Chambered Nautilus

Lore & Background

The chambered nautilus is the title and subject of a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, in which he admires the 'ship of pearl' and finds inspiration for spiritual growth. A painting by Andrew Wyeth, entitled Chambered Nautilus, shows a woman in a canopied bed whose composition mirrors that of a chambered nautilus on a nearby table. The Russian rock band Nautilus Pompilius is named after the species. American composer Deems Taylor wrote a cantata called The Chambered Nautilus in 1916. Nautilus shells were popular in Renaissance cabinets of curiosity and were often mounted by goldsmiths to make extravagant cups, such as the Burghley Nef, mainly for display or ceremonial drinking.

In Their Own Story

Deep in the perpetual twilight of the continental slope, the pressure is a crushing weight that would flatten a diver in seconds, yet for the nautilus, it is simply home. Suspended in the cold silence, its iridescent shell catches the faint, ghostly glimmer of bioluminescence from a passing shrimp. It does not dart or twist with the frantic, electric energy of a squid; instead, it moves with a slow, deliberate grace, fine-tuning the gas within its internal chambers to hover in perfect equilibrium. A scent trail of decaying matter drifts through the dark water, triggering dozens of slimy tentacles to unfurl from the shell's aperture, tasting the current for dinner. With a gentle, rhythmic contraction of its siphon, it propels itself forward—an ancient ghost gliding through time in the silent cathedral of the deep.

Reader's Guide

The chambered nautilus is a carnivore that feeds on underwater carrion, detritus, living shellfish, and crab, mainly as a scavenger eating 'anything that smells'. Food is stored in a crop. The species lacks a larval stage; eggs are laid in crevices or between corals and hatch after 9 to 15 months depending on water temperature. The nautilus shell of the young develops inside the egg and breaches the top before full emergence. Chambered nautiluses are relatively long-lived and reach maturity at about 5 years old. The shell functions for buoyancy: the nautilus controls the density and volume of liquid within its shell chambers to dive or ascend. They generally inhabit depths around 1000 feet but can dive deeper, though shells slowly fill with water at extreme depths and implode at depths beyond 2000 feet. As the nautilus grows, it continuously moves into new, larger chambers, leaving smaller chambers for depth regulation. Two subspecies are described: N. p. pompilius (the most common and widespread, sometimes called emperor nautilus) and N. p. suluensis (restricted to the Sulu Sea, much smaller). The shell's logarithmic spiral ratio ranges from about 1.24 to 1.43, averaging about 1.33 to 1, not the golden spiral ratio of 1.618.

Did You Know?

• The chambered nautilus has about 90 tentacles (cirri) that lack suckers, unlike other cephalopods.
• Its eye has no lens and works like a pinhole camera.
• The oldest fossils of this species are from the Early Pleistocene, not from ancient times.
• The species was first bred in captivity at the Waikiki Aquarium in 1995.
• The shell's spiral ratio averages about 1.33 to 1, not the golden ratio of 1.618.