20 Interesting Squid Facts

There are many squids in all the oceans of the world. Some of them are well known and widely eaten by humans, while others have not been studied at all. There are deep-sea species of these molluscs that live where there is no sunlight, and very little reliable information is still known about them.

Facts about squid:
• 1. In some squid, the right and left eyes differ in size. This is not an accident - different eyes capture light of different intensities, helping the squid navigate in space.
• 2. Squid have three hearts. Two of them perform auxiliary function, and they pump blood into the main heart, and it sends it further to other organs.
• 3. Octopoteuthis deletron squid, living at depths of up to 800 meters, has a very short period of sexual maturity. Therefore, males have developed a breeding strategy in which they do not make out who is in front of them - a female or another male. Meeting a squid of their own species of any gender in the dark, they attack it and smear it with spermatophores, that is, capsules with spermatozoa.
• 4. Squids have blue blood, not red. Iron gives our blood its red color, and in them, instead of iron, oxygen is carried by copper.
• 5. The so-called flying squids are found in the Pacific Ocean. Accelerating under water and jumping to the surface, they fly 20-30 meters.
• 6. All types of calamari have 10 tentacles. Eight of them are used for a variety of tasks, and two, the strongest and longest ones, catch prey.
• 7. There are many small species of squid in surface waters. The deeper under the water, the larger they are.
• 8. In squids living in cold polar waters, the body is translucent, like in some fish that live in similar conditions.
• 9. Scientists know about three hundred species of squid. But they believe that there are almost twice as many of them, just not all of them have been studied yet. Some, apparently, have not even been discovered yet.
• 10. It is they who are the least explored of all the inhabitants of the deep sea.
• 11. Squids are not found in fresh water. They can only live in salt water.
• 12. The largest of them is the giant squid, reaching 13-14 meters in length. It is found only in the Southern Ocean.
• 13. Second in size and first in mass are the Architeuthis squid. They grow up to 8-10 meters and weigh up to 500 kg.
• 14. Some squid species spend their entire lives in complete darkness, at a depth of thousands of meters. And sunlight penetrates the water only 100-200 meters, no more.
• 15. It was only in 2006 that a live giant squid was captured on video for the first time.
• 16. All squids are predators, but they often become someone's prey themselves. As zoologists have calculated, about 1% of the diet of all sea inhabitants on average falls on squids, their small species mainly.
• 17. Their brain is small, but the level of intelligence of squids is quite high, and they really know how to think. The brain is hidden in the hardest part of their body, in the cartilaginous part of the head.
• 18. Many squids are notorious cannibals. They are always ready to eat even members of their own species.
• 19. In the largest squid, suction cups can be about 5 centimeters in diameter. And some of their species also have claws at the ends of the tentacles!
• 20. Giant squids are neutrally buoyant, and therefore they feel very confident in the water. But their small relatives for the most part “drown”, so they have to move constantly in order not to go to the depth.