# What Do Cuttlefish Eat?

> What cuttlefish eat: Carnivore (fish, crabs, shrimp), foraging style, and seasonal shifts in Coastal seas, sandy seabeds, and seagrass.

- **Species:** Cuttlefish (*Sepia officinalis*)
- **Conservation status:** Least Concern
- **Diet:** Carnivore (fish, crabs, shrimp)
- **Habitat:** Coastal seas, sandy seabeds, and seagrass
- **Lifespan:** 1–2 years
- **Top speed:** Up to 25 km/h (16 mph) in a jet burst
- **Canonical HTML:** https://globalanimalguide.org/animals/cuttlefish/what-do-cuttlefish-eat/
- **Parent profile:** https://globalanimalguide.org/animals/cuttlefish/
- **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-16

## Quick answer

The common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) is a soft-bodied marine mollusc found over sandy seabeds and seagrass in coastal seas of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean. Despite its name it is not a fish but a cephalopod, related to octopuses and squid, and it can transform its colour and skin texture in a fraction of a second. It grows to about 50 cm including its arms, weighs around 2 kg, and lives only one to two years.

## Who should skip this page

Skip this if you need a captive feeding plan from a veterinarian. This page is wild diet, not a pet-care sheet.

## Camouflage and colour change

Cuttlefish are among the most accomplished quick-change artists in the animal kingdom, altering their colour, pattern and even skin texture almost instantly. They achieve this using thousands of pigment cells called chromatophores, layered over reflective iridophores and leucophores that bounce light. Remarkably, cuttlefish are colour-blind, yet they still match the hues of their surroundings, probably by sensing light through their skin and detecting polarised light. This mastery lets them melt into a sandy seabed to ambush prey or vanish from a passing predator.

## Help protect the Cuttlefish

Even familiar animals lose ground as wild habitat keeps shrinking worldwide.

[Donate to wildlife protection](https://worldanimalrescuenetwork.org/donate/)

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Source: Global Animal Guide (https://globalanimalguide.org/animals/cuttlefish/what-do-cuttlefish-eat/). Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0 — free for non-commercial reuse with attribution.