The Brains and Lives of Cephalopods

by Marion Nixon

The book describes the brains and sense organs of 57 of the 139 genera of the class Cephalopoda, many in great detail, as well as a variety of morphological features. The text is well-illustrated with fully labelled line drawings and photomicrographs. Attention is drawn to the many gaps in our knowledge of these intriguing marine invertebrates with a view to stimulating future research.

406 pages, Hardcover

First published November 6, 2003

Reviews

[Mark Desrosiers]

If you're willing to get past all the bio-jargon, and the lack of any glorious photos or illustrations of squid & octopus in the wild (lots of dead specimens and "sagittal sections" here), this is a fascinating read. Did you know that the wily, sinister cuttlefish is capable of active learning? (Also, it has a very cool method of going swiftly vertical to capture prey.) Or that the cloud of ink ejected by many cephalopods is officially called the pseudomorph? (nice)

And don't even get me started on those cromatophores which make so make so many squids & octopuses so very alluring and psychedelic.

My only gripe is that this is mostly descriptive -- there seems to be no speculation why cephalopod eyeballs are so evolutionarily advanced, for example.