Btw, no cephalopods were harmed in the making of this photo! The little squid is still in the water, in a petri dish, with the dime underneath the dish.
The bioluminescent octopus (scientific name: Stauroteuthis syrtensis) is really weird. Seriously, their tentacles’ lengths don’t match up (they can stretch out to around fourteen inches though) and they’ve got web connecting them and they look like disgruntled floppy umbrellas. They’re also very pretty.
Okay, so maybe the weird thing about them is not that they look like umbrellas, but that they glow! This is a pretty strange quality for an octopod, considering the only other times anyone’s ever heard of these shenanigans were with two other species that had glowy rings around the mouths of breeding females (that’s actually really weird too, maybe I should have written about that).
They have about forty suckers called photophores that should be your average octopus suction-cup, but instead are genetically modified through evolution to do less suctioning and more glowing. They still have multiple traits of normal suckers, apparently, but a lot of the muscles usually found in them were replaced by cells to aid in bioluminescence instead.
The light fades out toward the end of the row of photophores and is supposedly used to scare off predators but also lure in prey. The other idea is that they use it to communicate, which sounds awesome because some of them some of them do blink their lights and twinkle like Christmas lights (that might be a little bit embellished, but you get the point), and it just sounds beautiful and these guys are awesome I rest my case thank you and goodnight
It’s a special treat to spot a red octopus while tide-pooling, but careful not to touch it. Red octopuses have venom to kill prey and sharp beaks to break open shells. These adaptations help them secure food…and discourage handsy tide-poolers!
[bangs pots and pans together] WILD ANIMALS ARE NOT PETS. THEY ARE NOT FUCKING PETS. THERE IS A REASON WHY IT’S ILLEGAL TO KEEP WILD ANIMALS AS PETS. [bangs pots and pans louder] REAL LIFE ISN’T A FUCKING DISNEY MOVIE. IT TOOK 15,000 YEARS TO DOMESTICATE DOGS AND EVEN THEN IT JUST TAKES ONE BAD OWNER TO FUCK IT UP.
NO YOU CANNOT CUDDLE THE BEAR.
WHAT IN THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING.
