The marine biologist Jacinta Shackleton has been the one who has obtained this spectacular recording of a quite rare and precious animal.
“I had such an amazing snorkel today and came across a manta octopus! Shackleton wrote on his Instagram account. “These animals are a rare species of pelagic octopus that spend their entire life cycle in the open ocean. The first living male was only sighted in 2002!”, comments the biologist.
A vibrantly colored octopus
The colorful manta octopus was discovered off the coast of Lady Elliot Island , a coral cay that sits at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. Its waters are in “Zona Verde”, a highly protected region.
Regarding the species, females are much larger than males . They can reach two meters and they only a few centimeters . Why they are so small isn’t certain, but scientists think it’s likely that males spend all their time and energy locating females from great distances rather than investing in their own growth.
a deadly mating
When they meet, the male transfers his sperm via a specialized arm, called a hectocotyl , which will detach itself and pass to the female, who will keep it stored in her mantle cavity until she is ready to lay her eggs. Of course, after the sexual encounter, the male dies (almost immediately after mating), according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation .
It is one of the strangest but equally fascinating forms of reproduction that we can find in nature.
Did you know that the male weighs 40,000 times less than the female?
As a curiosity, the blanket octopus is carnivorous, with a diet based mainly on smaller fish. As if its appearance and its way of mating weren’t unusual enough, this octopus practices one of the strangest methods of hunting prey: it uses a tentacle torn from a toxic jellyfish as a weapon, usually from the Portuguese man-of-war. Blanket octopuses take these toxic tentacles (the poison is deadly) and attach them to the ends of their own arms, acting like little whips to discourage would-be predators.
Reference: Great Barrier Foundation
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