Mimic octopus

Thaumoctopus mimicus · The mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) is an octopus from the Indo-Pacific region, noted for impersonating a wide variety of other marine animals.

Mimic octopus
Photo: Rickard Zerpe, CC BY-SA 2.0
Mimic octopus
Photo: Silke Baron from Vienna, Austria, CC BY 2.0
Mimic octopus
Photo: Rickard Zerpe, CC BY 2.0

Taxonomy

KingdomAnimalia
PhylumMollusca
ClassCephalopoda
OrderOctopoda
FamilyOctopodidae
GenusThaumoctopus
SpeciesThaumoctopus mimicus

Where it lives

Muddy estuary floors from Indonesia and Malaysia to the Philippines and New Caledonia.

Fun facts

  • It can grow up to about 60 cm (2 ft) long, yet at its widest it's only about as wide as a pencil.
  • It can switch between up to 18 different marine-animal disguises, changing not just color but shape and behavior too.
  • One individual octopus was observed impersonating a flatfish nearly 500 times over just 5 days.
  • Its brain has roughly 300 million neurons, and each of its eight arms has its own neural network totaling about 50 million more.

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Facts and taxonomy adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).