Did you know that Isabella Rossellini writes, co-directs, and stars in a show about reproductive behavior and conservation? The show is called Green Porno. Yes, really!
It has just come to my attention that Season Three includes a squid episode! It's pretty awesome and only a few minutes long, so you should definitely go the website and check it out.
If Isabella Rossellini were a squid, she claims:
"Everyone would want to eat me." So true! Any marine predator (and even some terrestrial and avian predators) that can fit a squid in their mouth will happily devour these swimming protein bars.
"I would give the most passionate twenty-arm embrace." Then she corrects herself, "Twenty. Eighteen. Two are not arms, if you know what I mean." Oh no, no, Isabella, this is not correct! Each squid has eight arms and two tentacles. The two tentacles are retractable, and the squid usually keep them tucked away. They will shoot out to grab prey, but not potential mates, so we're really just talking about a sixteen-arm embrace here.
And whether or not her coy comment is mean to allude to the squid penis, I may as well state that yes, male squid do have penises, but they're not "out there" with the arms and tentacles--they're inside the mantle with all the other reproductive tissue. And, usually the penis is not used to deliver sperm directly to the female; instead, it extrudes sperm packets inside the male's mantle. He then uses one of his arms (specialized for the purpose, though it looks only slightly different from his other arms) to collect these packets and and pass them decorously to the female.
