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I guess this is about Octopi by Davin Eley
Phylum Mollusca
Chitons
Octopus
Snail
Octopus
Invertebrate (Cephalopod)
Carnivore
Average life span in the wild: 1 to 2 years
Maximum arm span of 9m
Up to 270kg
Octopuses divide into two types, the deep-sea finned octopuses and their finless, shallower water cousins. They inhabit many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs.
Tropical and temperate waters of the world’s oceans
Octopoda
Mollusca
Life style and Movement
The octopus spends much of its solitary life in a den, leaving at night to hunt. It likes to search for a new home every week or two.
Octopus dens are usually under a rock or in a crevice, and the animal has even been known to take up residence inside an old, discarded bottle on the seafloor.
The preferred method of movement for many octopuses is a form of walking. Rows of suckers on the underside of each arm enable the octopus to move itself forward along the sea floor.
Structure
The head of the octopus, inferior frontal lobe system present; superior buccal and posterior buccal lobes fused.
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.
They also have beaklike jaws.
This beak is useful for breaking open clam shells and tearing apart flesh.
Next to the beak is the radula, a barbed tongue the octopus uses to scrape an animal out of its shell once the shell is opened.
Tooth-covered organ called the salivary papilla that it can use to drill into shells.
Getting Food
The octopus uses a variety of techniques to capture and consume prey. Its long, flexible arms are ideal for reaching into crevices after tasty crabs and crayfish, and its soft bodies are able to squeeze into tiny spaces after small fish or clams with its beak.
Facts
- 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.
- 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.
Reproduction
As with most creatures, the octopus's main purpose in life is to reproduce. Both the male and female octopuses die soon after mating. The male dies a few months afterwards, while female dies shortly after the eggs hatch.
The male octopus has a modified arm called the hectocotylus, which is about a meter long and holds rows of sperm. Depending on the species, he will either approach a receptive female and insert the arm into her oviduct or take off the arm and give it to her to store in her mantle for later. The female keeps the arm until she lays her eggs, at which time she takes the arm out and spreads the sperm over her eggs to fertilize them.
The female cares for her eggs until they hatch. She blows currents across the eggs to keep them clean and protects them from predators. The eggs might incubate anywhere from two to 10 months, depending on the species and the water temperature. Once they hatch, they're on their own.
1 percent survival rate.
The Scientist
Origins
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I NEED
- The group of marine biologists who study cephalopods are called Teuthologists.
- All octopuses are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopuses are known to be deadly to humans.
- There are around 300 recognized octopus species, which is over one-third of the total number of known cephalopod species.
AN A
- They also have beaklike 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.