Abstract
IT has long been said that the ink discharged by the great majority of cephalopods is ejected as a black cloud, under cover of which the animal may escape from a threatened attack. That this is false is apparent to anyone who has watched the phenomenon. The ink (of such cephalopods that I have seen) initially does not form a cloud, but remains a discrete, dark, viscous mass; water turbulence breaks up the mass, dispersing it in the form of streaks indicating the direction of the current flow, and even in a small volume of water such as an aquarium tank, cloud formation takes place only after some considerable time. The importance of this may not be readily apparent in a brightly illuminated aquarium; but the following observation, made under conditions of reduced light intensity one evening aboard the Singapore Regional Fisheries Research Vessel Manihine (October 1955), appears to present the true interpretation of this escape reaction.
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HALL, D. Ink Ejection by Cephalopoda. Nature 177, 663 (1956). https://doi.org/10.1038/177663b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/177663b0
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