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New Scientist has a fascinating report on a recent article in Nature that speculates that some squid may brood their eggs before hatching:

A broody species of squid has been found to carry hundreds of its eggs under its many arms. It is the first species of squid known to look after its clutch. Usually squids simply drop their eggs on the sea floor and leave them to survive on their own, although some species of octopus are known to guard their clutch. But scientists captured on film the parental care lavished by Gonatus onyx on its eggs.

There are also a couple of interesting videos you can download from this page: a video of the squid hatching its young (6MB mpg); and the squid with its cumbersome egg sac fleeing from the submersible (6MB mpg).

The Editor’s Summary of the original Nature article is a bit more detailed:

Marine life can still surprise. Take Gonatus onyx. This squid is abundant in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, but its life history remains a mystery because spawning takes place at such great depths. ‘Gonatids’, like other squid, were thought to deposit their eggs on the sea floor and leave them to develop on their own but now they have been seen cradling eggs in their arms. These brooding squid may be an unwitting link between the deep and shallow marine ecosystems: their immobility makes them sitting ducks for whales and elephant seals diving in search of food.

Full article details:

Nature 438, 929 (15 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438929a
Post-spawning egg care by a squid
Brad A. Seibel, Bruce H. Robison and Steven H. D. Haddock

Gonatus onyx is one of the most abundant cephalopods in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and is an important prey species for a variety of vertebrate predators, but a full understanding of its life history has been hampered because spawning occurs at great depths, where observation is difficult. Here we describe post-spawning egg care, or brooding, in this deep-sea squid. Our finding is unexpected because this behaviour differs from the reproductive habits of all other known squid species.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Squid Happenings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.