Flamboyant Cuttlefish

• comportamientoIt can walk across the sea floor using two of its arms as legs rather than swimming, all the while flashing bright warning colours that signal how toxic it is.
• GeneralIt walks the bottom on its arms and flashes colour as a warning that it is toxic.
• It walks rather than swims. Its cuttlebone is too small to give it lasting buoyancy, so it moves across the bottom on two arms and two lobes of its mantle.
• Disturbed, it sends waves of purple, red, yellow and white rippling across its body, an aposematic warning that its flesh is toxic.
• Its flesh is toxic. It was found to contain a lethal compound distinct from tetrodotoxin, and it is the only cuttlefish known to be toxic in this way.
• It hunts by shooting out its feeding tentacles in milliseconds, like other cuttlefish, and its prey are crustaceans and small fish.
• It is active by day, which is unusual among cuttlefish.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - internal calcareous shell (cuttlebone)

Habitat and environment

Shallow sandy and muddy bottoms

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascarosepion_pfefferi; Anatomia de Cephalopoda; Wikipedia (Cuttlebone, Gladius); FAO, terminos tecnicos de cefalopodos

The pins mark the parks and dive sites where its presence is documented.