Octopusy

Octopus, where octo is Greek for eight.

The octopus belongs to one of my favorite animals. I always thought they were cool, but before I started diving and saw my first octopus, I had not thought so much about them more than that they were very clever and looked cool.

When I first got in touch face to face, I became really curious about this strange creature. I really felt how it studied me as much as I studied it. In those cases we were not too many divers, it was even easier to get a communication. If you were really lucky, they even wanted to touch us. An intoxicating feeling!

I was curious about the octopus's intelligence. I watched videos where octopuses were mischievous with divers, and they could even get annoyed at stupid divers who were teasing them and could rip off the diver's googles and the regulator get yanked out of their mouths.

I thought one story was hilarious.
It was from an aquarium at a zoo where they had two large aquariums. In one there were fishes  and in the other lived an octopus. When the staff arrived in the morning one fish was missing and the next day one more fish was missing and so on. The staff did not understand why the fishes were missing and decided to put up some cameras. The next day, another fish was missing, and they watched with excitement the night's recording. It turned out that the octopus nicely removed the disc over its aquarium. Slipped out and made his way away to the fish aquarium, removed the disc and fished out a nice tasty fish. Pulled the disc slid back to the aquarium, and softly get back to his tank and had a nice night meal. So hilarious  :)

I learned that the only hard thing on an octopus is the beak it has on the underside of the body. The rest of the body is soft and adaptable, the octopus can get through any hole only the beak can fit.

When the octopus is born, they are extremely tiny,  fit on a finger. Unfortunately, they do not live so long, usually 1–3 years. The sad thing is that the female take care of her eggs until they hatch without going outside her nest and don't eat anything. After 8 weeks, when her job is done and her children are going to fend for themselves, she dies.
I think the eggs look like bunches of grapes hanging in the nest ceiling.

The octopus has three hearts two that pump blood to the gills and one that pumps to the rest of the body. Unlike the human blood who is red, the octopus has blue. It's because the blood contains the copper-rich protein hemocyanin.

The octopus has incredibly good vision and has memories of things that have happened, recognize sensibility and can use tools. This makes it easy for them to learn mazes and different problem solutions. The suction cups on the arms can feel chemical changes , they can smell and taste with their arms.

When I looked at National Geographic, I learned that the octopus's ink is toxic and can be deadly even to the octopus itself. The ink is of mucus substance and melanin which is the dark pigment you can find in our eye color, hair and skin. Melanity forms the amino acid tyrosine. It impairs the sight, taste and smell of a predator and can even suffocate the predator that wants to eat the octopus. If the octopus does not have time to remove from its own ink, it can also suffocate.

There are many different types of octopus species, and they are all in different ways good at camouflaging themselves.
Change the color and shape of the body to blend in with the surroundings. Some are adept at impersonating other animals to look dangerous.

The octopus is an amazing creature that makes you happy to see, experience and deserves all the respect :)