Читать книгу Extreme Nature - Mark Carwardine - Страница 25

NAME	Indo-Malayan mimic octopus
LOCATION	Indonesian-Malaysian archipelago
ABILITY	pretending to be anything but an octopus

© Roger Steene/imagequest3d.com

If you are a medium-sized predator, the average octopus is one of the most edible animals in the sea. It’s substantial and meaty, and without a shell, bones, spines, poisons or any other unpleasant defence mechanisms. In fact, the best defence most species of octopus have is to stay hidden as much as possible and do their own hunting at night.

So to find one in full view in the shallows in daylight was a surprise for two Australian underwater photographers, swimming off the Indonesian island of Flores in the early 1990s. Actually, what they saw at first was a flounder. It was only when they looked again that they saw a medium-sized octopus, with all eight of its arms folded and its two eyes staring upwards to create the illusion of a fishy body. An octopus has a big brain, excellent eyesight and the ability to change colour and pattern, and this one was using these assets to turn itself into a completely different creature.

Many more of this species have been found since then, and there are now photographs of octopuses that could be said to be morphing into sea snakes (six arms down a hole, and two undulating menacingly), hermit crabs, stingrays, crinoids, holothurians, snake eels, brittlestars, ghost crabs, mantis shrimp, blennies, jawfish, jellyfish, lionfish and sand anemones. And while they mimic, they hunt – producing the spectacle of, say, a flounder suddenly developing an octopodian arm, sticking it down a hole and grabbing whatever’s hiding there.