Male cuttlefish get violent for sex

When it comes to courtship, male cuttlefish are douchebags, and will steal another’s romantic partner for sex.

Like other cephalopods such as octopi, cuttlefish can change the color of their skin to blend in with their environment. But cuttlefish also practice intricate, aggressive courtship rituals that often lead to violent fights among males.

While scientists have known of these mating altercations for a while now, this violent behavior has rarely been observed in the creatures’ natural habitat. This is what makes this recently uploaded video below so special, because it shows males fighting over a female under the sea instead of in the lab.



In 2011, Justine Allen of Providence, Rhode Island’s Brown University and Derya Akkaynak of Israel’s University of Haifa went on a research dive in the Aegean Sea, located off Turkey’s coast. Armed with an underwater camera, the biologists were observing a female cuttlefish for the purpose of studying the species’ camouflage ability.

Then a male cuttlefish appeared, and before long the two creatures were mating. Not long after the deed was done, however, another male approached the pair and intruded upon their post-coital pillow talk.

Thus began a battle between the males, which turned into a flurry of tentacles and ink.

“I just remember there being a lot of ink everywhere – so much ink,” said Allen.

The fight lasted three rounds. The third round got particularly violent, but in the end, the first male vanquished the intruder, sending him bolting away with his proverbial tail tucked between his proverbial legs.

According to the scientists, each of the males used those three rounds to assess his rival’s skills as well as his own, which explains why the fights escalated in intensity with every round.

The struggle was significantly more vicious than those observed in the lab.

The video confirms that wild male cuttlefish employ a variety of tactics to defeat romantic rivals. Such tactics include squirting ink while propelling themselves quickly around the water, ramping up the darkness of the stripes around their skin and eyes, tentacle wrestling, and biting.

The study was published in The American Naturalist. — TJD, GMA News