Squid

The squid is a sea animal with a long, soft body, eight arms, and two longer tentacles. Squid belong to a group of animals called cephalopods, which also includes octopuses and cuttlefish. They live in every ocean on Earth, from warm shallow seas to the deep, dark water miles below the surface. There are more than 300 kinds of squid.

A squid's body is shaped like a tube with two fins on top. Inside the tube is a stiff, clear part called a pen, which works like a tiny skeleton. The mouth sits in the middle of the arms. It has a hard, sharp beak that looks a bit like a parrot's beak. The eight arms are covered in suckers for grabbing food. The two long tentacles shoot out fast to catch fish and shrimp.

Squid are built for speed. They suck water into their body, then shoot it out through a tube called a siphon. This pushes them through the water like a living rocket. Most squid swim backward, with their pointed end leading the way. Some kinds can even launch out of the ocean and glide through the air for short distances to escape predators.

When a squid is scared, it can change color in a flash. Tiny bags of color in its skin, called chromatophores, open and close to make patterns. Squid also squirt a cloud of dark ink into the water. The ink hides the squid and confuses whatever is chasing it. By the time the attacker figures out it has been fooled, the squid is gone.

Most squid are small, about the size of a pencil or a forearm. But the giant squid can grow more than 40 feet long, as long as a school bus. Even bigger is the colossal squid, which lives deep in the waters around Antarctica. Scientists did not get a clear photo of a giant squid in the wild until 2004. Much of the deep ocean where they live is still a mystery.

Squid are a huge part of ocean food chains. They eat fish, shrimp, and smaller squid. In turn, they are eaten by sharks, dolphins, seabirds, tuna, and sperm whales. A sperm whale can dive more than a mile down to hunt giant squid, and some whales come to the surface with round scars from squid suckers on their skin.

People eat squid too. In many countries, cooked squid is called calamari.