Hey, sailors! Welcome back to Animals Are Good: Cephalopod Week edition. Cephalopods, in case you’re wondering, are a class of mollusks to which octopus, squid, and cuttlefish belong. As the week comes to a close, we’d like to give a much-deserved shoutout to one of the cutest tentacle-babies out there: the dumbo octopus (genus Grimpoteuthis).
Image: OET/NautilusLive
This fierce little squish — which gets its name from its elephant-ear-like fins — is a deep sea diver, living at about 3000m to 4000m. According to Aquarium of the Pacific, Dumbo octopuses have been found in the Pacific Ocean, near Australia and off the west coast of the US.
Even though they’re only about eight inches tall, the dumbo octopus can be pretty fierce. It swallows its prey — which include crustaceans and worms — completely whole!
“Dumbo octopuses envelop their prey within their webbed arms to make a balloon around them, and then consume them,” Dr. Nicholas Higgs, Deputy Director of the Plymouth University Marine Institute, told Gizmodo.
Since the Dumbo Octopus lives so deep, capturing video of it is pretty rare. We’ll take all the footage of this flappy little guy we can get.