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Articles of Interest
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mimic octopus

SOME OF ITS ACTS
The mimic octopus’s strategy is quite impressive. It is unknown just how many animals the mimic octopus knows how to morph into. What is known is that most of the animals we do know of that it chooses to mimic are poisonous. This information adds to the likelihood that the shape shifting that the octopus is doing is a deliberate survival strategy and not just over observant scientists seeing more than is actually there. Some of the more common animals the mimic octopus pretends to be are the following:

Pterois(Lion Fish)- The lion fish is a poisonous fish with the brown and white stripes and spines that trail behind it on all sides. When the octopus changes its color and shapes its eight legs to look like spines, it is indeed conceivable that to the eyes of a potential predator, what might otherwise look like a tasty snack, appears in fact as a highly venomous creature that should not be messed with.

Sea snake – If under attack, a mimic octopus may hide completely in a hole except for two of its legs, which it sticks out in opposite directions. What remains in view is a long thin object with white and black bands running across the elongated body. Again the prospect of tangling with the highly venomous sea snake is something many predators would not dare to do, and they therefore may swim off leaving the octopus to live another day.

Flatfish- By pulling its arms together on one side, and flattening out his body while moving forward along the ocean floor, the mimic octopus makes himself appear like a flatfish. All he needs to do is vary his color and predators cannot tell the difference.

DISCOVERY AND ORIGIN
The mimic octopus was first discovered off the coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia by a group of scientists in the early 1990’s. The species was thought to only inhabit the islands of Indonesia until one was spotted just last year near the Great Barrier Reef by Darren Coker. Coker spotted the octopus on a shallow sand flat near Lizard Island during a super low tide on the afternoon of July 4, 2012.

HABITAT
The mimic octopus lives primarily in shallow warm waters about 15 meters deep. It prefers obscuring murky and muddy sea floors to blend in with its natural brown, beige color. It also prefers river mouths and estuaries, as opposed to reefs which are usually preferred give more shelter to other types of octopus. This is because it is able to impersonate poisonous fish; therefore it is hiding out in the open.

DESCRIPTION
The mimic octopus is a smaller octopus, growing to an average length of about 60cm, roughly two feet, and their tentacles grow to be 25 inches long, with a diameter about the same as a pencil at their widest. The octopus’s natural color is a light brown/beige color. However, they are usually a more noticeable color of striped white and brown to scare off predators by appearing to be poisonous. It is unknown whether the mimic octopus is in fact poisonous to its predators. However, it is assumed that they are not considering that if they themselves were poisonous, then there would be no need to camouflage themselves as all these other poisonous sea animals.

EATING HABITS
The mimic octopus can either be classified as a hunter or a forager. It is believed to be a hunter because scientists have observed and recorded the octopus having the ability to stalk prey and hunt down small fish and catch them. More often, however, the Mimic Octopus can be seen foraging for food. It does this by using its slender tentacles to reach into crevices in coral, as well as holes in the sand, and use its suction cups to grab small crustaceans and eat them. Because the Mimic Octopus prefers to live in shallow, murky waters, it is believed that its diet consists almost exclusively, of small fish and crustaceans. That is because those are the only two animals that are common to those conditions that a mimic octopus can survive on. They are believed to be carnivores, and are not known to eat any type of plant or vegetation.