Watch: The spectacular female ‘Blanket Octopus’ was seen unfurling its stunning, fleshy cape
Part of the Tremoctopus genus, Blanket Octopus females are 10,000 times bigger than males.
Not only do Blanket Octopuses look stunning and almost fashionable, they are also incredibly elusive and sensitive creatures. Very few videos exist of these octopuses, and they also exhibit the most extreme degree of sexual size-dimorphism (females being larger than males) known in any non-microscopic animal.
“Imagine a female the size of a person and the male a size of a walnut,” said Tom Tregenza, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Leeds in England. The female blanket octopus also has behaviours particular to her moods – when she feels insecure, she unfurls her fleshy colour-shifting cape (video below).
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