Squid Sex

[Jenbowes]

No, I don't have a picture of it. I have a question about the egg sacks.

If I remember my 1992 Zoology correctly, the female squid has a bunch of eggs just floating in her mantle, and the boy squid swims up to her with the romantic gift of a spermatazoa packet (awww, yummy!). He then says hey baby and shoves it up into her mantle, then swims away, without leaving his number or even pretending that he'll call! Then, the eggs get fertilized and she ...

does what?

Are the fertilized eggs dropped, like salmon? Do they come out in that beautiful flowered clump, or does she "lay" them one by one? How and by what are they attached to one another?

This inquiring mind wants to know and doesn't have time to go back to college and actually pay attention in Zoology.

 

[smellzlikefish]

I know in the Hawaiian Sepioteuthis lessoniana, the eggs are attached one by one to rocks to eventually form a clump of eggs. I have pictures of the clumps and have even bred them, but I'm not at home right now. Their dominance/subordinate/sneaker male relationships are complex and rather intriguing. They have the usual large male being accepted by the female strategy, but the subdominant males will wait for the female and dominant male to be distracted at feeding time before swimming up and depositing his package. The young have a year to mature, breed, and die.