Nature eases no one’s mind when the revered journal explains it’s actually more efficient for some squid fly than to swim:
Squid of many species have been seen to ‘fly’ using the same jet-propulsion mechanisms that they use to swim: squirting water out of their mantles so that they rocket out of the sea and glide through the air. Until now, most researchers have thought that such flight was a way to avoid predators1, but Ronald O’Dor, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, has calculated that propelling themselves through the air may actually be an efficient way for squid to travel long distances.
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…[A]mateur photographer Bob Hulse in 2009 off the coast of Brazil…shot rapid-succession pictures of what the researchers believe were orange-back squid (Sthenoteuthis pteropus), a small cephalopod with a body length (excluding arms and tentacles) of around 6 centimetres, leaping out of the water.
Because they knew the intervals of time between each photo, O’Dor and his colleagues were able to estimate the squid’s velocity and acceleration, and compare them with these values for squid in water. They found that the velocity in air while the squid were propelling themselves with the water jet was five times faster than than any measurements O’Dor had made for comparable squid species in water.
“It makes perfect sense that these species are using flight as a way of saving energy,” says O’Dor.
Watch the skies, people.