The octopus

by Henry Lee

Professor Owen has remarked that the ejection of the ink of the cephalopods serves by its colour as a means of defence, as corresponding secretions in some of the mammalia by their odour.

It is worthy of notice that the Pearly Nautilus and the allied fossil forms are without this means of concealment, which their strong external shells renders unnecessary for their protection.

Fishermen are well acquainted with the fact that the cephalopods—at any rate, our British representatives of the Sepiidæ, Calamaries, and Octopoda—habitually discharge, when taken, a jet of water, and the two former sometimes their ink, in the faces of their captors. It has been regarded as doubtful whether this is an intentional act, or whether it is accidental, and consequent on the bringing of the orifice of the syphon tube above the surface, and the removal of the resistance to the out-pouring current, which, when ejected under water, would, in the one case, have been a means of locomotion, and, in the other, of concealment of their whereabouts. Some have supposed that the emission is involuntary, and is produced much in the same way as the water is tossed up in spray by the screw of a steam-vessel when her stern rises whilst she is pitching heavily in a rough sea. Others, who have experienced the effect of this habit of the animals, have persistently asserted that they take deliberate aim, with the motive of aggression or self-defence.

Mr. Darwin, in his narrative of the “Voyage of the Beagle,” says that whilst looking for marine animals, with his head about two feet above the rocky shore, he was more than once saluted by a jet of water accompanied by a slight grating noise. At first he could not think what it was; but he afterwards found that it was an octopus, which, though concealed in a hole, thus led him to its discovery; and it appeared to him that it could certainly take good aim, by directing the tube or syphon on the under side of its body.

The force with which the water is expelled is often very great. Some of the Loliginæ are capable of propelling themselves with such momentum by a vigorous out-rush from the tube, that when this pressure is so exerted as to cause them to take an upward direction, they leap out of water to such a height as to fall on to the decks of vessels, and are called by sailors “flying squids.” Desiring to preserve some specimens of the “little squid” (Loligo media), if possible with their colours unchanged, I put two alive into a bottleful of spirits of wine as the best method of causing their instantaneous death. Both of them immediately “squirted” with such effect that a third part of the spirits of wine was thrown out of the bottle and spilled on the table.

I have no doubt at all that the cephalopods intentionally and deliberately take aim, and that they are able to do so as accurately as the “Archer-fish” (Toxotes jaculator), which by the ejection of a drop of water from its mouth, brings down a fly from a branch or leaf three or four feet above the surface of the water.

With the purpose of testing the swimming powers of an octopus, and making other observations connected with its mode of progression through the water, I experimented with one in one of the store tanks at Brighton. I had put him through his paces, and brought him back to the starting-post several times after he had swum to the further end of the tank, and at last the creature became irritated. Instead of sinking to the bottom as he had previously tried to do, he swam along the surface away from me till he reached the back of the tank, where he sustained himself motionless for an instant, and then shot forth a jet of water which struck me on the breast, and drenched my shirt-front, though I was five feet distant from him.

I have known of many amusing instances of this squirting of water or ink by the cuttle-fish startling the victim of it by its unexpected suddenness.

My deceased friend Tom Hood, unaware of this propensity of the animal, hastened to lay hold of one which he had hooked in Looe Harbour, and, receiving its jet d’eau full in his face, exclaimed that “he did not exactly know what he had on his line, but he thought he had caught a young garden engine.”

Fishermen, when catching squid as bait, haul them up slowly until they are nearly at the surface of the water, and then “gaff” them by the tail, and hold them at some distance from the boat, to allow them to discharge their ink. The Rev. J. G. Wood mentions an incident of a naval officer’s white-duck trousers being “de-decorated” with the liquid missile of a cuttle; the aggrieved individual asserting that it took deliberate aim for that purpose.