Description
One of the two tentacular clubsAdult squid have several distinguishing features. The mantle encloses the visceral mass of the squid, and has two fins, which are not the primary method of propulsion. Instead, the squid has a siphon, a muscle which takes in water from one side, and pushes it out the other side: jet propulsion. The squid has eight arms and two tentacles with suction cups along the backs. In between the arms sits the mouth, or beak. Inside the mouth is a tooth-tongue-like appendage called the radula. Squid have ink sacs, which they use as a defense mechanism against possible predators. Squid also have three hearts.
The age of a squid can be determined on the basis of its growth rings, or statoliths, when additions are appended daily to the balance organs in the back of the squid’s head. This species of squid can weigh up to 0.5 kg. Mantle length in females can go up to 50 cm; males are smaller.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Flying Squid
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)