x ow Sst 23 October 1966 Legend of the living fossil Is the beautiful nautilus really a relic from the past? Its “primitive” shell has misled us. ‘Underneath lies a successful and highly specialised creature ‘Martin Wells HE PEARLY nautilus—known to Aristotle, and named ‘by Linneaus—stands on countless shelves throughout the world. Itis a beautiful objec, readily bought from any tourist trap with a sideline in shells, often cut in section to show the elegantly curved vals of the chambers vitin: I features in textbooks as well, a prime example of a “living fossil”, a reminder of past glories now hanging on in a last- ditch action against final extinction. But is nautilus really an vata ween Philadelphia, and a worksh« ‘ta recent symposium in Philadelphia, and a workshop at Baym Mawr Collage, in Pennayvania Brace Sanne od Paul Bond of Bryn Mawr brought together “most of the people who have ever worked on this remarkable living animal. Palaconto- ogists, “physiologists, bio- physicists and geneticists met fo review the state of our knowledge about nautilus, Evidence is growing that itis in truth a specialised organ- ism that has survived, where is, ancesors eventually failed, by adopting a strat very diferent hom that of forebears. At first glance, Nautilus is quite plainly a’ relic. Geo- ogists are instantly struck by itsresemblance to fossil forms that date back into Palaco- zoic times. The view that we are somehow dealing with an ancient animal is confirmed by zoologists, who find that it isa cephalopod—a relative of the squids and octopuses— with some apparently very primitive features. " Quite ‘apart from the shell (no other living cephalopod hasan ‘external shell, although most have internal traces ofa shelled. ancestry), there is the matter of the eyes. Nautilus has a lens- less pinhole eye, a much less sophisticated device than the focusable eyes of the newcomers, such as the octopus. ‘Nautilus also has a blood system with extensive sinuses where squids and octopuses have a fully enclosed circulation, with arteries, capillaries and veins. It lacks branchial hearts to ‘boost the return of blood through the gill, and it has two pairs of gills instead of one. (This last trait has even been seen as evidence that the molluscs evolved from a segmented ances- tor in the distant past.) Finally, its central nervous system is undeveloped compared with’ the complicated brains of ‘octopus and squid. All hiss of considerable interest to zoologsts intersted in origins. It also intrigues geologists, who would very much Ii to know, for praceal as well as theoretical reasons, whether ths ie iin and eof the nau really i a good indication of how sl lopods lived in the past way that fossils are distributed depends on their ecology as ing animals. So knowing something about the erstwhile festyle of fossilised nautiloids and ammonites can help in ‘An old relic, ora ereature cleverly designed forthe seas? defining sedimentary layers. Stratigraphy in tum allows geologists to locate oil and other desirable commodities buried in the rocks, “The search for the truth about nautilus is difficult. For a start, few people have ever seen the animal alive, and even fewer have observed in its habitat. Th reasons re simple it lives off the steep slopes of fringi in water 100 deey vers. It is widespread throughout the Indo-Pacific, but it is difficult to assess its distribution in detail because dead shells float and are carried by ocean currents. To discover its true distribution, researchers must catch the’ animal in traps baited with carrion and set in 100 to 400 metres of water, xno mean feat from the smali boats that are likely to be available on remote coral islands. ‘The animals have been collected from a variety of locations, but this is known to be a minimal list (Figure 1, overleaf). There are tantalising records of live specimens and fresh shells from as far afield as Japan and Kenya. Nautilus’ can now be trapped, tagged, telemetered and even transported, at a price, to aquaria throughout the world, So we are begin ning to know quite abit about its behaviour. All five species live in deep, water among the rubble and down, nto the fine mud off eet lopes. None can penetrate far into the abyss: the shells implode at around metres. Nautilus lives and hunts along the bottom cca ny ang ape St id we never catch any) and is active day and night, At night it migrates up the reef slope into comparatively shallow water, and, ‘macromphalus has sometimes been found there by scuba divers. But it cannot remain long in shallow waters, as temperatures above 24 °C soon prove lethal. ‘We do not know what it eats. Certainly it is attracted to ‘dead fish and meat in traps, and it sceks out the moulted exoskeletons of crustaceans, which are presumably a valuable source of calcium for the massive shells. All other cephalo- pods are predators, but itis difficult to believe that the rela- tively slow-moving nautilus could rely on fish or crustaceans caught in the open sea. The stomach contents of individuals from traps are not very informative in this respect because ‘raps, like aquaria, resirict the movement of potential prey, besides concentrating other organisms attracted by the bait. ‘Nautilus probably finds its food by smell, swimming upeurrent to carrion perceived ata distance and then turing in the direction of maximum intensity when the extend. tentacles come close t0 the food. Its eyesight is predictably ‘poor, and the image formed by tive eyes will be blurred, the ‘more so when the pupils are widely dilated, as photographs >consequences. One is that it is very poor at concentrat light, so that sensitivity i low, about {/30th ofthat of fish eye fsa dimensions, The ther deft x that it wll produce a halfway decent image only if the iris is sto down to a pinhole, At the depths where nautilus spends most of its time the iris opens up considerably, sacrificing its already limited ability to form images in a quest for the faint light available. Not, one would have thought, a very useful sort of eye. The nervous system has, nevertheiess, evolved a sophisticated stabilising system, so. that the eyes remain steady despite the rocking caused by the pulsed jet. The animal is quite plainly using its eyes for something, despite the fuzzy images. ‘The creature has a well-developed “optomotor response” Tests show that nautilus will jet to hold the visual world steady ifa striped background is moved around its aquarium. ‘This response can be used to determine visual acuity, by using finer and finer stripes until the behaviour fails. Nautilus, on evidence, can distinguish stimuli at around’ 7° apart—Octopus vulgaris is about 25 times more acute (and a person is about 25 times better than an octopus). | Soit seems very unlikely that nautilus hunts by sight. Sight is, nevertheless, an essential part of the sensory equipment of the animals, because a blind nautilus would have no way of determining its movement relative to the bottom as soon as it took off to jet about. If you wish to swim up-current, you ‘must have some means of determining drift, and that can be done only visually. Even a rather poor eye is better than nothing 180, animal is almost certainly able to detect dif over ‘the ground and orientate correctly to currents. Surprisingly, it also moves towards light. Quite what part attraction to lights plays in its life is uncertain; maybe dead bodies glow in the dark and certainly some of the crustaceans with which it produce luminescence that might help to guide ‘pautlus to is food. The animal also has sense organs (Sal0- cysts) that determine its orientation in space. It rapidly tects any ‘iting of the shell, and makes compensatory ‘movements with the funnel to direct the jet and right itself ‘The eyes remain stable as it rocks in jet propulsion, and it * Now Seber 29 October la > show them to be at depth. The eye of nautilus has no lens. This has two important Figure 1 Nautilus lives in deep water throughout the Indo- Pubic aut dead shls at bn ootan turer, Caching animals at depth of 400 metres is no mean feat the sea surface rather ‘and feeding, it is ‘chambered and really isn'ta shell either. It is produced, not by the mantle, but by two ofthe arms, which secrete a mucous mate the sa. “The dwarf males ave no “shell” and Sea er own permnrs ‘to the female. =i | found ofa he am ir sometmes detached fom the tale, in the femal’ mantic cavity whereas Sst | dered a8 worm, Hacocontus ganglionic nervous, system plainly placed it among the annelid worms. It was also, plainly, rather odd, and several ‘were written On the mater in the middle of the lst century before the story was blown by the discovery of intact males, to, one assumes, the deep embarrassment of more 1: Argonauta, the ‘paper nautilus’ Supericialy ike nautls, Argonaut is @ kind of ociopus The genus Hectocotylus, was plainly parasitic (it had no gut), and the presence