How many arms does a squid have?

A squid has eight arms.

Those eight arms are shorter appendages arranged around the squid’s mouth and are used to hold, manipulate, and control prey. Squids also have two longer tentacles, which they extend rapidly to seize prey. This means a squid has ten appendages in total, but only eight of them are classified as arms.

The distinction explains why people sometimes answer ten. In everyday language, all ten appendages may be called “arms,” but zoologists distinguish the eight arms from the two specialized tentacles. Octopuses, by comparison, have eight arms and no separate pair of feeding tentacles.

Squids are cephalopod molluscs, related to octopuses, cuttlefish, and nautiluses. Their soft bodies contain an internal chitinous structure called a gladius, or pen, which supports the mantle. They are active open-water predators and use their arms, tentacles, beak, and strong eyesight to capture prey.