Anatomy:
The cuttlefish belongs to the phylum Mollusca. The Mollusca group has three key features that define the phylum, these features are a mantle, radula and foot.
- Mantle: The mantle secretes calcium carbonate and creates the cuttlebone in cuttlefishes. The mantle also performs many other functions including slow swimming, fast swimming, escape jetting and respiration (Rogers, Nelson, Milligan, Brown, 3033).
- Cuttlebone: The cuttlebone is an internal shell that the cuttlefish used to help with buoyancy. The cuttlebone contains chambers, the front chambers are filled with gas and the rear chambers are filled with water (Denton, Gilpin-Brown, 319).
- Beak: The beak of a cuttlefish looks very similar to the beak of a parrot. It's used to help crush prey and sometimes used as a defense mechanism. If in danger the cuttlefish could use its beak to bite its predator and this would allow for the cuttlefish to make a quick escape either swimming away or using its ink sac.
- Chromatophores: Chromatophores cover a majority of the dorsal side of the cuttlefish. Chromatophores are used to help the cuttlefish camouflage into its environment. Chromatophores are of three broad colors; yellow, orange and brown (Hanlon, Messenger, 442). The chromatophores are controlled by innervated muscle fibers, giving the cuttlefish the ability to change not only the color of its skin but also the pattern of its skin (Messenger, 2001). Cuttlefish can almost instantly change their color and patterns using their neurally controlled chromatophores (Barbosa, Mathger, Buresch, Kelly, Chubb, Chiao, Hanlon 1242).
- Eye: The eyes of the cuttlefish are large in proportion to its body. The odd "W" shaped pupil of the cuttlefish allows it to control the amount of light that is allowed to enter the eye, because of this the cuttlefish can see particularly well in low amounts of light. The "W" shaped pupils have also been shown to have high spatial acuity, and thus cuttlefish can resolve fine details in the surrounding (Chiao, Chubb, Buresch, Barbosa, Allen, Thger, Hanlon, 196).