Octopus

 

Size: to 2m

 

Lives in rock pools. Soft body and well developed brain. Eye on each side of head for vision but totally deaf. Usually stays in dens during day and hunts primarily at night or on dark dreary days.

 

Arms have two rows of suckers. It eats crustaceans and molluscs, luring them by wriggling arms as if a worm. Once caught, the octopus bites, injecting poisonous venom and a digestive enzyme. It sucks out the flesh and discards the empty shell. If an octopus loses one of its tentacles it will grow another in its place.

 

It can shoot a smoke screen of ink at attackers and can change its colour and texture to escape predators or attract a mate. It propels itself by jetting water from its mantle cavity through a siphon tube. Females lay vast numbers of eggs in a week and do not eat until the eggs hatch in around 50 days. For this reason females die of starvation.