Male bigfin reef squid may be the best fathers of all cephalopods | New Scientist
In their recordings, a male squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana) that has just mated raises his arms up while pushing his tentacles downward. At the same time, he dons a color pattern similar to animated zebra stripes.
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This is really awkward for the squid, because the tentacles are usually held with the arms to protect them, said Sampaio, But the whole display is really obvious for other males to see.
After the zebra display but before his mate lays her eggs, he dives into a crevice in a reef or rocks on the seafloor, possibly checking for signs of predators. Typically, the male just copulates and goes, but here we saw that he actually checks out the nest site first, said Sampaio. Only then does the female enter the location.
He does this at the risk of predators lying in wait and of rival males sweeping in on his unguarded mate. One cool thing to consider is that we were able to document this behaviour in populations 10,000 kilometers apart from each other, said Sampaio. This suggests the behavior is rather widespread among bigfin reef squids.