Cephalopod eight or ten. Decapods such as cuttlefish and squid have five pairs. The longer two, termed "tentacles", are actively involved in capturing prey; they can lengthen rapidly (in as little as 15 milliseconds). In giant squid they may reach a length of 8 metres. They may terminate in a broadened, sucker-coated club. The shorter four pairs are termed "arms", and are involved in holding and manipulating the captured organism. They too have suckers, on the side closest to the mouth; these help to hold onto the prey. Octopods only have four pairs of sucker-coated arms, as the name suggests, though
Striped flying squid are small subcutaneous photophores on the underside of mantle, head and of the third and fourth arms, while the fourth arms have a large oval photophore at their bases and another hallway to their tips. The ventral surface of mantle has 2 stripes of luminous tissue extending along almost its entire length with two large, oval-shaped luminous patches at the end of each mantle strip closest to the head. The fins are heart-shaped and taper to a point. The larvae have dispersed large brown chromatophores while in the juveniles these are crimson and brown. The striped flying squid is distributed