The Daily Cephalopost

Want to learn how to speak bigfin reef squid? Better get your chromatophores in order, because these cephalopods use their color-changing skin cells to communicate!

This flamboyant cuttlefish can crawl and camouflage like no other.

Have you ever seen a cuttlefish walk?

If you stop by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Tentacles” exhibit, you might. The aquarium is one of a handful in the country to display flamboyant cuttlefish (Metasepia pfefferi), a diminutive species of cephalopod that often forgoes swimming to crawl, army-style, along the seafloor (or the bottom of a tank).

“They kinda lumber around on four appendages,” says Bret Grasse, who manages the cephalopods in the aquarium’s exhibit. Those appendages include two large arms and portions of the cuttlefish’s mantle, which it extends “to provide what looks like two projected legs,” he explains.

Aside from that weird walk, M. pfefferi is also unique among cuttlefish for flashing a resplendent display of hues and patterns. “I think of them as sort of like a biological bouquet of flowers,” says Grasse. “They’re just so gorgeous and exotic, and they make such an unbelievably beautiful arrangement of colors together, from reds, pinks, to yellows, to whites, blacks.” Read more about the dazzling cuttlefish here. 

Impressive Giant Pacific Octopus, carved from a fallen Redwood

Woodcarver Jeffery Michael Samudosky has magical hands that he uses to carve exquisite sculptures from mere blocks of wood.

It’s been too long since I’ve posted an octo update, (or any update, really), and this feisty little lady has been up to some pretty cool things!

We recently got a set of hamster tubes to use for octo enrichment, and the set had a little blue lookout tower in it. Surprising everyone, our octo turned this sweet blue green color to match it! I had seen our reef octopus before her with colors like this occasionally, but never a common octopus. We also don’t have a lot of blue in that habitat, so she had no reason to be blue until her enrichment was blue! (She tends to be more rock/sand colored)