Nautilus has a planispherally coiled external shell, while squids and cuttlefish have a smaller internal skeleton, and octopus has no hard skeleton at all. While most other mollusks have hard external shells, most cephalopods do not. Some octopuses, squids, andĬuttlefish have the remarkable ability to change color and color patterns to better blend in with the surrounding seafloor. Many living cephalopods (but not Nautilus ) possess an ink sac capable of ejecting a dark fluid to confound predators. The tentacles surround a powerful beak-like mouth. The tentacles range in number from eight in the octopus to more than ninety in Nautilus. A shared trait of the group are sucker-bearing tentacles used to seize and hold prey. Major CharacteristicsĪll cephalopods live in the marine environment, where they are carnivores. The phylum Mollusca also includes the gastropods (snails and slugs) and bivalves (such as clams and oysters) among others, and is considered one of the most intelligent and successful invertebrate groups in the oceans. Nautilus belongs to the cephalopods, a category of mollusks to which the octopus, squid, and cuttlefish octopus also belong. What group of marine invertebrates was celebrated by a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States? (Answer: cephalopods.) Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 –1894) wrote the poem "The Chambered Nautilus" in 1858 to describe the shell of the cephalopod Nautilus.
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