The theme of this entry will be the four cuttlefish in the exhibit, one of which I got to meet pretty closely today.
Here's one cuttlefish.
Here's another one. This guy would flash his skin different colors when we waved a hand at him.
And the third one.
Cuttlefish are mollusks. They are members of the class Cephalopoda, same as squid and octopi. Cuttlefish have an internal structure called a cuttlebone. It is made of calcium carbonate (same as shells). The cuttlebone is made of many super thin, hollow layers that the cuttlefish fills up with water to grow heavy and sink, or empty and let the creature rise.
Now here is the fourth, and last, cuttlefish. He is the one that I got to work with today. We had to transfer him from one tank to another one. First we scooped him into a clear box-like container, which you can see here.
Immediately he got mad and let out a lot of ink: the water turned completely black for a couple of seconds. Then it cleared a little and he started making bubbles/or maybe spitting water from his backside at me. (I was holding the box).
Next, we carried im to the new tank and transferred him into the bucket which we filled half with water from his new tank, and half from water from his old tank. Than, as you can see, we left him to float in the new tank so that he would get acclimated to the temperature and salinity of his new environment.
Here's a closer look at our cuttlefish, isn't' he cute? :)
Finally, after a bit, we completely let him out into his new tank and watched him sink to the bottom.
So that's my cuttlefish adventure...
Oh, and the cuttlefish that I was working with are common to the North American East Coast and to the Mediterranean.
That's it for today then, I promise more posts on my internship are coming up. :D
See ya soon,
Yaroslava :D
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