Cuttlefish - Wanna Cuddle with One?

In a neighboring tank were several of the oddist fish I have ever seen - well - if they are fish.  This young one is so little, it would fit in the palm of your hand.  If you cupped both of your hands and put them together, you could completely enclose this cuttlefish and his tankmates.  I have seen them as large as a football, however. 

Having the word "fish" in their name suggests that cuttlefish are really fish - here's the research.....

Cuttlefish are marine animals, but NOT fish - they are molluscs in the same family as squid, octopodes and nautiluses.  They have an internal shell called the cuttlebone.  If you have ever provided a calcium scratch for your parakeet, you have used a cuttlebone from a cuttlefish.

Cuttlefish have 8 arms and 2 tentacles.  They range in size, when fully grown, from 5 inches to 20 inches.  They eat a range of foods that include small molluscs, crabs, fish, shrimp, octopides, worms and...sadly....other cuttlefish.

Sharks, like the one on the previous page, dolphins, fish, seals, seabirds and cuttlefish eat them.

Cuttlefish are short-lived, living one to two years, and are not often considered good aquarium pets for this reason.

Cuttlefish are highly intelligent and have one of the largest brain to body ratios of all animals.  One of their most outstanding traits is their communication skills.

Talk About Calculating!!!

Now here is calculating.......

Hammer nose shark, on the prowl

 It's all about the hunt....or is it the meal?????

Hammer nose eyeing the next page - neither of these sea creatures are drawn to scale

And look at what's peaking around the next page - a strange creature, inded!

Calculating??

The octopus went from looking fearful and timid to looking powerful and calculating in the wink of an eye - about as fast as she displayed her fearsome palette of burgundy, purple and ochre, she returned to a blob of beige and retreated into hiding. 

With the transition to her aggressive colors, the slant of her eye even changed to create a "V"..... In human facial gestures, we would view that eyebrow angle as angry or enraged.

When the pages are bound in the text they become very tight and compressed.  All of these pages will remain tight and compressed until the book is used qite a bit.

As you can see, the pages, prior to being assembled into the minibook, are much more visually appealing to observe.  The combination of the printed text pages, the visual hand painted pages, and the note tags that integrate into the palette, make the book cohesive. 

Did I Hear Cantina Music?

Dinner in the octopus cafe - interesting that the octopus and the starfish share many of the same colors when in the same environment, and yet one eats the other if opportunity knocks.  In the Darwin vs. Lamark discussion, what are the factors that help these two creatures share some similar attributes?  Is it the mineral content in the water, sunlight, food supply.....things ingested OR are there things in the environment that make being beige and burgundy safer than being some other color? 

Are the current beige and burgundy starfish and octopi ancestors of those early beige and burgundy great, great, great, great, great, etc. grandparents who were not eaten or destroyed?  Were the burgundy and beige ancestors truly the fittest of the fit - did the fittest survive to reproduce? 

I wonder what colors these two species appear to be without the illumination of the artificial light of the aquarium?  Do they both appear to be the same colors in the wild OR is something in their most exterior derma-layer sending similar messages to predators that has nothing to do with color?  I hope they are studying these questions at the Mote Aquarium, or any one of a dozen or so marine-life magnet high schools in Florida.  Since most of the states that border an ocean must have several aquatic or marine research high schools, someone must be researching like-colors in the food chain...well.....I hope so!

When in the binding and held in place by the book rings........pages get a little tight.  Until this minibook is actually in use, it will continue to be very clam-shell like and practically snap shut during each attempted opening.  Although more time consuming, and seemingly less durable, the stitched-binding minbook is, once again, looking more appealing!  On almost every full page spread, they will lay flat and some sketchers even sketch right across the spine as if the two pages become one. 

Building to the Full Display......

Working up to the display...

The octopus is quickly changing colors to full, throbbing display -

 I less than a minute, this octopus went for total beige to strobbing shades of burgundy and purple.  She also went from docile and blob-shaped, to aggitated and swimming aggressively across the tank.  The mystery is - "What made her so agressive?" 

Speaking in terms of the structure of the minibook:  Notice, also, the use of the text block to print the lines for the addition of hand written text.  I love that I could make this a color to compliment the octopus!

Full-page spread once the book is bound together.

Once the pages are fit into the binding and locked in place with the book rings.....  One of the challenges of these minibooks is the tight binding on the spine.  The choices are either to reduce the number of pages or begin with a very stiff binding that makes the pages difficult to fully open.  Of course the third obvious choice is to build the book in a completely different way!!!

Progressions of Displayed Anger

I think this is "the evil eye" look when an octopus is mad......OK, I don't really know that but it is a great personification.  When we first came upon her tank, she was very activated, swimming all over her space, and clearly getting more and more mottled purple and burgundy - almost strobbing. 

Octopus sketch based on new Mote addition - she's not happy and beginning to show agitation!

The color and the look of rage in the world of an octopus.  I have seen this behavior on National Geographic programming, but what a treat to see 'live."  Of course, I would never provoke a captive critter to see it "do it's thing," but am not sorry I was an interested observer who arrived at just the right time. 

 

Although not a good judge of the weight of a mad, swimming octopus, I would guess she would be an 8 to 10 pounder - the bulbous part in the middle was the size of a small turkey - it's the tentacles that are difficult to gauge.  Thick near the central "blob," but narrowing significantly four to five feet down each appendage. 

Just an image in an assembled book, but reminescent of octopus behavior - hiding behind a non-descript obstacle.  What a great view!

Enraged Octopus

The last minibook was created primarily with hand cut block prints that were inked, then stamped on paper already cut to the appropriate page size.  This minibook marks a substantial shift in the process of making images because all of these are original, one of a kind images that have been hand drawn.

Octopus gearing up for the colorful display.  Not sure what made her mad, but is is moving towards a full display of colors!

These images are based on a trip to the Mote Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida.   As you may recall from earlier posts, this is a small, privately owned research and teaching aquarium sitting shoreside to a waterway leading directly to the Gulf of Mexico.  It is open 365/366 days of the year.  Many of the people working there are either marine researchers in a doctoral program or retirees volunteering time to serve as docents.  

Over the past couple of years, the Mote has made upgrades and improvements that make it more visually appealing to school groups and the visiting public.  Mid-winter they tore out their largest tank (the size of an oval olympic swimming pool,) and added an otter habitat to one end of the enclosure.  The last time we visited the remainder of the once-pool space was in rubble and roped off to the public.  The Mote has not yet put into print what they plan to do with the large space, but I hope it will be focused on marine learning and education. 

OMG - have you noticed lately that octopi or being included in many ads.  There is an insurance commercial that shows it raining many different sized of octopi, for example.  The first place I saw octopus promotion was in the new Disney movie headlining Dory.  I am so glad to see the octopus come into the limelight for something besides inking themselves and cowering.  They are intelligent problem-solvers who were maligned in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean sagas, and calamari cuisine seems to have been their only redeeming value for decades.  Most images I have seen lately reveals orange octopus.....interesting choice since all of the living octopi I have seen in the last couple of years have been beige unless enraged, like the cover princess on this minibook.