Why are there no videos of flying squids? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

First, for the benefit of anyone who thinks this is a joke: Flying squid, as they say these days, is a thing.

Squid can pump water into the cavity where their gills are—the mantle cavity—and expel it quickly through a nozzle-like opening, the hyponome, causing them to “jet-propel” themselves forward in the water. There are well-documented cases of some squid species jet-propelling themselves up and out of the water completely. When they do this, they seem to spread their fins and arms in such a way as to generate some lift, and they fold their fins and arms as they’re about to exit or reenter the water. So this is not just a ballistic jump, like a dolphin’s leap; the squid have some degree of control. These squid also continue jetting water as they pass through the air, generating thrust as well as lift. So the term “flying squid” seems to be accurate, and researchers prefer the term “flying squid” to “gliding squid”, even though squid are no competition for seagulls or albatrosses when it comes to aerial capabilities.

I came across a review paper by Maciá et al., published in 2004 in the Journal of Molluscan Studies and available online on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/pub... The paper only lists fourteen published reports of “flying squid” between 1892 and 2004. Maciá and colleagues point out that the behavior seems to be fairly rare. They mention some observations of squid being pursued by a predator and not gliding, even when it seemed as though they should be able to.

Since then, of course, there have been some more reports. There was a famous report on “flying squid” in the northwest Pacific that actually got some quantitative data on how far and fast these squid can glide, and how their behavior enables them to glide. (Muramatsu et al. 2013, Marine Biology 160: 1171–1175. I was able to find the full paper here: https://afanporsaber.com/wp-cont...)

There was also a report from 2010, when a retired geologist named Bob Hulse just happened to be on a cruise ship off the coast of Brazil when he spotted flying squid and was able to get some shots with his digital camera. Since it was set on burst mode, the photos came at precise intervals, and scientists were able to measure speed and other parameters. (See Squid can fly to save energy. The technical paper is O’Dor et al., 2013, Deep Sea Research II 95: 113–118, linked here, but payment is required to access the full text: Squid rocket science: How squid launch into air. Note that in both pictures, you can see trails of water that the squid is jetting as it flies)So why don’t we have more evidence? First of all, flights don’t last long, just a few seconds—and they don't rise very high. And given that only 14 cases were published between 1892 and 2004, this is a fairly rare behavior to observe. So to capture a flying squid on video, you would have to be pointing your video camera in exactly the right place at the right time.

Second, squid tend to live out in the blue water away from shore. You’re not likely to spot flying squid while you’re standing on the beach. Most reports come from ships out at sea. Again, you’d have to be in just the right place at the right time.

Third, many squid (and other marine critters) practice diel migration; they stay in deep water during the day, then rise into shallower waters at night. During the day, they’d usually be much too deep in the water to go flying. Ron O’Dor seems to think that squid are likeliest to go flying at night. He mentions instances of sailors discovering squid on the decks of their boats in the early morning—evidently the squid went flying at night, and unfortunately crash-landed on the boats. (Unfortunately for the squid, that is. I assume the fishermen got a nice calamari snack out of the encounter.)

So that’s probably why there’s no video footage—or should I say, very little video footage. After I’d written this, a commentor clued me in to what looks like a flying squid caught on video, purely by chance, in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. It does seem to jet both ink and water out when it breaches the surface at 0:03. Look carefully on the right-hand side of the frame. If that is in fact a flying squid—and I’d be willing to accept it is, although I can’t see it clearly—then this guy was very lucky to capture it on video.

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