Cephalopod

“ What can have got hold of him?” We called the doctor to come and see; and Jerry jumping on shore, gave up his place to him in the canoe. When the doctor, got over the spot, after a short examination he exclaimed, “Why, it is a monster cephalopod—a squid, a horrid polypus has got hold of him. Poor fellow, what a dreadful death to die! There can be no doubt how it happened. He must have stepped on the squid, which caught hold of him with its long and powerful tentaculas, and gradually infolding him in its dreadful embrace, dragged him under the water. What strength the creature must have! ”

“ When we compare a low mollusc, such as a floating ascidian, with a high mollusc, such as a cephalopod, we are again shown that greater organic evolution is accompanied by more evolved conduct. At the mercy of every marine creature large enough to swallow it, and drifted about by currents which may chance to keep it at sea, or may chance to leave it fatally stranded, the ascidian displays but little adjustment of acts to ends in comparison with the cephalopod ”

“ The body is covered with these little pigment cells, the different colors—pink, blue and green—being so evenly scattered over the surface than when each color cell is expanded the whole body assumes that tinge. This is one of the most wonderful characteristics of the Mollusca.
Another cephalopod closely related to the Octopus is the Squid, several species of which are found on the Atlantic coast of the United States. ”

“ They could not but feel a certain awe, in thus venturing into these unknown depths, for the first time visited by human beings. They did not speak, but they thought; and the thought came to more than one, that some polvpus or other gigantic cephalopod might inhabit the interior cavities, which were in communication with the sea. ”

“ The ball started to sink.
“Our cable has parted!” cried the doctor. “Turn on the lights!”
Carnes closed the switch. The ball was so covered with the huge tentacles that they could see nothing, but the light had its usual effect and they were released. The ball sank toward the bottom and they could see the huge cephalopod lying below watching them. Blood was flowing from a wound near one of its eyes where the Minneconsin’s shell had found its mark.
Toward the huge monster they sank until they lay on the bottom of the ocean and a few yards from it. ”

“ The giants and ogres of romance were never so fearfully armed or clothed by the wildest fiction with so terrible an aspect as the cephalopods, the race to which the cuttlefish or octopus belongs. Eminently carnivorous, voracious and fierce; beneath staring eyes are spread eight strong fleshy arms furnished with tenacious suckers, which adhere with unrelenting pertinacity, and the arms are swiftly twined round the struggling prey, which vainly strives to disengage itself from so fearful and so fatal embrace. ”

“ The great auk, now extinct, was once found in myriads around the island. The little auk, guillemot and the razor-billed auk are abundant. No venomous reptiles occur. Frogs have been introduced and thrive well. Of molluscous animals the common squid, a cephalopod about 6 or 7 in. in length, visits the coasts in immense shoals in August and September, and supplies a valuable bait. A gigantic species of cephalopod was discovered in 1873, which excited much interest among naturalists: the body varies from 7 to 15 ft. in length, with a circumference of 5 or 6 ft. ”

“ There is nothing like this in the vegetable world; but an exactly corresponding structure is met with in the shells of two kinds of existing animals, the pearly Nautilus and the Spirula, and only in them. These animals belong to the same division—the Cephalopoda—as the cuttle-fish, the squid, and the octopus. But they are the only existing members of the group which possess chambered, siphunculated shells; and it is utterly impossible to trace any physiological connection between the very peculiar structural characters of a cephalopod and the presence of a chambered shell. ”

“ They have eight tentacular arms, covered on the lower side with the usual cephalopod type of suckers, the center of each sucker being occupied, as in some species of octopus, by a small, sharp claw. The thickness, and therefore the muscular strength of these arms is enormous. It is no wonder men proved utterly powerless against them. ”

“ The living animal possesses a well-developed head with eyes, horny jaws, and many tentacles fused with the foot. Cephalopods are the most advanced of all mollusks and include the squid, octopus, pearly nautilus, and the extinct ammonoids. Members of this class range from Cambrian to Recent in age but were much more abundant in ancient seas than they are today. Their remains constitute a very useful group of fossils, particularly in Paleozoic and Mesozoic rocks. ”

“ Some of the cephalopods possess extraordinary powers of muscular contraction, as the common squid, for example, which is spread out at one moment in a body and volume larger round than a large man's fist, and the next moment will contract itself so that it can easily pass through the cork-hole in a boat or the neck of a wine-bottle. Great sensational attraction has been directed to the octopus by the tremendous description of the combat in Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea." ”

“ These relics are among the most varied and striking of the extinct beings that occur in the sedimentary strata, from the most ancient secondary formations, to the most recent tertiary. The living species are but a feeble representation of the countless myriads which must have swarmed in the ancient seas.
The animal of the Cephalopods is composed of a body, which is either enclosed in a shell, as in the Nautilus, or contains a calcareous osselet or support, as in the Sepia or Cuttle-fish ”

“ These processes are employed by cuttle-fish as anchors, for the purpose of fixing themselves firmly to rocks during violent agitations of the sea; and accordingly we find that it is only the extremities of these bony tentacula that are provided with suckers, while the short ones have them also along their whole length. The other genera of cephalopodous mollusca are, like the sepia, provided with tentacula attached to the head. They comprehend animals differing exceedingly in size, some being very large, but a great number very minute, and even microscopic. ”

“ Whether the closed primitive shell-sac of the slugs (and with it the transient embryonic shell-gland of all other Mollusca) is precisely the same thing as the closed sac in which the calcareous pen or shell of the Cephalopod Sepia and its allies is formed, is a further question which we shall consider when dealing with the Cephalopoda. It is important here to note that Clausilia furnishes us with an exceptional instance of the continuity of the shell or secreted product of the primitive shell-sac with the adult shell. ”

“ Every fisherman worth his salt knows how well all fish that swim in the sea love the sapid flesh of the cephalopoda, making it the finest bait known, and in truth it is, and always has been, a succulent dainty, where known, for mankind as well. But it is evident from the scanty number of times that the gigantic cuttle-fish has been reported, that his habitat is well beneath the surface, yet not so far down but that he may be easily reached by the whale, and also find food for his own vast bulk. Probably they prey upon one another. ”

“ Cephalopod molluscs have been traced back to the straight-shelled nautiloids of the genus Volborthella, while true ammonites have been found in the inferior Permian of the Continent and by American palaeontologists in the true coal measures. Similarly, early forms of the crustacean sub-class Merostomata have been traced to the pre-Cambrian of North America. ”

“ The figure given by one author of a gigantic Cephalopod rising from the surface of the ocean and embracing with its arms a full-rigged ship does not accurately represent an actual occurrence, but on the other hand there are authentic instances on record of fishermen in small boats on the banks of Newfoundland being in great peril in consequence of large squids throwing their arms across their boats. ”

“ It is a mollusc, and belongs to the most perfectly organised family of that extensive order of beings—viz. to the cephalopods. This is a word which, in English, means the head-foots, and as a descriptive term it is properly employed, since the limbs of the cuttlefish—which can be used either as arms or feet—grow from the orifice of the mouth, and so may be considered, equally with the latter, as belonging to the head. These limbs are the well-known tentacles, and in number may be either eight—which makes their possessor an octopod—or ten, by which it becomes entitled to the rank of a decapod. ”

“ Of the Devil-fish that we in this country hear most about, and have indelibly portrayed for us by Victor Hugo, the octopus, so much has been written and said that it is not necessary now to do much more than make passing allusion to the family. But the Cephalopoda embrace so vast a variety that it seems hardly fair to single out of them all the comparatively harmless octopus for opprobrium, while leaving severely unmentioned the gigantic onychoteuthis of the deep sea, to say nothing of many intermediate cuttle-fish. ”

“ The following are the dimensions of a fine male Sepia which I dissected at the Brighton Aquarium, July 3, 1875:—
Specimens of another of the Sepiidæ, the diminutive Sepiola (S. Rondeletii) —a veritable Liliputian among cuttles—are sometimes caught in shrimp-nets, and brought to the Aquarium. The mantle-sac enclosing the body of this little Tom Thumb cephalopod is about an inch in length, and in shape like a short wide-bore mortar. The head may be supposed to be the tompion fixed in the muzzle; and where the trunnions would be are two little flat fins of rounded outline. ”

“ He set [127] his screws in motion, and kept them circling in the vortices thus created until a boat could be lowered. And these specimens were whole cephalopods and fragments of cephalopods, some of gigantic proportions, and almost all of them unknown to science!
It would seem, indeed, that these large and agile creatures, living in the middle depths of the sea, must, to a large extent, for ever remain unknown to us, since under water they are too nimble for nets, and it is only by such rare unlooked-for accidents that specimens can be obtained. ”

“ The manner in which the eight-armed and ten-armed cephalopods capture their prey is similar in principle and plan, but differs in action in accordance with their mode of life. The ordinary habit of the octopus is either to rest suspended to the side of a rock to which it clings with the suckers of several of its arms, or to remain lurking in some favourite cranny ”

“ T.H. Huxley.
Hodeslea, October 12, 1893.
Dear Professor Pelseneer,
I am very glad to hear from you that the homology of the cephalopod arms with the gasteropod foot is now generally admitted. When I advocated that opinion in my memoir on the "Morphology of the Cephalous Mollusca," some forty years ago, it was thought a great heresy.
As to publication; I am quite willing to agree to whatever arrangement you think desirable, so long as you are kind enough to take all trouble (but that of "consulting physician") off my shoulders. ”

“ They are all strictly marine in habitat, and are all carnivorous. Most of them have no shell, or where the shell is present it is internal in all but a very few forms. The tentacle-like arms or feet surrounding the mouth which occur in all the Cephalopods are provided with sucking organs or suckers, in some cases with a horny toothed rim. These long, powerful, grasping, tentacular feet, with the suckers and five hooks, are very effective means of securing prey, and the pair of strong, sharp, cutting mandibles or beaks are equally effective in tearing to pieces. ”

“ Probably the best known of the shell-less cephalopods is the octopus, with its rounded body, large eyes and long arms. Almost everybody has read Victor Hugo’s weird account of the octopus in his “Toilers of the Sea,” and the animal has thus been rendered more or less familiar, although it was made to do several things by the author that it would not do in nature, as, for example, “drinking” a man alive. The Octopus is found abundantly throughout temperate and tropical seas, generally on the coast among rocks, but frequently on the sandy bottom in water of moderate depth. ”

“ As a rule the cephalopods swim slowly by the aid of their fins or by a rhythmic contraction by which water is expelled from their siphons, but when in danger the muscular contraction is so violent that they dart through the water with great speed, and even leap into the air to avoid their enemies. But they have another and much more remarkable way of escaping from their foes:—They possess a gland, the duct of which opens into the base of the funnel or siphon, that prepares an inky fluid ”

“ But, like all of its class, the Sepia is very intelligent. It soon learns to discriminate between friend and foe, and ultimately becomes very tame, and ceases to shoot its ink, unless it be teased and excited.
Professor Owen has remarked that the ejection of the ink of the cephalopods serves by its colour as a means of defence, as corresponding secretions in some of the mammalia by their odour.
It is worthy of notice that the Pearly Nautilus and the allied fossil forms are without this means of concealment, which their strong external shells renders unnecessary for their protection. ”

“ The Nautilus genus itself begins in the Upper Silurian rocks; we may trace the well-known shells upward to the Carboniferous strata, where they are best developed; and we follow the genus onward in time, as it decreases in numbers, until we arrive at the existing order of things, in which the solitary nautilus remains, as we have seen, to represent in itself the fullness of cephalopod life in the oceans of the past. The older or Palæozoic rocks reveal a literal wealth of these chambered shells, and therefore of the existence of the four-gilled cuttle-fishes as the founders of the race. ”