Category:Cuttlefish

Cut"tle (kt"t'l), n. Etym: [OF. cultel, coltel, coutel, fr. L. cultellus. See Cutlass.]

Defn: A knife. [Obs.] Bale.

cuttle; cuttlefish Cut"tle (kt"t'l), Cut"tle*fish` (-fsh`), n. Etym: [OE. codule, AS. cudele; akin to G. kuttelfish; cf. G. k, D. keutel, dirt from the guts, G. kuttel bowels, entrails. AS. cwip womb, Gith. qipus belly, womb.]

1. (Zoöl.)

Defn: A cephalopod of the genus Sepia, having an internal shell, large eyes, and ten arms furnished with denticulated suckers, by means of which it secures its prey. The name is sometimes applied to dibranchiate cephalopods generally.

Note: It has an ink bag, opening into the siphon, from which, when pursued, it throws out a dark liquid that clouds the water, enabling it to escape observation.

2. A foul-mouthed fellow. "An you play the saucy cuttle me." Shak.

Cuttlefish are not true fish, but mollusks or molluscs. They are invertebrates and are in the same class, Cephalopoda (cephalopod), as squid, octopuses, and nautiluses. They also produce ink, just as do squid and octopus, and bacterially-produced neurotoxins in their saliva, just as do octopuses and some squid. They can change their skin color to match their surroundings. The blood of a cuttlefish has more of a greenish blue color because of the copper-containing protein hemocyanin to carry oxygen instead of the red iron-containing protein haemoglobin (hemoglobin) which is in vertebrates' blood.