The story
The blanket octopus (Tremoctopus spp.) certainly does, with a hypnotic swirl of billowing tentacles resembling a kaleidoscopic cloak. While the ordinary swimmer may fail to distinguish it from a wisp of drifting plastic, marine researcher Jactina Shackleton was ecstatic to identify this uncommon and lovely critter, as shown by the squeaks of delight in her recording.
“I had a great snorkeling trip today and saw a BLANKET OCTOPUS!” On Instagram, Jacinta wrote. “These animals are a rare type of pelagic octopus that lives its whole life in the open ocean. The first guy seen alive was not until 2002!”
Thursday, Shackleton was swimming near Lady Elliot Island, a coral cay at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, when he saw the young female blanket octopus. The waters are in a highly protected “Green Zone,” which makes them a home for many different kinds of wildlife, like pink and black manta rays. But, as Shackleton says, seeing a female blanket octopus here is “surely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Shackleton was so excited that she could barely hold her breath as she snorkeled. Luckily, she was still able to take pictures and videos of the octopus, which is, to be honest, just too beautiful to look at.
Don’t let their beauty fool you, though, because the blanket octopus carries a strange shiv in the form of a limb cut off from a poisonous jellyfish.
size of octopus
Dr. Julian Finn of Museums Victoria was the first person to see a blanket octopus living. He said that the species is “the most extreme example of sexual size difference in a non-microscopic animal.” It’s a good point, especially since an adult female can be up to two meters (6.6 feet) long while an adult male is only 2.4 centimeters (0.9 inches) long. This is the biggest difference in size between males and females in the animal world.
With such different sizes, you might think pairing would be hard, and you’d be right. The tiny guys die in the process because their sex arm is broken off, and they don’t live long after that.
“Seeing one in person is indescribable; I was so mesmerized by its movements that it seemed to be dancing through the water with a flowing cape,” Shackleton told Guardian. “The colors are so incredible that you can’t take your eyes off of it.”
