Hello again, it's been a hot minute,
I have been eager studying the evolution of Cephalopods recently, and it motivated me to dig out all of these old Cephalopod concepts I had from a failed project. These are all fictional, speculative species that could exist on an alternate version of earth.
A giant, deep-sea Cirrate Octopod whose body is round, flabby and gelatinous. The beast itself is similar in length and girth to a small car.
A deep-sea relative of cuttlefish, that stands on the abyssal sea-floor using its modified mantle and arms. Its habits and method of predation resembles that of the tripod fish.
A giant Cranch Squid, similar in size to a Colossal Squid but much more slender and elongate, with specialized arms and tentacles.
An enormous, transparent pelagic Octopod, as long as a grown man. It feeds in the upper pelagic zone at night, using its glassy body as camouflage.
A small Cranch squid which inflates its body as a defense, and is covered in pointed, chitinous spines.
A large Cirrate Octopod that drifts upside-down in the Abyssopelagic Zone, snagging particles of marine-snow which forms the bulk of its diet.
A large, plump Cranch squid that is able to inflate its body as a defense against predators.
A large deep-sea Squid with very long arms and tentacles, but a proportionally small body. It feeds by seizing abyssal fish with its clawed tentacles.
A huge predatory deep-sea squid that reaches as much as 17 meters long, it feeds mostly on large abyssal squids including its own kind.
A smallish, predatory Belemnite that seizes passing prey with its fiercely clawed arms.
A small, parasitic squid that adheres to large fish and cetaceans using a fused arm-array that is covered in large suckers.
A fair-sized Argonaut Octopod, the female resides within a ridged paper-nautilus that allows it to drift at the surface and be propelled by the wind, like a Velella jellyfish.
A fair sized relative of Alloteuthis squid that has a very elongated mantle and inner pen.
A large pelagic squid with wing-like side-fins, allowing it to propel itself very fast in both directions.
A small, disc-shaped nocturnal-cuttlefish that lives in sandy-bottomed nearshore-waters and communicates using bioluminescent organs.
A kind of small, flattened Octopus that lives partially buried in sandy-bottomed shallows in order to ambush prey.
A smallish Belemnite with clutching, clawed arms that it uses to seize prey even as large as itself.
A large abyssal squid that is covered by scaly armor derived from the rough warts seen in related squid. These growths have become chitinous and serve as protection from some predators.
A large, deep-sea squid that hunts by using bioluminescent organs to attract prey.
A small abyssal squid that seizes smaller invertebrates using a raptorial organ formed from its 2 fused feeding tentacles.
A large octopus found exclusively within seaweed and kelp groves in colder shallow seas. It uses its profuse covering of skin growths and chromatophores to camouflage itself.
A small abyssal squid that bears its arms and eyes on stalks, these features are derived from the shape of its ancestor's larval-form.
A relative of the flamboyant-cuttlefish that lives in cold southern waters and paces along the sea-floor methodically, in order to stalk prey from ambush.
A mid-sized, fast-swimming squid with large claws on its tentacle-whips.
A short-armed abyssal squid with exceedingly large eyes that allow it to hunt glowing arthropod prey.
A squid that lives in the abyssopelagic zone, where it sculls along slowly with 3 pairs of fins.
A smallish, deep sea squid that has many side-fins derived from a single pair of fins splitting multiple times.
An abyssal Squid with long, thread-like arms and tentacles.
A pelagic squid that hunts by hovering in the water column using its large, undulating side-fins.
A deep-sea Bobtail-Squid that has very short arms and very long feeding tentacles.
An abyssopelagic squid whose side-fins are profusely covered in stiff, hair-like skin fibers.
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