If you guessed octopus you’re right. They are amazing, playful and intelligent creatures who (apart from correctly predicting the winning teams of football) have been observed to solve puzzles and unlock childproof jars. Here are some more interesting facts about our eight legged masters of camo.
- They have been observed to eat their own arms when bored and can regrow the lost arm.
- They are quite intelligent and can use tools and even use coconut shells as mobile homes.
- Octopuses can change the colour of its entire body in just three-tenths of a second to match the surrounding objects such as plants and rocks.
- They have approximately 240 suckers on each limb, and a large sucker could hold up to 15 kg.
- Octopuses are very curious and need stimulation. They even engage in what humans would call play.
- They have three hearts and blue blood. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood throughout the body.
- Females lay up to 150,000 eggs in a week. After hatching, small octopuses will float for a short period of time with plankton and then swim to the bottom of the sea
- When discovered, they release a cloud of black ink to obscure its attacker’s view and dull their sense of smell, making the fleeing octopus harder to track.
- They are fast swimmers and can jet forward by expelling water through their mantles.
- The only hard structure on their body is their beak, which looks just like the beak of a parrot.