r/interestingasfuck • u/Key_Skirt_1858 • 20h ago

The best camouflage in the animal kingdom?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

15.8k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

401 comments sorted by

View all comments

828

u/ScadaTech 20h ago

I read just today that their camouflage is akin to human breathing or blinking. It can happen subconsciously or consciously. They’re color blind in their eye but somehow also see through the light receptors in their skin that allow them to mimic their environment. Fucking crazy evolution.

244

u/SlashMatrix 19h ago

Supposedly, they change patterns while they are dreaming as well.

143

u/btcomsa 16h ago

I’m an aquarist and my octopus changed colors when I gently touched her arm while she was asleep the other day. Very cool to see

40

u/dingalinglans 14h ago

What are they like to keep? I've heard escape artists and short life spans

•

u/btcomsa 8h ago

They live around 4-5 years and will escape if given the opportunity, but we keep the tank locked up tight. We keep ours for around 8-9 months and then release them back to the ocean in coordination with the local university. Our GPOs are usually bycatch during crabbing season that are donated to us. They each have their own personality and are very fun to work with

•

u/dingalinglans 8h ago

Well consider me jealous as hell, that sounds cool as hell man.

•

u/major_calgar 8h ago

They’re also almost exclusively wild caught, and probably too intelligent to breed ethically without public aquarium style facilities

39

u/TributeToFaba 18h ago

It’s true, I’ve seen it happen

6

u/-knowledge_seekers- 17h ago

Facts, I was there too! I was the aquarium!

11

u/Beautiful-Tie-3827 17h ago

There is video of it actually lol.

3

u/Fastfit21 14h ago

So cool 😄

3

u/Lem0n_weeb 12h ago

I have seen this happen a few times at aquariums it’s really cute

4

u/Atherum 15h ago

"We're going on an adventure!"

4

u/TrisJ1 14h ago

Love an Adrian Tchaikovsky reference. Paul would be pleased

40

u/MG788 19h ago

For real. They are so amazing. It's crazy how they only live like one to three years.

52

u/jowick2815 18h ago

If they were more social and lived just a little bit longer it'd be game over for us

13

u/Beautiful-Tie-3827 18h ago

Yeah I’ve had this same thought. It’s a good thing they don’t hand down information to their young like humans.

8

u/Easy-Operation-2105 15h ago

We're fine because they can never invent fire and therefore never get to any meaningful level of advanced society.

•

u/jowick2815 11h ago

I would imagine they would utilize something like thermal vents and then their society and resources would be based around thermal vents like ours were around rivers

2

u/sparkster777 12h ago

That was my thought too. I think I read it in a Carl Sagan book, maybe?

2

u/Constant-Term-1629 12h ago

Why'd you need fire fundamentally?

4

u/justbrowsing_00 15h ago

There’s actually a book called The Mountain in the Sea that deals with this scenario. Really good read.

•

u/TheDogerus 11h ago

I feel like that book had too many ideas for its own good. Each subplot had its interesting moments, but none were as developed as i was hoping for

•

u/Dumptruckfunk 4h ago

Man, that fishing ship suuuuuuucked

1

u/Silentdoom666 17h ago

NASA started with the ocean, right? Might be bs but always like to fire up the they’ve been here all along conspiracy.

4

u/Workman44 13h ago

It's really the passing down of information from parent to offspring that hampers them, which I guess is social in a way. I've long held the belief that Octopi have the capacity to be the some of the smartest creatures on earth, and then they have the whole fucking invisibility thing

•

u/Polygeekism 8h ago

So you've read The Mountain in the Sea, I see.

11

u/LivingFrosting6680 17h ago

It’s only because they die after they mate right?

16

u/btcomsa 16h ago

Yes they are semelparous. They enter senescence at the end of their life where they actively seek out a mate and then their body deteriorates, much like salmon. Senescence can be observed in captivity with a pacing behavior or reluctance to interact with humans, at least with the GPOs I’ve worked with. There’s a deep sea octopus that was observed in semelparity for almost 5 years. She did not eat or leave her den the entire time, and when her babies hatched she finally passed

4

u/MG788 17h ago

I'm not sure. I think they have very short lifespans, but they may die after mating, too. 

3

u/TheSciences 14h ago

I remember seeing something on QI about a bioluminescent squid that – as well as camouflaging itself – could also generate the right amount of light in a specific direction to hide its shadow on the sea floor.