Blue-ringed Octopus

Blue-ringed Octopuses

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Mollusca
Class:	Cephalopoda
Order:	Octopoda
Family:	Octopodidae
Genus:	*Hapalochlaena*

Species

Hapalochlaena fasciata
Hapalochlaena lunulata
Hapalochlaena maculosa
Hapalochlaena nierstraszi

The Blue-ringed Octopus (genus Hapalochlaena) are small octopuses that live in tide pools in the Pacific, in places from Japan to Australia.

There are four species of Hapalochleana:

Greater Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata)
Lesser Blue-ringed Octopus or Southern Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa)
Blue-lined Octopus (Hapalochlaena fasciata)
Hapalochlaena nierstraszi

An individual Blue-ring Octopus tends to blend into its environment until provoked, when it turns quickly into a bright yellow creature with blue rings or lines. It camouflages's itself by using special dermal cells called chromatophores. It hunts small crabs, but will bite an attacker, even a human if provoked or stepped on.

Its saliva, which can be instilled through a painless bite or can be spit, contains the bacterial poison tetrodotoxin, to which there is no known antidote. Tetrodotoxin, the same poison found in Pufferfish and Cone Snails, can cause paralysis leading to respiratory arrest, which can then lead on to cardiac arrest because of lack of oxygen. First aid treatment is pressure on the wound and CPR, and hospital treatment involves respiratory assistance until the toxin is washed out of the body. The symptoms can vary in severity, with children being the most at risk because of their small body size. If the victims live through the first 24 hours after the bite they generally go on to make a complete recovery.

Table of contents

1 Feeding
2 Mating
3 External links

Feeding

Their diet typically consists of small crab, and shrimp, but may also feed on fish if they can catch them. They pounce on their prey, bite them then use their beaks to tear off bits. They then suck out the flesh from the crustacean's exoskeleton. In lab conditions they have been seen to eat each other although they have not been studied in the wild.

Mating

Males mate with the females by grabbing her mantle, then transferring sperm packets by inserting his hectocotylus into her mantle cavity over and over again. Mating continues until the female has had enough, and in at least one species has to remove the over-enthusiastic male by force.

Blue ringed octopus females lay only one clutch of about fifty eggs in their lifetime towards the end of autumn. Eggs are laid then incubated underneath the females arms for approximately six months, and during this process she will not eat. After the eggs hatch the female dies, and the new offspring will reach maturity and be able to mate by the next year.