Photo of a day octopus by Ahmed Abdul Rahman available at Wikimedia Commons. |
2. Octopuses are mollusks. This means that they are not only closely related to squid and cuttlefish, but also to clams, oysters, snails and slugs.
3. Octopuses are crazy-smart. They can solve problems, learn from watching others, use tools, and remember experiences. They even have personalities and play with toys. Check this out:
4. Octopuses have nine brains! Rather than a large centralized brain like ours, octopus brains are more like the internet. Their main CPU is a fairly small brain in their head, but each of their eight arms has an additional brain of its own. In fact, two-thirds of an octopus’ neurons are in the arms, which can independently attach to things, push things, and even smell things. They can even react after they have been severed! Not only that, but their severed arms recognize their previous owner:
5. If an octopus loses an arm, it can grow back. Those crazy arms are like the brooms in Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia!
6. Octopuses are amazing camouflage artists. Their soft bodies can squeeze into ridiculously small cracks and crevices and take on any number of shapes. A 50-pound octopus, for example, can squeeze through a 2-inch hole! They can also change the color and texture of their skin to match their background.
The mimic octopus, the ultimate master of disguise, doesn’t just imitate their background, but also flounders, starfish, poisonous lionfish, and sea snakes.
A vertebrate eye (left) versus an octopus eye (right). 1: Retina, 2: Nerve fibers, 3: Optic nerve, 4: Blind spot. Image by Jerry Crimson Mann at Wikimedia. |
In octopus eyes, the photoreceptor cells face forwards and the nerve fibers go behind the retina. This means that they have a continuous layer of photoreceptor cells and no blind spot.
8. Octopuses are more blue blooded than police officers. Their blood is truly blue, due to the fact that they don’t have hemoglobin, our respiratory pigment that contains iron and turns red when it binds to oxygen. Rather, they have hemocyanin, which contains copper and turns blue when oxygen binds to it.
9. Octopuses have three hearts! They have two small hearts that each pump blood through the gills and a main systemic heart that collects the blood and pumps it through the circulatory system.
10. Octopus ink is a defensive chemical concoction. It not only obscures the view of an attacker, but it also contains a chemical that irritates the predator’s eyes and temporarily paralyzes its sense of smell.
11. Octopuses bite with a bird-like beak and venomous saliva, which is mostly used to subdue prey. Of the approximately 300 octopus species, only the small blue-ringed octopus is known to be deadly to humans.
12. Octopuses die after they mate for the first time. And they mate in an odd way too: males use the tip of their third arm on the right to either insert their spermatophores (sperm packets) directly into the female’s tubular breathing funnel or he just hands it to her (The tip of the third right arm can be used to tell if an octopus is male or female). If he hands it to her, she accepts it with one of her right arms (we don’t know why they’re right-handed this way). Then the males go off to die. The females eventually lay up to 400,000 fertilized eggs, although they can wait months before they do this. She tends them and guards them at the exclusion of all else until they hatch, at which point her body rapidly deteriorates as her cells die off.
Woo these facts are amazing..
ReplyDeleteReally liked it, keep on sharing these kinds of facts.
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