squidblog.net

RelentlesslyOptimistic got in touch with squidblog recently to point us to his appeal to cephalogeeks to follow up this interesting quote from the Wikipedia entry on Octopus:

When under attack, some octopuses can detach and autonomise their limbs, in a similar manner to skinks and other lizards. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators; this ability is also used in mating.

So we flayed out a few tentacles, and they pulled in this entry from the excellent pharyngula.org:

Male squid do not have a penis. Instead, they have a pouch that opens into the mantle cavity, called Needham’s sac, where spermatophores are stored, and they have a specially modified tentacle, the hectocotylus, which is used to reach into the sac, scoop out a spermatophore, and and place it inside the buccal or mantle cavity of the female. In some cephalopods, the end of the hectocotylus snaps off and remains imbedded in the female.

And then there are these two excellent quotes, with references, from this rather old page at Science Frontiers:

Love’s arrow. Or, rather, love’s giant hypodermic needle. Cupid’s arrows are rather benign compared with those of some squid. Some small squid will use their sharp beaks or tentacle hooks to rip open the skin of females. They then insert spermatophores with their penises. In the giant squid, however, the male’s penis is formidable, muscular, and almost a meter long. It is powerful enough to insert spermatophores directly under the skin of the females. The males are not always accurate, for males themselves are sometimes impregnated in this manner during the squids’ deep-sea orgies.

(Norman, Mark D., and Lu, C.C.; “Sex in Giant Squid,” Nature, 389:683, 1997.)

The free-style penis. In the octopus and many cephalopods, the males have a special tentacle with which they insert their spermatophores under the mantle of the female. The tentacle is then retracted for future use.

The male paper nautilus (and here) is more profligate with its tentacles. The paper nautilus is cephalopod which, like its cousin, the chambered nautilus, “sails the unshadowed main.”* When the male detects a receptive female, he avoids intimacy. It’s sex at a distance. His spermatophore-bearing tentacle detaches itself from the body and swims — under its own power — to the female, being in effect a swimming penis.

Just how this peculiar arrangement evolved is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the female paper nautilus still retains a molluscan shell, while the male has lost this armor and looks more like an aspiring octopus. Without a shelly defense, the male may not want to get too close to the female!

(Anonymous; “The Shell of Aphrodite,” Nature, 391:550, 1998)
[Although this is only a brief review of the book Plants of Love, which does not contain this quote. So who knows where the original quote came from?]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 1st, 2005 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Squid Facts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.