nautilus
1. any cephalopod mollusc of the genus Nautilus, esp the pearly nautilus
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
Nautilus
[′nȯd·ə·ləs] (invertebrate zoology)
The only living genus of the molluscan subclass Nautiloidea, containing the only living cephalopods with an external chambered shell and numerous cephalic tentacles, six species live in the western Pacific and around the East Indies.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Nautilus
submarine in which its builder, Captain Nemo, cruises around the world. [Fr. Lit.: Jules Verne Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea]
Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
Nautilus
a genus of invertebrates of the superorder Nautiloidea and the class Cephalopoda.
Nautilus is now the only living group of the subclass Tetrabranchia. The shell is large (up to 30 cm in diameter) and external, spirally coiled in a single plane, and divided by partitions into a series of chambers. The body of the mollusk is located in the last and largest chamber. The chambers serve the animal as a hydrostatic apparatus. To descend, it fills them with water to varying degrees, while to rise it fills them with a gas with a high content of nitrogen. There are several species, which are found in the Indian Ocean and the western part of the Pacific. Nautilus crawls along the bottom (at shallow depths) or swims on the surface of the water. It feeds on small crabs and fish.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.