I thought that I had finally found the very rare Lembeh Hairy Octopus. It wasn’t, sadly, but a very interesting octopus none the less, and one we hadn’t seen before.
It is interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, when it walks, it has the most bizarre action, bunching it’s legs under it’s body, stretching itself out and then walking and almost falling over at the same time. While it’s doing this, it is a fairly uniform dark colour, quite smooth, with a distinctive white marking running down it’s body and eyes.
When it stopped the second strange thing about this octopus showed itself. It grew hairs!! Which is why I though it was a Hairy Octopus. It rapidly camouflaged itself against the object it was on, which had masses of algae growing on it and perfectly copied the hair-like algae. He is, perhaps, a Shaggy Octopus, rather than a Hairy…
A wonderful octopus to watch, changing from smooth to hairy…
