Dramatic fighting by male cuttlefish for a female mate Akkaynak, Derya creator Allen, Justine J. creator Male cuttlefish compete for females with a repertoire of visually dramatic behaviors. Laboratory experiments have explored this system in Sepia officinalis but corroborative field data have eluded collection attempts by many researchers. While SCUBA diving in Turkey, we fortuitously filmed an intense sequence of consort/intruder behaviors in which the consort lost then regained his female mate from the intruder. These agonistic bouts escalated in stages, leading to fast dramatic expression of the elaborate Intense Zebra Display and culminating in biting and inking as the intruder male attempted a forced copulation of the female. When analyzed in the context of game theory, the patterns of fighting behavior were more consistent with mutual assessment than self assessment of fighting ability. Additional observations of these behaviors in nature are needed to conclusively determine which models best represent conflict resolution, but our field observations agree with laboratory findings and provide a valuable perspective. Sepia officinalis Agonistic behavior in animals Cephalopoda Behavior Sexual selection Evolutionary game theory 2011-05-02 1 FlipCam video (02:48) born digital Funded by National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (to JJ Allen); ONR grant #N0001406-1-0202 and support from the Sholley Foundation to Roger Hanlon, PhD Recorded afternoon of May 2, 2011 https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0PR7SX4 The American Naturalist Vol. 190, no. 1 July 2017 2017-07 10.1086/692009 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License software