Having sex is exhausting!
As we all know, reproductive activities take energy to conduct so it is no surprise that baseline swimming endurance were cut in half post-mating activities for both male and female squids. A loss of energy has significant impact on feeding, escaping predators, and finding more mates for a creature that already has a short lifespan. The southern dumpling squid (Euprymna tasmanica) were collected from Australia and studied to improve the understanding of reproductive behaviors with the cephalopods as a whole.
[via Yahoo News]