You Will Believe A Squid Can Fly…
Posted by Justin on August 2nd, 2010
Want to hear something awesome? Squids can squirt their way out of the water engaging in what many marine biologists classify as flight. The phenomenon was so random that little photographic evidence existed of the practice. New proof seems to confirm the notion that squids fire themselves above out of the water and use some combination of their fins and tentacles to stabilize and increase distance.
The 2004 paper’s authors argue that “gliding” is too passive a term to describe what squid do when they leave the ocean for the air: “flight” is more fitting.
“From our observations it seemed like squid engage in behaviors to prolong their flight,” Maciá says. “One of our co-authors saw them actually flapping their fins. Some people have seen them jetting water while in flight. We felt that ‘flight’ is more appropriate because it implies something active.”
This article also contains my favorite first five words of a paragraph ever: “On a LISTSERV dedicated to mollusks…”
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