#nautilus headcanons

[nautalass]

Nautilus proportions... Arms: Nearly three heads long Legs: Only about two heads long (bottom of foot to top of leg) Body: About three heads tall (from top of legs to around neck)

[nautalass]

As mentioned tons and tons of times, Sal has extremely poor vision as a nautilus. Traditional nautiluses have pinhole eyes with no lenses in their eyes, meaning their vision is beyond bad. Their vision at best covered ‘is it light or dark’? Nautilus-people evolved to have more humanoid eyes with lenses, however they still are not as developed or strong as a human’s and are still based around the traditional pinhole shape, the pupil being little more than a slit as opposed to a circle. For reference, this article shows visuals of 20/200 and 20/400 eye vision. Sal’s vision probably falls around 20/300 if not worse, meaning he is absolutely legally blind. I’m tempted to go beyond 20/400 (maybe 20/500) but it may be too much. His field of view is also probably narrower than a human’s. His sense of smell is incredibly strong and helps him figure out who people are, what things are, and so on, and he has no problem navigating sidewalks or hallways (aside from being stuck with one eye) but many details are completely lost on him. Reading? As if. To get any sense of what something says or a sense of details, he usually has to take a picture with his phone and blow it up to a huge size, hoping the quality of the picture doesn’t die when he zooms in.

[nautalass]

Siphons

I thought I detailed siphons before, but looking back, I can’t find the information, so I’m tossing it up here now.

The siphon of a nautilus-person’s mantle goes down from the base of their shell on the back side of their head, starting somewhere beneath their tentacles. It goes down the back of their head, the length of their neck, and ends between where their shoulder blades would be. The primary purpose of the siphon is to provide extra swimming speed. While it was the primary source of locomotion for traditional nautiluses, nautilus-people have limbs which they can use to swim and direct themselves. As such, the siphon has largely been reduced to providing extra speed for when they’re swimming. While the siphons of most animals that have them are tubes, for nautiluses, it is actually a single flap of skin folded over and ‘rolled up’ into a tube shape. Additionally, it only takes on this tube shape when in water. While out of water, it goes essentially flat against their skin and becomes difficult to spot, being as thin as it is. This can be seen in this drawing here (warning that the drawing is a nude picture of Sal).

[nautalass]

I’ve talked about it a few times, but what’s talking about it without providing some audio to go with it? Nautilus-people have pretty trilly voices and their own nautiloid language consists of lots of chirps, trills, and chatters, much like a cat’s, in addition to tentacle motions in relation to their shells. The end result sounds very, very much like the main chorus of this song. The main difference is that there would be lots more trilling and chattering (which this song naturally doesn’t have). I’d say that if these were nautilus voices, they’d be maybe young teenage nautiluses. Adults would tend to have deeper voices, though ultimately they’re all still a bit higher-pitched when compared to a human’s voice.

Sal’s own voice from when he was human is heavily based around the voice in this video, so the voice that he has now is somewhat of a mix between that and the ‘typical’ voices nautiluses have for his age.

[nautalass]

Me reading up on the wikipedia page on nautiluses: “The animal can withdraw completely into its shell and close the opening with a leathery hood formed from two specially folded tentacles.” GHGGHGH I DIDNT REALIZE THE HOOD WAS ACTUALLY WEIRDLY SHAPED TENTACLES Edit: My head can’t mentally manage trying to figure out how the hood is tentacles right now??? For convenience, I might read it as tentacles that changed over evolution to a separate organ? Cause that mentally reads really weirdly and I’d feel like I’d have to adjust Sal’s design again and that would be weird and hard if trying to adjust to that...

[nautalass]

Alright, going into more detail now that I’m finally getting a clearer idea how nautilus-people like Sal would work.

As already mentioned in Sal’s app, he’s a great swimmer not only because he had to learn to be a good one as a human, but now also because of his nautiloid biology. Nautilus-people such as himself could swim similarly to how humans would be able to easily enough, their cartilaginous limbs having enough support and muscle to keep from just flapping in the water. And they could do this as long as they wanted without ever surfacing, taking into account how the gills along the sides of their bodies would let them breathe underwater without a problem (so long as it’s clean obviously). However, their body has some ‘extra mechanics’ built into it to take into account that heavily improves upon their method of navigating through water. To start with, they can adjust their buoyancy by slowly adjusting the density of their shells through a complex form of osmosis. Without going into too much detail, this means they could just lower themselves or rise through the water at a relatively comfortable pace without ever having to actually force themselves to go through the bigger swimming motions. However, for more active swimming, nautiluses make use of their siphons (or the hyponome in a cephalopod’s case). Specifically for nautiluses, these siphons are actually one-piece flap that seem to be folded over, overlapping themselves and forming a tube shape. While on land, they appear as a thin flapped piece of skin that extends out from their shell on the back of their head down to their mid-back; they are thin enough that they are barely noticeable and if held away from the skin light could partially pass through it in a translucent manner. They have minimal nerves in them and cling close to the skin, so they’re not uncomfortable to sit back against. Once in water, the water ‘billows’ it out, and it appears as a sort of tube going down to their mid-backs. Using the siphons, the nautiluses can more actively draw water into their shells, however their main purpose is to draw water in and then eject it out for forward propulsion (which speeds up their manual swimming). Traditional nautiluses used their siphons for propulsion and to manipulate which direction they went, but with the development of extended bodies and limbs, their main purpose became providing extra speed or assisting in buoyancy adjustments.

[nautalass]

Some more notes after discussing Gills and More with @championgraced... Most of his human-like skin generally feels like human-skin, but hairless and smooth (making it feel weird enough). His gills and tentacles though have that generally slight rubbery pliable feeling to them. The tentacles don’t exactly get slimy, but they stay slick, despite being able to grip really well. The gills on the other hand, get a sort of filmy slickness on their insides (like a frog’s skin). It doesn’t really stick like slime, but would feel kinda weird to the touch. This is to help keep them hydrated, especially since they’re some of the more exposed parts of his body. Again, don’t reach inside his gills...

[nautalass]

Something I discussed with Delta a long time ago was how Nautiluses hatched and then grew up. And basically that was similarly to Inklings and Octolings: First looking like their original form, then growing into little goblins, and finally taking on their more human form.

…Thing is, with nautiluses, that means they are essentially just their adult form’s heads when they’re babies and then grow their bodies and limbs as they get older. Which sounds kinda monstrous.

Not that ink goblin babies aren’t.