90 Creepy Facts About Octopus

An octopus is a soft-bodied, eight-limbed mollusk of the order Octopoda. The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. Like other cephalopods, an octopus is bilaterally symmetric with two eyes and a beaked mouth at the center point of the eight limbs. The soft body can radically alter its shape, enabling octopuses to squeeze through small gaps. They trail their eight appendages behind them as they swim. The siphon is used both for respiration and for locomotion, by expelling a jet of water. Octopuses have a complex nervous system and excellent sight and are among the most intelligent and behaviourally diverse of all invertebrates.

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Interesting Facts About Octopus

Octopuses have four pairs of arms.
Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body.
The environment and lifestyle of cephalopods mean that they need to be capable of complex and flexible behavior.
As active predators, they need to explore, understand and remember their environment and the behavior of other animals.
Studies have shown that octopuses learn easily, including learning by observation of another octopus.
Giant Pacific octopuses have short lifespans of only 2 to 3 years on average.
Giant Pacific octopuses have 2,140 to 2,240 suction cups on their arms, giving them a powerful grip and sense of taste and smell.
The female octopus can lay up to 400,000 eggs and due to its obsessive and aggressive nature when tending to its eggs, it prioritizes its motherhood duties and therefore stops eating. When the eggs hatch, the female’s body undertakes what is called a ‘cascade of cellular suicide’. The female puts so much energy into tending for her offspring that she does not tend to herself and therefore dies.
Just call them the chameleons of the sea. Sorry Culture Club, but, the octopus camouflage game is way better than yours…
Under an octopus’s skin is an element called chromatophores which is a mix of pigment, nerves, and muscles. An octopus is able to manipulate these in order to change its external appearance. Octopuses camouflage themselves to hide, send a warning message, or attract a mate – it can take them up to several minutes to fully change colour.
Giant Pacific octopuses can grow to 29.5 feet (9 m) wide from the tip of one arm to the tip of another and 44 pounds (20 kg).
Giant Pacific octopuses can change color in one-tenth of a second.
Giant Pacific octopuses can be found more than 330 feet (100 m) underwater.
4. Female giant Pacific octopuses never leave their eggs during the brooding process and die shortly after from self-cannibalization.1
Female giant Pacific octopuses lay 18,000 to 74,000 eggs that are the size of a grain of white rice.
Common octopuses will collect crustacean shells and other objects to construct fortresses, or “gardens,” around their lairs. Other octopuses carry shells for protection.
The common octopus has a wide array of techniques it uses to avoid or thwart attackers. Its first—and most amazing—line of defense is its ability to hide in plain sight. Using a network of pigment cells and specialized muscles in its skin, the common octopus can almost instantaneously match the colors, patterns, and even textures of its surroundings. Predators such as sharks, eels, and dolphins swim by without even noticing it.
They have been found to play with a ‘toy’ and to have individual responses and individual temperaments, with some scientists believing they have individual personalities.
All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are known to be deadly to humans.
They can solve problems, as when they remove a plug or unscrew a lid to get prey from a container.
They are the first invertebrates to be seen using tools, such as using coconut shells to hide from potential predators and using rocks and jets of water in a way that could be classified as tool use.
There are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species.
When discovered, an octopus will release a cloud of black ink to obscure its attacker’s view, giving it time to swim away. The ink even contains a substance that dulls a predator’s sense of smell, making the fleeing octopus harder to track.
Octopus arms have a mind of their own. Two-thirds of an octopus’ neurons reside in its arms, not its head. As a result, the arms can problem solve how to open a shellfish while their owners are busy doing something else, like checking out a cave for more edible goodies. The arms can even react after they’ve been completely severed. In one experiment, severed arms jerked away in pain when researchers pinched them.
The smallest octopus is the Octopus wolfi, at less than 2.5 cm long and weighing under a gram.
Octopus blood is blue because it contains a copper-based protein called hemocyanin. Not because they are related to royalty. Supposedly.
An octopus has three hearts (greedy), one to pump blood through its organs, and the other two to pump blood through its gills.
They prefer to crawl than swim, as when swimming, the heart that delivers blood to the organs stops beating. Therefore swimming = exhausting!
An octopus can taste what it touches through its suckers. One word. Ew.
These suckers are made of tiny, complex muscles, which can apply enough pressure to tear flesh… ‘But do you even lift bro?’ Well yes. In the case of the giant Pacific octopus, one sucker can lift an object as heavy as 16 kilograms!
Octopus ink doesn’t just hide the animal. The ink also physically harms enemies. It contains a compound called tyrosinase, which, in humans, helps to control the production of the natural pigment melanin. But when sprayed in a predator’s eyes, tyrosinase causes a blinding irritation. It also garbles creatures’ sense of smell and taste. The defensive concoction is so potent, in fact, that octopuses that do not escape their own ink cloud can die.
Octopuses have blue blood. To survive in the deep ocean, octopuses evolved a copper rather than iron-based blood called hemocyanin, which turns its blood blue. This copper base is more efficient at transporting oxygen than hemoglobin when water temperature is very low and not much oxygen is around. But this system also causes them to be extremely sensitive to changes in acidity. If the surrounding water’s pH dips too low, octopuses can’t circulate enough oxygen. Accordingly, researchers worry about what will happen to the animals as a result of climate change-induced ocean acidification.
Octopuses, to some, are erotic muses. Japan’s notorious “tentacle erotica” traces back to an 1814 woodblock print (potentially NSFW) titled Tako to Ama, or “Octopus and the Shell Diver.” According to Courage, the image takes inspiration from a legend about a female shell diver who is chased by sea creatures, included octopuses, after attracting the eye of a sea dragon god.
After mating, it’s game over for octopuses. Mating and parenthood are brief affairs for octopuses, who die shortly after. The species practices external fertilization. Multiple males either insert their spermatophores directly into a tubular funnel that the female uses to breathe, or else literally hand her the sperm, which she always accepts with one of her right arm (researchers do not know why). Afterwards, males wander off to die. As for the females, they can lay up to 400,000 eggs, which they obsessively guard and tend to. Prioritizing their motherly duties, females stop eating. But she doesn’t starve to death–rather, when the eggs hatch, the female’s body turns on her. Her body undertakes a cascade of cellular suicide, starting from the optic glands and rippling outward through her tissues and organs until she dies.
The creature’s intelligence may have something to do with the fact they have nine brains. Its nervous system is made up of one central brain and a brain at the base of each arm – which is why an octopus can be doing something different with each arm at the same time.
Clever, clever creatures. Well, Aristotle didn’t think so! The famous philosopher once wrote that “the octopus is a stupid creature, for it will approach a man’s hand if it is lowered in the water”. If only Aristotle was around now to see an octopus unscrew a jar with one of its nine brains…
The octopus has waaaaay outlived dinosaurs and date back a whopping 296 million years. These underwater creatures were existent during the Carboniferous period.
Scientists found fossil remains that depict the aquatic creature to have eight arms, an ink sack, and two eyes – sound familiar? So, next time you’re worried about another birthday coming around, think about how an octopus feels…
Octopus skin contains the same light-sensitive proteins present in their eyes, so they can sense and respond to light, for example camouflaging themselves, without information from the eyes or brain!
If an arm is lost in any way, it can grow back in a few weeks.
But they’re not ‘armless… (See what I did there?), all octopuses contain venom. The blue-ringed octopus (less than 20 centimeters long), has enough venom to kill as many as twenty-six humans in minutes!
The third arm on the right-hand side of a male octopus is also a specialized mating arm, known as the hectocotylus. So be careful when shaking hands!
Octopuses are some of the most antisocial and unfriendly animals alive. Even going so far as to eat their partner when mating (except the larger Pacific striped octopus).
However, mating requires the male to directly insert the hectocotylus into one of the two siphons on the female's mantle. Pretty intimate.
Ever struggle to open child-proof lids? Well, a female giant Pacific octopus named Billye can! Widely considered to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates, an octopus brain is formed by 500 million large neurons, compared to the human brain consisting of roughly 100 billion smaller neurons.
Octopuses can learn from experience, maintain short- and long-term memory, and have also been observed using tools intelligently.
Ever done something on autopilot you can’t remember doing? Multiply that by 8. Around two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are in its arms, meaning they can react to stimuli without needing instructions from the brain, even when severed from the body…
To solve this sexual cannibalism issue, some literally mate at arm's length. Others disguise themselves as another female to get close enough, and some sacrifice their entire mating arm before quickly leaving!
However, after mating, they die. The male dies in a couple of months, whilst as the female fasts to protect her eggs, she dies from starvation just before they hatch.
Aristotle thought octopuses were dumb. In his History of Animals, written in 350 BC, the Greek philosopher wrote that ”The octopus is a stupid creature, for it will approach a man’s hand if it be lowered in the water; but it is neat and thrifty in its habits: that is, it lays up stores in its nest, and, after eating up all that is eatable, it ejects the shells and sheaths of crabs and shell-fish, and the skeletons of little fishes.” After describing a few more quirks of octopus life history–it ejects ink for self-defense, it’s slimy, it can crawl on land–he flippantly signs off, “So much for the mollusca.” However, the big-brained cephalopod can navigate through mazes, solve problems and remember solutions, and take things apart for fun–they even have distinct personalities.
Most octopus for human consumption comes from North and West Africa. Octopus has been a popular food item in East Asia, Spain, Greece and other countries for centuries, and recently, it has gained popularity in the U.S. and beyond. Today, Koreans consume the most octopus. But that popularity has had an impact on octopus stocks in oceans around the world. In Japan, for example, octopus catches plummeted by 50 percent between the 1960s and the 1980s. The international demand for octopus inspired North and West African fisheries to start targeting the animals in the 80s, although recently demand has taken a toll on those waters as well, shifting fisheries from Morocco to Mauritania and, more recently, Senegal. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, around 270,000 tons of octopus is imported by various countries around the world each year.
Fast swimmers, they can jet forward by expelling water through their mantles. And their soft bodies, with no internal or external skeleton, can squeeze into impossibly small cracks and crevices where predators can’t follow.
The amazing mimic octopuses are capable of changing their body shape to mimic other animals
They also have beak-like jaws that can deliver a nasty bite, and venomous saliva, used mainly for subduing prey.
If all else fails, an octopus can lose an arm to escape a predator’s grasp and re-grow it later with no permanent damage.
It may look friendly as it waves to you eight times, however, the octopus can pack a very hefty punch – a poisonous one at that. The octopus is able to create venom from the bacteria that live inside its body and uses it to deter predators.
There’s nothing to worry about, though. The majority of octopuses aren’t full of enough poison to harm humans – apart from the blue-ringed octopus, which can paralyze an adult human in minutes.
Inside an octopus’s ink is a compound called tyrosinase which can cause a blinding irritation. This is used as a defensive mechanism when an octopus feels threatened by a predator. It gives the octopus the chance to get away whilst the predator is trying to overcome the potent ink spray. The spray can be so strong, that even an octopus can die if it doesn’t escape its own ink cloud in time.
Octopi? Octopodes? Octo-squad? Does anyone know the plural version for octopus? Oh, wait, we do! It’s octopuses. Deriving from the Greek word of ‘oktopodi’, it directly translates to ‘eight-foot’ – makes sense actually.
Not only are octopuses cold-blooded, but they also have blue blood. In order to survive in the deep depths of the oceans, octopuses have evolved to have a copper-based bloodstream known as hemocyanin, instead of the more commonly known iron-based bloodstream.
One of the most distinctive characteristics of an octopus is that after mating and giving birth, both the male and female die. After the male octopus has given the female its hectocotylus (mating arm), it soon swims away and dies. Researchers are still unsure as to why, but, some believe if this didn’t happen, octopuses would soon take over the oceans due to their rapid growth and reproduction cycle.
Octopuses are waaay old. The oldest known octopus fossil belongs to an animal that lived some 296 million years ago, during the Carboniferous period. That specimen belongs to a species named Pohlsepia and is on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. Harmon Courage describes it as a “flattened cow patty” or a “globular splat,” but a close examination reveals the tell-tale eight arms and two eyes. Researchers aren’t sure, but possibly there’s an ink sack there, too. In other words, long before life on land had progressed beyond puny pre-dinosaur reptiles, octopuses had already established their shape for the millions of years to come.
Octopuses have three hearts. Two of the hearts work exclusively to move blood beyond the animal’s gills, while the third keeps circulation flowing for the organs. The organ heart actually stops beating when the octopus swims, explaining the species’ penchant for crawling rather than swimming, which exhausts them.
The plural of octopus is octopuses. The word “octopus” comes from the Greek, októpus, meaning “eight foot.” The word’s Greek roots mean it’s pluralized as a Greek word, too, which depends on both a noun’s gender and the last letter it ends with. In this case, an -es is simply tacked on. So no octopi, octopodes, or octopussies, Harmon Courage points out.
It’s not just changing color, either. An octopus can actually mimic other creatures such as sea snakes, lionfish, and flatfish. Impressive, right? Well, how about being able to squeeze in and out of the tiniest of places? Because they have no bones, an octopus can practically squeeze into any space. Good luck trying to find one in a game of hide-and-ink… we mean hide-and-seek.
There are over 300 different species of octopus roaming our oceans – one of which only has seven arms! Here’s the quick need-to-know on the main ones…
Despite pre-dating dinosaurs, the lifespan of an octopus is actually very short. Its maximum lifespan is five years and some octopuses live for only six months – once an octopus reaches mating maturity, it actually symbolizes the end of its life.

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