools crafted for everything from crushing nuts and stones, to awls and engraving devices. There is some evidence, albeit hotly debated, that these tools MIGHT have been used in ancient burials. Maybe. This is up for debate because these tools are THREE MILLION YEARS OLD. They pre date homo sapiens and homo erectus. They pre date the ice age. Hell, they pre date the fucking ice caps. We don't think humans were burying their dead as we understand it today, but maybe?? These were made by homo habilis, or the "handyman", so named for their invention of tools.

Of course it does! It also produces nitrogenous metabolic waste (pee) but it all goes out the same way.

For illustrative purposes: here’s how to charge your phone when it’s alive, full of guts, and you are a crab alien who lives in the sea. Scuds are dreadful little libertarians so there’s very little global (or sometimes even local) standardization for stuff like port compatibility and symbols, so assume this is one of many varieties of power cable.