Animal of the Day: Cuttlefish

Beasts are all around us. Many of them are familiar and many of them are so odd and mysterious that they challenge the laws of what we find nonfiction. Each weekday on GUY, we take a look at one of them.

A warning: Some will be adorable. Some will make your skin crawl. Some of them will make you never want to leave the house.

Yesterday’s Animal: The Star-Nosed Mole!
Today’s Animal: The Cuttlefish!

"Please don't put me in a bathtub with a Japanese girl."

The cuttlefish is one of the most odd and beautiful creatures in the animal kingdom as well as one of the most advanced. To see it change color is a ballet of light, shadow, and underwater magic. To see it move is to watch an almost alien-like intricacy and complexity. It is one of the most unreal things on this planet, a weird mash-up of octopus and squid and fish. It hovers. It jets. It shoots ink around like a pissed-off poet. It changes its entire physical embodiment per the situation. An amazing beast, and one which has obviously influenced many designs of aliens, monsters, and cosmic deities.

It’s as if a whole bunch of animals were brought together into one body and instead of being awkward and without true function it’s a highly efficient machine. The best of every world.

To be one of the creatures the cuttlefish preys upon is to be assured of a certain death. You don’t know when and you don’t know how but that thing is going to snatch you from the mortal coil in a flash. It looked like a rock, but no… it was a villain! It looks like the sand but sand doesn’t blink and then eat you. The cuttlefish is a toolsy little asshole of the sea.

But they’re a delicacy in many countries. And very fragile, often having very short lives in captivity. Beautiful, efficient, but delicate.

They also have possibly the most developed eyes in the animal kingdom, ones which some scientists feel develop in the egg stage and that they watch and learn from there. It’s not every day you get stared down by the contents of an egg. Regardless cuttlefish are a tentacled and ink-laden creature that is mysterious and elegant and proof we don’t have a fucking clue what else could be possibly waiting in the depths.

Quick Hits:

• If it were horse sized, we’d… BE SAD THE SEA WAS EATEN BY CUTTLEFISH.
• If it had wings, it’d… OFFICIALLY BE EVERY ANIMAL.
• If granted human intellect, it’d… BE DUMBER THAN IT IS.
• If ‘Day of the Animals’ happened, we’d… BE SAFE, BUT ONCE WE ENTERED THE SEA WE’D END IMMEDIATELY.

Have a peek. It’s like a mixture of Predator and For the Love of Benji:

Remember: The cuttlefish is a toolsy little asshole of the sea.