

They also evolved a unique genetic mechanism, called RNA editing, that lets them diversify the number of proteins in their neurons. Squid eat mainly small fish and crustaceans, while octopuses will eat just about anything they can find, including other squids. Squid are also faster swimmers than octopuses. The main difference between squid and octopus is that squid have two tentacles, while octopus have eight. They have relatively big brains and millions of neurons in their arms. Main Difference Between Squid and Octopus.

Today, there are some 800 living species of cephalopods, all of them whip smart. Here squids are bigger than octopus and even weigh more they are also more aggressive than an octopus. When we compare the fight between two creatures, we have to consider their strength and their size and weight. “It became a much more successful strategy to be a really high-metabolism, very rapid-moving animal,” Alastair Tanner, a biologist at the University of Bristol, in England, told The Times in 2017. In a fight comparison between an octopus and Squid, Squid is more likely to win. There was a burst in fish diversity, and predators had to become strong enough to crush shellfish or fast enough to catch their prey. But when cuttlefish, squids and octopuses began to evolve separately - 160 million to 100 million years ago, during the so-called Mesozoic Marine Revolution - life was undergoing a rapid change. Hundreds of millions of years ago, all cephalopods had heavily armored shells.
