Scientific community up in tentacles over Apple's 'upside down' squid emoji

Apple's artistic decisions have once again landed the company in hot water, this time with scientists who take issue with the tech giant's emoji rendition of a squid.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium in a tweet on Wednesday noted Apple's squid emoji is "upside down."

More specifically, the siphon — used for breathing, excreting waste and locomotion via jet propulsion — on Apple's squid is claimed to be located on its "face" when it should be positioned on the opposite side of the head. Pun-happy personnel responsible for maintaining the aquarium's Twitter page took umbrage with the squid emoji, suggesting Apple took undue artistic license when it designed the character.

"Not even squidding the siphon should be behind the head [right now] it just looks like a weirdo nose," the tweet reads.

Indeed, Apple's take is the only emoji to place the siphon, also known as the funnel, on the squid's "face," as revealed in a collection of squid characters aggregated by Emojipedia. The organ is not present on designs in use by Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook and others.

Despite the fervor, Apple's version appears to be a faithful rendition of certain squid species.

Biological drawings and photographs of dissections readily available online corroborate Apple's siphon placement. Anterior and ventral views of the bilaterally symmetrical animal show the funnel jutting out from beneath the creature's mantle between its eyes, with fin, arm and tentacle locations mirroring those of Apple's emoji.

The squid emoji was approved as part of Unicode 9.0 in 2016, and Apple's iteration has not changed since its debut that same year.