Nautilus

The nautilus (from the Latin form of the original Ancient Greek: ναυτίλος, 'sailor') is a pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina.

It comprises six living species in two genera, the type of which is the genus Nautilus. Though it more specifically refers to species Nautilus pompilius, the name chambered nautilus is also used for any of the Nautilidae. All are protected under CITES Appendix II.

Nautilidae, both extant and extinct, are characterized by involute or more or less convolute shells that are generally smooth, with compressed or depressed whorl sections, straight to sinuous sutures, and a tubular, generally central siphuncle. Having survived relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, nautiluses represent the only living members of the subclass nautiloidea, and are often considered "living fossils".

The first and oldest fossil of Chambered Nautilus displayed at Philippine National Museum.

The word nautilus is derived from the Greek ναυτίλος nautílos and originally referred to the paper nautilus of the genus Argonauta, which are actually octopuses. The word nautílos literally means "sailor", as paper nautiluses were thought to use two of their arms as sails.

Cirri
The "tentacles" of the nautili are actually cirri (singular: cirrus), composed of long, soft, flexible appendages which are retractable into corresponding hardened sheaths. Unlike the 8–10 head appendages of coleoid cephalopods, nautiluses have many cirri. In the early embryonic stages of nautilus development a single molluscan foot differentiates into a total of 60–90 cirri, varying even within a species. Nautilus cirri also differ from the tentacles of some coleoids in that they are non-elastic and lack pads or suckers. Instead, nautilus cirri adhere to prey by means of their ridged surface. Nautili have a powerful grip, and attempts to take an object already grasped by a nautilus may tear away the animal's cirri, which will remain firmly attached to the surface of the object. The main cirri emerge from sheaths which cohere into a single firm fleshy mass. Also, the pair of cirri before the eye (pre-ocular) and the pair of cirri behind the eye (post-ocular) are separate from the others. These are more evidently grooved, with more pronounced ridges. They are extensively ciliated and are believed to serve an olfactory purpose.

Digestive system
The radula is wide and distinctively has nine teeth.

The mouth consists of a parrot-like beak made up of two interlocking jaws capable of ripping the animal's food— mostly crustaceans— from the rocks to which they are attached.​ Males can be superficially differentiated from females by examining the arrangement of tentacles around the buccal cone: males have a spadix organ (shaped like a spike or shovel) located on the left side of the cone making the cone look irregular, whereas the buccal cone of the female is bilaterally symmetrical.

The crop is the largest portion of the digestive tract, and is highly extensible. From the crop, food passes to the small muscular stomach for crushing, and then goes past a digestive caecum before entering the relatively brief intestine.

Circulatory system
Like all cephalopods, the blood of the nautilus contains hemocyanin, which is blue in its oxygenated state. There are two pairs of gills which are the only remnants of the ancestral metamerism to be visible in extant cephalopods.​ Oxygenated blood arrives at the heart through four ventricles and flows out to the animal's organs through distinct aortas but returns through veins which are too small and varied to be specifically described. The one exception to this is the vena cava, a single large vein running along the underside of the crop into which nearly all other vessels containing deoxygenated blood empty. All blood passes through one of the four sets of filtering organs (composed of one pericardial appendage and two renal appendages) upon leaving the vena cava and before arriving at the gills for re-oxygenation. Blood waste is emptied through a series of corresponding pores into the pallial cavity.

Nervous system
The central component of the nautilus nervous system is the oesophageal nerve ring which is a collection of ganglia, commissures, and connectives that together form a ring around the animal's oesophagus. From this ring extend all of the nerves forward to the mouth, tentacles, and funnel; laterally to the eyes and rhinophores; and posteriorly to the remaining organs.

The nerve ring does not constitute what is typically considered a cephalopod "brain": the upper portion of the nerve ring lacks differentiated lobes, and most of the nervous tissue appears to focus on finding and consuming food (i.e., it lacks a "higher learning" center). Nautili also tend to have rather short memory spans, and the nerve ring is not protected by any form of brain case.

Shell
Nautili are the sole living cephalopods whose bony body structure is externalized as a planispiral shell. The animal can withdraw completely into its shell and close the opening with a leathery hood formed from two specially folded tentacles. The shell is coiled, aragonitic, nacreous and pressure-resistant, imploding at a depth of about 800 m (2,600 ft). The nautilus shell is composed of two layers: a matte white outer layer, and a striking white iridescent inner layer. The innermost portion of the shell is a pearlescent blue-gray. The osmeña pearl, contrarily to its name, is not a pearl, but a jewellery product derived from this part of the shell.

Internally, the shell divides into camerae (chambers), the chambered section being called the phragmocone. The divisions are defined by septa, each of which is pierced in the middle by a duct, the siphuncle. As the nautilus matures, it creates new, larger camerae and moves its growing body into the larger space, sealing the vacated chamber with a new septum. The camerae increase in number from around 4 at the moment of hatching to 30 or more in adults.

The shell coloration also keeps the animal cryptic in the water. When seen from above, the shell is darker in color and marked with irregular stripes, which helps it blend into the dark water below. The underside is almost completely white, making the animal indistinguishable from brighter waters near the surface. This mode of camouflage is called countershading.

The nautilus shell presents one of the finest natural examples of a logarithmic spiral, although it is not a golden spiral. The use of nautilus shells in art and literature is covered at nautilus shell.

Size
N. pompilius is the largest species in the genus. One form from Indonesia and northern Australia, once called N. repertus, may reach 25.4 cm (10.0 in) in diameter. However, most nautilus species never exceed 20 cm (8 in). Nautilus macromphalus is the smallest species, usually measuring only 16 cm (6+1⁄2 in). A dwarf population from the Sulu Sea (Nautilus pompilius suluensis) is even smaller, with a mean shell diameter of 11.56 cm (4.55 in).