![]() Squid need highly developed vision as they communicate with each other through changes in body colour patterns and posture. Vision is a sense especially highly developed in squid, and this is why their eyes take up such a large proportion of their head. ![]() You couldn’t exactly call them compassionate creatures though – if they are hungry enough with no sign of dinner in sight, they will quite happily turn around and eat their closest squid neighbour. When squid themselves are ‘fishing’, they actually kill their prey very quickly as well, by biting through the back of the neck of the fish to take out the spinal cord and stop them from struggling. As they have such a developed nervous system, it’s a good idea once you’ve caught a squid to try and kill them as humanely as possible - either place the squid in an ice slurry which dulls the nervous system before killing them, or remove the head straight away so that it dies very quickly. Squid are very intelligent creatures with a nervous system as well developed as fish, and more advanced than that of any other invertebrate. A beak to chop their food into tiny little pieces is essential, as their digestive tract actually goes through a narrow channel of cartilage in their brain to get through to the stomach! They eat pretty much anything that moves, and tear apart their prey with their parrot like beak. To provide fuel to support their fast metabolism and fast growth rates, squid must consume huge amounts of food each day. Squids have such high metabolic rates that they need to extract oxygen through their skin surface as well as through their gills. They have not one, but three hearts - one at the base of each of two gills to pump deoxygenated blood through the gills, and one main heart to pump oxygenated blood through the rest of the body. From a biological perspective, squid are rather bizarre creatures.
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