Margaret curry, age 11 of somerset, n. J., for her question:     

What are cephalopods?

Some of the cephalopods are whoppers, but they are not rated among the advanced and highly developed animals of the modern world. There are merely a few hundre species of the class cephalopoda, and we seldom see them. But there was a time when Cephalopods were the most important animals in the world, and thousands of species thronged the ancient seas.     The name cephalopod is coined from two greek words meaning head and foot. In the modern world, the class cephalopoda is represented by the jet propelled squids, by the leggy octopuses and by the nautilus who rides the bounding waves in his own     Dainty sailing boat. The  average cephalopod has a large head. And a startling pair of human type eyes. His foot, which has become eight or 10 stringy tentacles, grows around the head of the head footed cephalopod. The 100 or so cephalopods belong,; in the phylum iiullusca, along with the crusty Clams and lazy snails and a vast assortment of handsome shellfish. Of the cephalopods, The nautilus lives in a graceful shell and the octopus has no shell at all. The squid Has a strip of shell buried in his f1esh. The cuttle bone we put in a bird cage is A strip of shell from the fleshy back of the cuttlefish, alias the sepia. The sepia is a squid with. The sad expression of a basset hound. Mien threatened, He squirts a jet of ink into the water and escapes through a murky cloud. The ink sac empties into a funnel which the squid uses to jet propel himself through the water. His torpedo shaped body is wrapped in a mantle of loose skin which forms side flaps and fins for swimming.     The nautilus navigates on the surface of the sea. This small cephalopod uses His papery shell as a sail, letting the wind blow him over the waves. All cephalopods have supple tentacles studded with suckers for grasping their prey. The giant squid of the deep ocean may have tentacles spanning 50 feet. The story of the cephalopoci.s dates back more than 400 million years. Fossils Of more than 10,000 species have been fowl preserved in ancient rocks. In the dim p[ast, most of there wore shells. Some of the first cephalopods lived in straight or cone shaped shells 15 and 20 fret long. Later species developed coiled shells., some of them seven feet in diameter.     Modern cephalopods form the most advanced class of the mollusks. Some of them have complex ce11s which enab1e them to change color. The timid octopus ranges from pale, pasty tones to vivid reddish orange. The giant squid is the largest of the world's 'packboneless animals, the invertebrates. He wrestles with his enemy the whale, who is the world's largest vertebrate, and often wins the contest.