Educational Science

A Woman Placed an Octopus on Her Face for a Photo. Then It Bit Her.

A woman's ill-advised photo attempt with an octopus recently went horribly wrong: After she draped the cephalopod on her face, the octopus dug in with its suckers and bit her on the chin, causing a painful infection that sent her to the emergency room. Jamie Bisceglia, a resident of Fox...

Photos: Deep-sea expedition discovers metropolis of octopuses

Exploring the deep (Image credit: Ocean Exploration Trust/NOAA)The E/V Nautilus has been working with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to send their underwater remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) to unexplored regions of the Davidson Seamount, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) off the coast of Monterey, California. The researchers discovered an abundance...

Why do octopuses have eight arms? The better to punch fish with, new research reveals. These brainy cephalopods sometimes team up with fish to find food; hunting collaboratively like this allows them to cover more area, and it increases their chances of catching prey. However, when big blue octopuses (Octopus...

Rare octopus video shows 'once-in-a-lifetime encounter'

A mesmerizing new video shows a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with a bizarre, bright red octopus swimming above the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Australia. The encounter, first reported by local Australian news website Bundaberg Now, was a rare sighting of a blanket octopus, named after the blanket-like fleshy cape between its...

All hail 'Emperor Dumbo,' the newest species of deep-dwelling octopus

A new species of Dumbo octopus, equipped with telltale (and darling) fins on its head, has been dredged from the deep. Nicknamed the Emperor Dumbo, the adorable creature was discovered in 2016. Alexander Ziegler of Friedrich Wilhelm University in Bonn, Germany, was aboard the German survey ship R/V Sonne as...

Octopuses can 'see' light with their arms

Octopuses can see light with their arms, even when their eyes are in the dark, researchers have found. When the arms of the octopus detect light, the eight-armed creature pulls them close to their body. Because octopuses generally have a poor sense of where their body is in space, this...

Scientists capture the world's deepest octopus on video. And it's adorable.

Explorers have captured video of the deepest-known octopus, revealing an adorably pudgy Dumbo octopus some 4.3 miles (6,957 meters) beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean swimming in what is called the hadal zone, where not even a drop of sunlight can penetrate. The dumbo octopus (genus Grimpoteuthis), with its...

Elusive glass octopus spotted in the remote Pacific Ocean (Video)

This rarely seen glass octopus bared all recently — even a view of its innards — when an underwater robot filmed it gracefully soaring through the deep waters of the Central Pacific Ocean. Marine biologists spotted the elusive glass octopus (Vitreledonella richardi) during a 34-day expedition off the remote Phoenix...