![]() The hatchlings are called paralarvae, a term that was invented to describe all baby octopus and squid. Another is that they're neither at the surface or the bottom, but floating in the middle of a vast three-dimensional environment. That's one reason they're so hard to find. Laboratory experiments indicate that it takes only a week for Humboldt squid to develop from fertilization to hatching, so egg masses are ephemeral things. The jars were full of squid eggs, which began to hatch that very night, and later genetic analysis confirmed they were baby Humboldt squid. They collected parts of it in jars and brought them back to the boat. About 16 meters (52 feet) below the surface, they swam into a gelatinous blob the size of a small car. On the same 2006 cruise where the females spawned on deck, some scientists went diving in the middle of the Sea of Cortez to collect jellyfish. The math suggests that a successful female may spawn 10-20 masses in her lifetime.įinding that one egg mass was a fantastic accident. Female Humboldt squid have about 10 million eggs each, and the only egg mass ever found and studied by scientists contained between half a million and a million eggs. She'll probably continue to eat and grow as she spawns the rest of her eggs, over the course of a few weeks or months. Mama Humboldt releases the egg mass into the open ocean and goes about her business. In the center of her arms is her mouth, with its surrounding buccal membrane and the stored spermatophores and spermatangia, so this position allows the sperm to finally do their duty and fertilize the eggs.Īs in almost all squid, there's no parental care. Here's our working hypothesis for how an egg mass is created: the female mixes eggs and jelly inside her mantle, squirts this mixture out of her funnel, then holds it in her arms. On a research cruise in the Gulf of California in 2006, several females in aquaria on the deck of the ship spawned, but it happened in the middle of the night and no one saw them do it. ![]() Spawning itself has never been directly observed. ![]() (We know this because successful laboratory fertilization of Humboldt squid eggs requires the addition of oviducal gland extract.) Jelly from the nidamental glands does not seem to be necessary for development, but provides the structure of the egg mass, and may repel predators and parasites. The oviducal glands coat each egg with jelly that facilitates development. She has two different glands that produce two different kinds of jelly. When a female's eggs are ripe, her first task is to mix them with jelly inside her mantle. Scientists can't determine whether a Humboldt squid is male or female by looking at the outside, and it's possible that the squid aren't totally sure either. Rarely, they might even be found on a male squid. Somehow, the sperm from inside the spermatophores migrates into these spermatangia, but the mechanism remains a mystery.Īs well as on the buccal membrane, spermatophores are sometimes found attached to a female's arms or head. You may also see spermatangia little whitish pimples full of sperm. If you look on the reddish-purple membrane around the squid's beak and see soft white needles, a centimeter or less in length, these are spermatophores. The most common place to find stored spermatophores on a female’s body is her buccal membrane the area of tissue surrounding her mouth. Professor Gilly may have seen a couple mating once, in the Gulf of California, but the experience was short on intimate details.Ī female Humboldt squid can mate and store sperm from a young age. Some other species of squid aggregate in predictable places to mate and spawn, but no such behavior is known for Humboldt squid. Most of what we know about Humboldt squid reproduction is educated guesswork. Females keep these spermatophores until they are ready to spawn, at which time they'll use the stored sperm to fertilize their eggs before releasing them into the water in a huge gelatinous mass. Also like all squid, Humboldt males package their sperm into spermatophores, which are passed to females during mating. So how do Humboldt squid make more Humboldt squid? Like all squid species, they have separate male and female sexes. Biology's ultimate mandate is to reproduce itself.
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