No problem.ģ) Blanket octopuses are very romantic. Oh, and sometimes they have to take a ‘shark stick’ to poke away nighttime predators. Y’know, where scientists go diving in the middle of the night…in the middle of the ocean…while hanging from a rope above the abyss. Males were first discovered during a “blackwater hang”. The males, on the other hand, are the size of the pupil in a female’s eye, or roughly the size of your thumbnail, and look like this: Scale bar is 1 mm. The females can reach up to 2 meters (~6.6 ft) in length.
For many animals, the male is the bigger and flashier sex. Pages 764-766.2) Blanket octopus females are 10,000 times bigger than males. Tremoctopus violaceus Uses Physalia Tentacles as Weapons. New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, Vol 36. First encounter with a live male blanket octopus: the world’s most sexually size-dimorphic large animals. Norman MD, Paul D, Finn J & Tregenza T (2002). Just a beautiful scarf of living flesh, floating in the middle of the ocean. I can’t imagine what someone might think, finding something like this with no rhyme or reason. Occasionally these blankets are spotted by divers. This may be accidental, or a way to distract predators. When a blanket octopus is threatened, as in the video below, it’s all like, “excuse me ladies and gentleman”, unfurls its fleshy bat cape, and swoops into the night like a badass.Ħ) The ‘blankets’ of blanket octopuses can break off. If you ask me, that is pretty dang clever.ĥ) They look like superheroes. Blanket octopuses may actually use these stollen tentacles to stun or kill prey. These tentacle weapons may be more than just defensive. Octopuses hold onto these tentacles with their suckers, and the scientist who accidentally discovered this “experienced sudden and severe pain involuntarily threw the octopod back into the water”. Young female blanket octopuses literally rip the tentacles right off portuguese man-o-war jellies, and uses them like little octopus nunchuks. Did I mention he probably dies afterwards? He likes her that much. She keeps it, and can use it if she wants to. He is very patient like that. Instead, he fills up one of his little arms with sperm, sticks it to her, and breaks it off his own body. When a male finds a lady he likes, he doesn’t try to convince her that he’s the right guy. No problem.ģ) Blanket octopus doods are very romantic.
Y’know, where scientists go diving in the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean, while hanging from a rope above the abyss. The males, on the other hand, are the size of your thumb and look like this: The scale bar is 1 mm. But not so for the blanket octopus. The females are large and elegant, reaching up to 2 meters (~6.6 ft) in length. Cox.Ģ) Blanket octopus females are 10,000 times bigger than males. For many animals, the male is the bigger and flashier sex. When threatened, the blanket octopus extends these fleshy curtains to look like a disco icon. Between the arms of the blanket octopus are long sheets of patterned flesh. To help spread the word on these lovely creatures, here are six reasons why blanket octopuses are my new favorite cephalopods.ġ) The blanket octopus is stylish. The blanket octopus( Tremoctopus spp.) spends its entire life in the open ocean, and looks like a Cher outfit from the 60s. Very few videos exist, and not much is known about their biology. But the truth is, blanket octopuses are incredibly elusive. I’d never heard of a blanket octopus before, which is surprising given the internet’s obsession with both large cephalopods and bizarre animals. A two meter long octopus dressed like a fashion icon certainly falls under both categories. When I first saw a picture of the blanket octopus I did a double take.
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