Cephalopods: Intelligent Morsels of Protein: Distribution of Cephalopods

Over the years, cephalopods have been the subject of a number of good, general knowledge books. Two of them were cowritten by the famous French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. The first, Cousteau and Philipe Diole’s Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence, was extremely popular. A more recent volume is Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein’s The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World. One of the best general resources is Danna Staaf’s Monarchs of the Sea: The Extraordinary 500-Million-Year History of Cephalopods (first published as Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of Cephalopods). Staaf examines the evolution of cephalopods and, in the closing chapters, hypothesizes about their future.

One could not ask for a better illustrated book than Staaf’s The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives: A Natural History of Cephalopods. The title is a bit misleading, as the book covers all members of the molluscan class Cephalopoda. In the first part of the book, Staaf describes the attributes of cephalopods and examines different habitats and the species associated with them. In the second half, she looks at existing species. Sy Montgomery’s Secrets of the Octopus delves into the lives of octopuses specifically. It has the same outline as Staaf’s most recent book: the first section deals with the creatures’ biology, and a second, shorter section describes six-teen species of octopods, illustrating them with full-color photos. Another new book on these groups is Roger Hanlon, Mike Vecchione, and Louise Allcock’s Octopus, Squid, and Cuttlefish: A Visual, Scientific Guide to the Oceans’ Most Advanced Invertebrates.

These newer books provide a lot of good information, but some of the older books on the topic deserve recognition. Kir Nesis’s Cephalopods of the World: Squid, Cuttlefishes, Octopuses, and Allies is a classic. Translated from the Russian by B. S. Levitov and edited by Lourdes Burgess, the book is fully illustrated with black-and-white ink drawings and a section of color photos of a variety of species. Also valuable is Mark Norman’s Cephalopods, a World Guide: Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean, Arctic, Antarctic, which includes both a biological examination of cephalopods and more than eight-hundred photographs of cephalopods taken in their natural habitat. Two slightly older books of note are Martin Moynihan’s Communication and Noncommunication by Cephalopods and Paleontology and Neontology of Cephalopods, edited by Malcolm Clarke and Edwin Royden Trueman. The latter is the last volume in a twelve-volume set, The Mollusca (editor in chief, Karl Wilbur), which comprises nineteen essays that deal with all aspects of cephalopods.

Other books study specific aspects of cephalopod biology. Marison Nixon and J. Z. Young’s The Brains and Lives of Cephalopods explores the brain structure of cephalopods in a systematic fashion. An English academic who spent most summers working at the Zoological Station in Naples, Young discovered squid’s large nerve fiber and the associated synapse. His cowritten book with Nixon was not published until 2003, some five years after Young’s death at age ninety. He was lauded at his death as among the twentieth century’s most influential biologists. Nixon and Young’s book was reprinted in 2011.

Some scholars emphasize geography in their analyses. For instance, James Cosgrove and Neil McDaniel’s Super Suckers: The Giant Pacific Octopus and Other Cephalopods of the Pacific Coast. Mark Norman and Amanda Reid’s Guide to Squid, Cuttlefish, and Octopuses of Australasia focuses on Australia. Reid also wrote Cephalopods of Australia and Sub-Antarctic Territories.

Cephalopod behavior and interactions with other marine life have come under scrutiny in a few monographs. Cephalopods are the targets of various predators. Often, in doing gut analyses of predators, the only part of a squid that researchers can detect is its beak. José Xavier and Yves Cherel’s Cephalopod Beak Guide for the Southern Ocean: An Update on Taxonomy provides a mechanism that allows researchers to determine the importance of squid in the economy of oceans. Hanlon and Messenger’s Cephalopod Behaviour includes topics such as feeding and foraging, reproduction, and communication. Another volume on cephalopod behavior is Cephalopod Neurobiology: Neuroscience Studies in Squid, Octopus, and Cuttlefish, edited by N. Joan Abbott, Roddy Williamson, and Linda Maddock. Reproduction of Marine Invertebrates, the fourth volume of Molluscs: Gastropods and Cephalopods, edited by Arthur Giese and John Pearse, begins with the functional anatomy and histology of cephalopods. It also includes a number of chapters on pathogens and diseases, all illustrated with color photos.