Chambered Nautilus
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| Chambered Nautilus | ||||||||||||||
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| Nautilus pompilius Linnaeus, 1758 |
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The Chambered Nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) is the best known species of nautilus. The shell, when cut away as in the photograph below, reveals a lining of lustrous nacre, and displays a nearly perfect equiangular spiral. It has primitive eyes compared to other cephalopods, mostly because they have no lens. Their eyes are comparable to a pinhole camera. It has about 90 tentacles and no suckers which is also different from other cephalopods. This nocturnal animal has a pair of rhinophores, which detect chemicals and uses olfaction and chemotaxis to find its food.
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[edit] Subspecies
Two subspecies of N. pompilius have been described:
- Nautilus pompilius pompilius
- Nautilus pompilius suluensis
N. p. pompilius is by far the most common and widespread of all nautiluses. It is sometimes called the Emperor Nautilus due to its large size. The distribution of N. p. pompilius covers the Andaman Sea east to Fiji and southern Japan south to the Great Barrier Reef. Exceptionally large specimens with a shell diameter of up to 268 mm[1] have been recorded from Indonesia and northern Australia. This giant form was described as Nautilus repertus, however most scientists do not consider it a separate species.
N. p. suluensis is a much smaller animal, restricted to the Sulu Sea in the southwestern Philippines, after which it is named. The largest recorded specimen measured 148 mm in shell diameter.[1]
[edit] In literature and art
Small natural history collections were common in mid-1800s Victorian homes, and chambered nautilus shells were popular decorations.
The Chambered Nautilus is the title and subject of a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, in which he admires the "ship of pearl" and the "silent toil/That spread his lustrous coil/Still, as the spiral grew/He left the past year's dwelling for the new." He compares his life to the creature that once was in the shell, building its body and growing over time, his soul being the creature and the body being the shell. He looks at how the creature leaves the shell behind to be free, and speaks of how his own soul shall do this, bringing him into Heaven. He concludes with the peroration:
- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
- As the swift seasons roll!
- Leave thy low-vaulted past!
- Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
- Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
- Till thou at length art free,
- Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
A painting by Andrew Wyeth, entitled "Chambered Nautilus," shows a woman in a canopied bed; the composition and proportions of the bed and the window behind it mirror those of a chambered nautilus lying on a nearby table.
The popular Russian rock band Nautilus Pompilius (Наутилус Помпилиус) is named after the Chambered Nautilus.
American composer and commentator Deems Taylor wrote a cantata entitled The Chambered Nautilus in 1916.
 Cutaway of a nautilus shell showing the chambers |
 Empty nautilus shell, whole |
 Nautilus pompilius in aquarium |
 Internal anatomy of Nautilus pompilius |
[edit] References
- ^ Pisor, D. L. (2005). Registry of World Record Size Shells, 4th edition, Snail's Pace Productions and ConchBooks, p. 93.
- Norman, M. 2000. Cephalopods: A World Guide. Hackenheim, ConchBooks, pp. 30-31.
[edit] External links
- CephBase: Chambered Nautilus (Nautilus pompilius pompilius)
- CephBase: Chambered Nautilus (Nautilus pompilius suluensis)
