Octopus pictures4/11/2023 ![]() Victorian scientists puzzled over argonauts. There are seven known species of these curious little octopuses that occasionally wash up on beaches nestled inside a paper-thin shell (they are also known as paper nautiluses because they vaguely resemble another mollusc, the chambered nautilus). All the others gave up this ability in the distant evolutionary past, leaving the shell-making to snails, clams and their other molluscan relatives. Dumbo octopusĪrgonauts are the only octopuses that make external shells. Sea snakes are common predators of damselfishes. For instance, when attacked by a shoal of territorial damselfish, an octopus was seen putting on its snake ‘costume’ and the fish left it alone. They seem to deploy their versatile powers of deception in response to particular threats. It stuffs six arms into a hole in the seabed, then sticks out two arms with black and white stripes and waggles them around in a distinctly snaky way. They’ve been seen trailing their arms behind them, possibly mimicking a highly toxic lionfish.Ī mimic octopus can also turn itself into a sea snake. Not content with impersonating just one species, the mimic octopuses have a whole repertoire. This makes them look a lot like a local species of spiny, venomous flatfish, which presumably deceives predators into leaving the soft octopuses alone. In Indonesia, they have been seen with their arms held together in a leaf shape and swimming across the sand with an undulating motion. The mimic octopus is a true master of disguise. The only other non-transparent parts are the eyes, optic nerve and digestive tract. Their function in dark waters is not obvious, and they may just be something the species inherited from ancestors. Golden flecks visible on the webs between the octopus’s arms are pigmented chromatophores. Footage of the two animals was a big hit on the internet. Exploring the deep sea with the remotely operated underwater vehicle, SuBastian, the team also found a second glass octopus. The one in this picture was found by scientists on the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Research Vessel Falkor (named after the Luck Dragon from the 1980s movie The Neverending Story) during a 2021 expedition to the Phoenix archipelago in the Pacific. They’ve been spotted in tropical and subtropical waters all around the world, usually near giant underwater mountains called seamounts. Living in mysterious deep waters down to at least 1,000 metres and with transparent gelatinous bodies, glass octopuses are some of the most elusive and least studied octopuses in the ocean.
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