Octopus & Other Cephalopods

Information about Octopus:

Octopuses are cephalopods of the order Octopoda. They are cephalopods and they make up over 1/3 of that class of animals. Octopus have eight arms (four sets of two), two eyes and are bilaterally symmetrical. While the octopus has no bones or anything like a skeleton, it does have a hard beak at the center of where the arms come together. This flexibility and allows them to squeeze through and into very tight spaces, with some smaller species this means they can enter into something as small as the opening of a bottle.

They are exclusively found in saltwater, commonly in kelp forests and coral reefs, where they are usually near the bottom, not far from shelter or a rocky place they can escape into. When threatened, they will often dispel a burst of ink in order to discourage potential predators. They are uncommonly intelligent, and will put their cunning into work usually figuring out how to obtain prey.

In a famous incident, a marine biologist noticed that fish were disappearing mysteriously from his tanks, despite the fact that no predators were kept in the same tank. One evening, he put a security camera in place to see what was going on, and to his amazement the resident octopus was leaving its tank and invading neighboring tanks for food. There are other accounts of captive octopi doing amazing feats, such as screwing the top off a bottle to get at prey inside.