Woaw!

HE’S TRYING TO BLEND IN.

HE KNOWS HE’S IN DANGER AND HE’S SCARED AND DOESN’T WANT TO BE SEEN.

y’all see this motherfucker right here?

this is the Indonesian Mimic Octopus.

This cool little guy can mimic a crab, lionfish, sea snake, flatfish, and jellyfish. He uses these amazing disguise techniques to avoid and deter predators, and also to attract possible meals.

Animals lived on ground for only 550,000,000 years, while underwater life existed for billions of years. Also the ground is only 30% of the Earth and height wise it’s only as tall as some tall trees unless you’re flying. Also many places on the ground are deserts and thus don’t have water to support much life.

My mom and her wife volunteer as docents at the Hatfield Marine Center in Newport, OR. The Center catches, studies, and releases great Pacific octopuses every 6-8 weeks. Longer than that is considered cruel. Male octopuses don’t live very long - females live longer, but only until they lay a clutch of eggs. Then they starve to death protecting their hatchlings.

Depriving them of too much time is like solitary for DECADES for a human.

And the Hatfield treats them as close to people-in-different-shapes as possible. Octopuses learn individuals. Docents they like, they hug (since they taste through the sensors in their suction pads). Docents they don’t like they squirt with jets of water - and everyone knows that’s valid, and that docent is reassigned.

When the time period is up, the Hatfield takes the octopus in question out to the bay and releases him/her back to the sea. It’s a testament to their treatment that the animals tend to hug everyone goodbye, then swim away slowly. They form attachments. 

I think they’re smart. I think their smarts involve their lives underwater, and not our technological world in the air - so they don’t LOOK smart to US.