Happy Invertebrate Valentine’s Day, Here are Some Cuttlefish CuttleBoning!

This video is great for many reasons, but mainly because the way cuttlefish canoodle is so. Dang. Weird.

Roger Hanlon of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts recorded these two giant Australian cuttlefish making underwater whoopie. Here’s a blow-by-blow (Editor’s note: Heh.) courtesy of New Scientist:

To initiate sex, a male spreads his arms around his partner’s head […] Once the deed is done, the female stores the deposited sperm in one of two places, either around the lining of her mouth or in a receptacle below her beak. Her eggs are fertilised internally before she lays them in crevices: they need to be protected since she will die at the end of the breeding season.

(If cuttlefish kink sounds a little unsettling, please read this Toast piece. Our meat-bag humans bodies are horrifying, too.)

Cuttlefish may have several sexual partners during a breeding season in order to increase their chances of reproduction, but research has shown that females are unlikely to have multiple encounters in quick succession, while males demonstrate a preference for unfamiliar partners. You go, horny creatures of the deep! Get down with your bad cephs!

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Carolyn Cox