Another cephalopod is the Flapjack Octopus, also known as the opisthoteuthis californiana.
These octopuses are able to flatten themselves out very thin, almost like a pancake or flapjack, so that's where they get the nickname.
Just like the Dumbo Octopus, their arms are all webbed together like a skirt, and they also use the fins on their head or mantle to help them swim.
They very deep in the ocean, and like the Vampire Squid just eat whatever garbage is floating around in the water.
The little octopus named Pearl in the movie Finding Nemo was a Flapjack Octopus.
Unlike the movie though, the flapjack octopus does not have an ink sac, so they can not squirt out ink like Pearl does in the movie!
Another cephalopod is the Armhook Squid, also called the Gonatidae.
These are a type of squid that don't have just normal suction cups on their arms.
Most squids have rows of two cups all the way down their arm, but the armhook squid has four, and some of the suckers are actually more like hooks.
They are red, purple or brown, they live in the ocean, and they grow to about 10 inches.
Another type of cephalopod is the Broadclub Cuttlefish, also called sepia latimanus.
This is a type of cuttlefish living in shallow water in the pacific, that can change it's colors just like most other cuttlefish.
When these animals are hunting, sometimes they will change their colors almost like flashing lights to try and mesmerize or hypnotize their prey until they attack and gobble them up!
Another type of cephalopod is the Plectronocerida.
These are an extinct type of cephalopod like a nautilus that had a shell on it's back.
These cephalopods would crawl along the bottom of the water and eat food, almost like an underwater snail.
Another cephalopod is the White Spotted Octopus, also known as the grass octopus or callistoctopus macropus.
It is red, with white spots and can grow to be about 5 feet wide.
If it gets scared, it's reds and whites will get very bright to try and scare off predators.
This octopus hunts its prey by wrapping its body around a big piece of coral, and then feeling around with its arms to try and find small fish or other animals that hide out in the coral.
Some other fish like groupers will follow this octopus around to try and catch fish that try to run away when the octopus comes to the coral to hunt.
Another type of cephalopod is the Glass Squid, also known as the cockatoo squid, cranch squid, cranchiid or bathyscaphoid squid.
This type of squid lives in the ocean near the surface or in the middle of the water all over the world.
They are from about 4 inches long to almost 10 feet long.
They get their name because they are almost totally see through, almost like a floating piece of glass!
Because they are so clear, these squids can hide out so that their prey can not see them coming, and their predators can not come eat them.
This animal is extinct now, but it was part of the ammonite family, which look a lot like the shelled nautilus, but are actually their own family in the world of animals.
These Parapuzosias would grow to be around 2 feet wide, but one person found pieces of an old shell showing one that was over 8 feet tall!
Another type of cephalopod is the Giant Cuttlefish.
This is the largest cuttlefish in the world, and they live around the southern part of Australia.
They are very colorful and can change their whole body to white, red or yellow, and very bright or very dark to try and either get the attention of other cuttlefish, or to confuse the animals they are hunting.
They also can raise up little bumps on their skin to make themselves look either bumpy or smooth, so they can look like rocks, sand or seaweed.
The giant cuttlefish is so popular in Australia, that for a festival someone made a 42 foot long parade float shaped like a cuttlefish, named "Stobie the Disco Cuttlefish" that could move its arms, blink its eyes, and had flashing lights and dance music.
This octopus lives on the sea floor, and tries to look like other animals.
It can change it's body color, puff it's head up, wave its arms around or hold its body in a certain way to look like other animals.
Sometimes it will try and look like it's prey like a crab, so that it can sneak up on the crab and eat it before the crab even figures out there is a dangerous octopus nearby.
Other times it will try and look like a poisonous animal like a lionfish, so that predators that might attack the octopus will stay away and not try to eat it.
Theses octopuses have been seen trying to look like a lion fish, sea snake, flat fish, jelly fish, crab or even a sponge!
They are very smart animals, and will decide which animal to try and look like depending on which other animal they meet.
These smart cephalopods have been seen looking like up to 15 different animals!
This type of squid lives in the cold deep part of the ocean, over 2,000 feet below the sea.
It is very cold and dark at this part of the ocean, and there is not a lot of oxygen or food to eat.
Even though they are called the vampire squid, they do not drink blood of other animals.
They eat waste that is floating in the water.
These vampire squids are also kind of like an octopus, so they are their own type of squid and octopus cephalopod called "Vampyromorphida".
Just like the cirroteuthis octopus that looks like it is wearing a skirt, these cephalopods have their arms all webbed together.
Inside their webbed area their arms all have little poky looking spikes called cirri on them.
They are not sharp, and the vampire squid uses them to help collect the garbage food that is floating around in the water.
If they get scared, they can light up their body with photophores that make them glow.
Mostly just at the tips of their arms and the top of their head, but their whole body can make light.
They can also spit out some glowing goo, and sometimes they flip their webbed skirt area inside out and wrap it around their head to try and scare off someone who is trying to eat them.
These cephalopods can have black skin with a red eye, or red skin with a blue eye, so you can see why someone thought they looked like a scary vampire squid!
But mostly they are just a harmless animal floating deep in the ocean eating garbage and trying not to get eaten by a bigger animal.
Another type of cephalopod is the Lituites Nautilus.
This is an extinct type of nautilus from long ago that we know about because of fossils found in the ocean.
Just like the Chambered Nautilus it has a coiled body like a type of snail shell, but then it straightens out at the end like the ancient Orthoceras Nautilus we learned about.
Another type of cephalopod is the Argonaut Octopus.
These octopuses are sometimes called a "paper nautilus" because the female argonaut will make a hard shell to lay their eggs in, and they will have part of their body in this shell, curled up and looking like a nautilus.
They lay their eggs in the shell, and then sometimes even after the eggs hatch they keep the shell and live in it.
The male argonaut does not have a shell. Both the males and females have eight arms just like all other octopuses.
Another type of cephalopod is the Bigfin Reef Squid.
These squids get their name from the big fin on their mantle that goes all the way around it.
With their shape and the way they swim, sometimes people think they are cuttlefish.
They grow to around 13 inches in just a few months, and they only live for less than a year.
Their body has a lot of different colors, and can be white, yellow, pink, brown or purple.
Sometimes when light is shined on them their body will reflect white, green or red, but they do not glow in the dark like some other cephalopods.
Because these squids grow very fast, there are people out there who try to have squid farms in the ocean, almost like cows, chicken or pigs.
Another type of cephalopod is the Flamboyant Cuttlefish, also known as Metasepia pfefferi.
These cuttlefish are very small, only about 3 inches long.
They are very brightly colored, and also just as poisonous as the blue ringed octopus!
Like other cuttlefish it has a cuttlebone inside its body that it uses to help it swim, but its cuttlebone is very small, so it mostly just walks around on the bottom of the sea.
It is usually a dark brown color, but when it is attacked it changes its colors to patterns of black, dark brown, white, red and yellow.
When it is walking along the sea floor it waves around its red tipped upper arms to try and tell predators that it is poisonous.
We just learned about the Firefly Squid that can light itself up.
Another cephalopod is the Orthoceras.
This is a type of nautilus that is extinct, which means they aren't around anymore.
We only know they existed because people have found fossils from a long time ago.
They are a type of nautilus, but very different because their body is shaped like a long cone.
Another type of cephalopod is the Firefly Squid also known as watasenia scintillans.
They are usually about 3 inches long, and live in the Pacific Ocean.
This type of squid is bioluminescent.
That means parts of its body light up, kind of like a firefly.
There are tiny little dots all over the squid's body with organs called photophores.
The squid uses these photophores to light up, which makes small fish swim toward them, and they eat them up!
It also uses its body lights to make its top bright and bottom dark so it can hide from other predators.
When it is looking around for another firefly squid it will light up it's whole body as a signal.
This is an octopus that has webbing in between its arms holding them together.
It almost looks like an octopus wearing a dress!
It can grow to be almost five feet long, and is usually white or purple.
Just like the dumbo octopus, this octopus has fins on its head that it can flap.
They live in the deep sea in cold water, like the Arctic ocean or the south pacific near Antarctica.
Scientists have not been able to find a lot of these, because they live over 6,000 feet deep in the ocean, where there is almost no light.
Another cephalopod is the Grimpoteuthis, also known as the "Dumbo Octopus".
This octopus has fins on the side of it's head that look almost like ears, and it flaps these fins almost like dumbo the elephant flapping its ears to fly.
They swim along the ocean floor floating along, and then they jump on their prey and swallow it whole.
(from: wikipedia - grimpoteuthis)
Another type of cephalopod is the Blue Ringed Octopus.
This type of octopus is very small, only about 4 to 8 inches wide even including its arms.
Their body is yellow, with glowing blue circles on it.
This is nature's way of warning everyone to stay back because they are very poisonous, and deadly to humans!
If they bite a person, they have a type of neurotoxin poison that attacks the nerves in the body and make it so they can't move any muscles.
