If you like a feisty insurgent, look no additional than the flamboyant cuttlefish, on the 10-strong shortlist for the Guardian’s invertebrate of the 12 months 2025. It’s small, good, able to spectacular shows and has fought in opposition to the chances to grow to be the deadliest of its sort.
This inventive creature is small for its class of cephalopods, which incorporates octopus, squid and nautilus, at simply 6-8cm. Because of the comparatively decreased measurement of its air-filled cuttlebone, a singular inside shell used for buoyancy that lends these molluscs their distinctive, moderately alien-spaceship approach of swimming, it can not float or hover in addition to its cousins.
So, moderately than swim, the flamboyant cuttlefish usually ambles alongside the seafloor on two tentacled arms and fins that, collectively, give the impression of legs.
When confronted with predators, most species of those chameleons of the ocean dart away to flee, or use their outstanding color and texture-changing skills to mix into their environment.
Not so the flamboyant cuttlefish – or Ascarosepion pfefferi, to offer the animal its scientific identify. As an alternative, this species, which is darkish brown with some yellow and purple spots, stands its floor and exhibits off it fabulous skills: it flashes a blinding array of patterns and psychedelic colors. Yellows, reds, whites and browns ripple alongside the physique, because the cuttlefish pulses its fins and wave its arms in a hypnotic show. It’s believed to warn predators that it’s venomous, the one cuttlefish species recognized to be poisonous.
Cuttlefish are good, too. Scientific research have proven them to be among the many most clever invertebrates, with one of many largest mind to physique ratios of all.
The previous High Gear presenter Richard Hammond as soon as carried out an experiment for a Miracles of Nature BBC programme to learn the way adaptive cuttlefish actually had been. He launched a cuttlefish to the equal of a “front room” aquarium, with a chintzy chaise-long, striped “wallpaper”, a zebra rug and even a chequerboard flooring.
The animal had an excellent stab at mimicking the chequerboard, with a single white sq., flashed a fast zebra-print, earlier than deciding on the brown-patterned chintz, the closest factor to a seafloor within the tank.
Had it been the flamboyant species, nonetheless, the outcomes might have been much more spectacular. So refined is the pfefferi, the RuPaul of cuttlefish, some have been seen to alter color alongside one half of their our bodies, whereas sustaining a traditional colouration on the opposite.
It additionally makes use of its skills throughout courtship. Males, 10-60% the dimensions of females, court docket their mates with vivid and dynamic shows, which look like among the many most elaborate rituals amongst cephalopods. How these rituals repay is unknown, however females are exceptionally picky, rejecting 50% of potential mates.
The cuttlefish stay in coral reefs, from Indonesia to jap Papua New Guinea and throughout northern Australia and the east Indian Ocean, however are threatened by air pollution, overfishing and habitat destruction.
Feisty, flamboyant, fussy and intelligent: vote for this cute cuttlefish, you’ll not remorse it.
