Cuttlefish
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40 free Cuttlefish trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cuttlefish look like something a child invented: a soft body that hovers like a submarine, skin that repaints itself in the blink of an eye and a squirt of ink for emergencies. They are also some of the smartest animals without a backbone, which is why scientists keep designing odd experiments for them. This quiz turns the best cuttlefish fun facts into questions. It covers their anatomy and senses, how the camouflage works, how they hunt, court and breed, where they live, and how people have cooked with them and borrowed from them for centuries. It suits curious kids, divers, aquarium fans and anyone who has just watched a nature documentary and wants to know more. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up a new fact even when you guess wrong.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many separate hearts pump the blue-green blood of a cuttlefish around its body?
Three
Three hearts share the work: two push blood through the gills and one sends it around the rest of the body.
Q 02Which reddish-brown color, linked with antique photographs, takes its name from the Greek word for cuttlefish?
Sepia
Sepia began as a brown pigment taken from the ink sac of the cuttlefish, and artists drew with it until the 19th century.
Q 03Thanks to their most famous talent, cuttlefish are sometimes nicknamed which reptiles of the sea?
Chameleons
Chameleons of the sea is the nickname, because cuttlefish can change skin color within a second to hide, signal one another or startle predators.
Q 04Cuttlefish mothers coat their egg clusters in ink, making them look very much like which fruit?
Grapes
Grapes are what the inky clusters resemble, and each egg hatches into a miniature version of the adult.
Q 05To test depth perception, scientists fitted cuttlefish with which tiny accessory before screening films of shrimp?
3D glasses
3D glasses with red and blue filters showed that cuttlefish judge distance with both eyes, striking at the place where the shrimp seemed to be.
Q 06Cuttlebone, the chalky internal shell of a cuttlefish, is sold in pet shops as a calcium supplement for which pets?
Caged birds
Caged birds such as parrots peck at it for calcium, and cuttlebone often washes up on beaches after a cuttlefish dies.
Q 07Despite the name, cuttlefish are not fish; they belong to which group of animals?
Mollusks
Mollusks include cuttlefish alongside snails and clams, even though the cuttlefish keeps its shell inside the body, as the cuttlebone.
Q 08Not counting its pair of longer feeding tentacles, how many arms does a cuttlefish have around its mouth?
Eight
Eight arms hold and handle the prey once the pair of longer tentacles has grasped it.
Q 09Cuttlefish in a lab showed self-control by passing an adapted version of which famous experiment devised for children?
Marshmallow test
Marshmallow test results put cuttlefish alongside chimpanzees and crows: they held out for 50 to 130 seconds.
Q 10Besides color, which feature of their skin can cuttlefish change, using bands of circular muscle, to mimic rocks?
Texture
Texture changes when the muscles contract and push fluid up into little spikes, bumps or flat blades.
Q 11Which metal in the oxygen-carrying protein hemocyanin gives cuttlefish blood its unusual blue-green tint?
Copper
Copper does the job that iron does in human blood, but it carries less oxygen, so cuttlefish blood has to flow faster.
Q 12The largest cuttlefish species, up to a meter long with tentacles outstretched, is native to which country's waters?
Australia
Australia is home to the giant cuttlefish, which ranges around the southern half of the coast, from Brisbane to Shark Bay and down to Tasmania.
Q 13In northeast Italy, cuttlefish ink is famously used to turn which classic dish jet black?
Risotto
Risotto al nero is the northeast Italian classic, and across the Adriatic in Croatia the same dish is called crni rižot.
Q 21Which shape describes the smoothly curving pupil in the eye of a cuttlefish?
W-shaped
W-shaped pupils sit in eyes that focus by sliding the whole lens back and forth, rather than reshaping it as mammals do.
Q 22Cuttlefish cannot see color, yet their eyes can perceive which property of light that sharpens contrast?
Polarization
Polarization vision helps cuttlefish hunt silvery fish, whose scales give them away by polarizing light.
Q 23Which dark pigment is the main constituent of cuttlefish ink, alongside mucus?
Melanin
Melanin may do more than hide a cuttlefish: computer simulations suggest it overwhelms the scent receptors of sharks.
Q 14Ground-up cuttlebone, once a goldsmith's polishing powder, was also added to which everyday bathroom product?
Toothpaste
Toothpaste once contained powdered cuttlebone, which was also taken as an antacid.
Q 15By changing the mix of gas and liquid held in its chambered cuttlebone, a cuttlefish controls what?
Buoyancy
Buoyancy is tuned through an organ on the underside of the cuttlebone, which fills its chambers with gas or liquid.
Q 16A cuttlefish can release a blob of ink about its own size, called a pseudomorph, which serves as what?
A decoy
A decoy of ink keeps a predator busy while the cuttlefish swims away, and a wider smoke screen can hide the escape too.
Q 17Cuttlefish rank among the most intelligent invertebrates, yet most species typically live for only how long?
One to two years
One to two years is all most cuttlefish get, and many die soon after they reproduce.
Q 18Which hard mouthpart, hidden at the center of its arms, does a cuttlefish use to break into armored prey?
Beak
Beak bites also deliver venom, which nearly all cephalopods can produce to help kill their prey.
Q 19In Spencer Gulf, which marine mammals have been seen removing the ink and cuttlebone from cuttlefish before eating them?
Dolphins
Dolphins there, Indo-Pacific bottlenoses, use a specialized technique to clean each cuttlefish before swallowing it.
Q 20A courting male cuttlefish can show mating colors on one side of his body while the other side imitates what?
A female
A female pattern on the side facing a rival stops him from interfering, while the courtship display carries on unseen.
Q 24When startled, a cuttlefish jets away by squirting water through which organ, often inking as it goes?
Siphon
Siphon jets are for emergencies; day to day, a cuttlefish cruises by rippling the fins around its mantle.
Q 25Young cuttlefish may prefer to hunt whichever prey they first watched from where?
Inside the egg
Inside the egg, embryos shown crabs went on to hunt crabs after hatching, though hatchlings normally prefer shrimp.
Q 26What happens to the cuttlebone of a cuttlefish that dives deeper than a few hundred meters?
It implodes
It implodes somewhere between 200 and 600 meters down, which is why most cuttlefish keep to shallow seafloors.
Q 27Resting cuttlefish twitch their arms and flash skin patterns in a state resembling which human phenomenon?
REM sleep
REM sleep is the closest match: the common cuttlefish shows predictable bursts of rapid eye movement while it rests.
Q 28In the Greco-Roman world, the brown fluid that cuttlefish squirt was commonly put to which everyday use?
Writing
Writing was its common use in antiquity, when the fluid served as ink; today artificial dyes have mostly replaced the natural pigment.
Q 29Rival male cuttlefish face off using an intense striped display, considered an honest signal, named after which animal?
Zebra
Zebra stripes announce a contest, and a male that means to attack also darkens his face.
Q 30Which shelled sea animal is a cephalopod, making it a relative of cuttlefish, squid and octopuses?
Nautilus
Nautilus species are the only living cephalopods whose shell is still on the outside.