Blue Ring Octopus - Cephalopods -very cool critters

finfan 19th October 2012, 12:19 am

As some may know I recently acquired a Blue ring octopus from a. Club member not wanting it, a new addition to my tank I particularly enjoy.

She has an amazing personality and switches between the two tanks I keep her in, which are side by side....I do have lids on both but after about a month I realised they don't hold her anyway - but this is only when I don't feed her for a week. Her diet is small crabs and shrimp, oh - and some of the slower fish that she doesn't like.

Its funny how she is selective about her tank mates, I have a wrasse, clown and damsels all sharing fine in fact the wrasse will even steal food from her and she tolerates it no problem, but some other fish she just eats.... Shocked

Occys - Cephalopods have colour-changing chromatophores on their skin, which allows them to camouflage themselves, they can change colour as well as texture to blend in — but the blue-ringed octopus has a different trick up its tentacle.

The blue-ringed octopus is tiny and awesome — but, as we Australians know, those blue iridescent rings are a warning sign. The octopus' venom is the deadliest in the world, enough to kill an adult human within minutes via a paralysis that shuts the body down completely, and there is with no anti-venom —victims have to be intubated and kept alive via artificial respiration until the venom passes from the body. Not that I can ever name a victim.....

But how this octopus shows the rings is different to how squids and other octopodes camouflage themselves, discovered Lydia Mäthger, a biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts. She and a team of researchers filmed the octopus at super-slow speeds to find out the secret.

The colour in the rings is not caused by chromatophores, but iridophores — an iridescent layer, usually under the skin of the cephalopod, that shifts to reflect light. In the blue-ringed octopus, the "rings" are sections of the skin where the iridophores aren't covered by the chromatophore layer. The circle of skin inside the ring has a direct neural connection, and the octopus can contract it at will, revealing the glowing blue ring underneath. How cool is that - digital camo

I will attach some pics later today - I think that cephalopods amazing and very cool ?

Cool