May 24, 2008

Nautilus, squids, and cuttlefish oh my!

I have to do another art post soon...but for now, I have to talk about another one of my favorite animals: the nautilus!

The Nautilus is that little thing that looks like a squid in a shell. Even though they're not squids or octopodes at all, they really are pretty much little squids in a shell, with some differences in size and the tentacles of course.

Nautiluses (that just sounds wrong but oh well) are called living fossils; this excerpt from Wikipedia:

Fossil records indicate that nautiluses have not evolved much during the last 500 million years, and nautiloids were much more extensive and varied 200 million years ago. Many were initially straight-shelled, as in the extinct genus Lituites. They developed in the Cambrian period and became a significant sea predator in the Ordovician period. Certain species reached over 2.5 meters in size. The other cephalopod subclass, Coleoidea, diverged from the Nautilidae long ago and the nautilus has remained relatively unchanged since. Extinct relatives of the nautilus include ammonites, such as the baculites and goniatites.


Not bad, not bad...



Hey nautilus!


I love cephalopods. They're just so awesome and some of them are so cute and pretty and flashy! And they're interesting and really intelligent! It's a shame most of them, like squids and octopodes, only live a few years. It really limits what they can do.



Atlantic bobtail squid


And, my day wouldn't be complete without a cuttlefish, which if you can't get behind, I don't know what's wrong with you.



Cuttlefish is watching you...


Take care of your cephalopods :D

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Please share some knowledge. Or amuse me at least :O