This week is our annual celebration of all things octopus, squid, and cuttlefish, and we're talking all about inking.

So if they have a ton of mucus in the ink they can make these ink ropes think about if you pick up

slime and you pull it for a really really long time. It's Tuesday June 18th and this is Sefflepod week on Science Friday.

I'm Scifry producer Shishana Bucksbaum.

What started as a response to Shark Week about a decade ago has now become a beloved science Friday

tradition and one of the many things that makes Southerlopods special is their ink.

So why do they shoot ink at their predators anyway? What's that ink made of and why did they

evolve this incredible skill? Here is guest host, Annie Minoff with more.

Joining me to talk all about inking is my guest.

Dr. Lauren Simonitis is a research and biological imaging specialist at Florida,

at Florida, Atlantic University, based in Boca Raton, Florida.

Welcome.

Thanks so much for having me.

So let's start with the basics.

What do Suffolk pods use their ink for?

So, Cephalopods use their ink for a variety of different reasons, but they all have to do with social activities mostly.

So one of the biggest ones is anti-predator.

So during a predation event, an ink response is a great way to get out of that situation because ink is really dark in color, so it has a good visual response.

Ink also has a lot of chemicals that smell really strongly or really badly,

so it's a chemical response, but it's also a physical response because it's really gloopy and it can stick all over them,

though it's this physical, chemical, visual trifecta of a predator weapon.

I did not think of ink as gloopy.

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