Day Octopus

Octopus cyanea · Mollusc

Day Octopus
Day octopus on a reef in the Maldives · Ahmed Abdul Rahman, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

An octopus of the Indo-Pacific reefs, from the Red Sea and East Africa to Hawaii, 16 cm in body with arms of 80 cm or more, that hunts by day, mostly at dawn and dusk, unlike most octopuses. It changes colour, pattern and skin texture to match the bottom, once 1,000 times in seven hours, and hunts fish, crabs, shrimp and molluscs from a den in a crevice or among the coral heads, leaving a midden of shells outside; it sometimes hunts alongside groupers, and has been seen punching them. It lives 12 to 15 months. In Hawaii it was the octopus the islanders ate, lured out with a cowrie shell.

Danger
Harmless
How it is met
Alone, by day
Size
Small
In winter
Active in winter

Where it lives

Coral Reef

Gives

Day Octopus Meat

Sources

Open it in Biomes — MGS Toolbox