Once upon a time I went to the beach in South Carolina with my partner, where a raccoon came and unwrapped the foil on our potatoes with its little human hands while we were sleeping in the tent. On the beach there was a dead slimy jellyfish. A helpful passerby said, “That there’s a Portuguese Man-of-War! It’ll hurt like hell.” I later learned about the Blanket Octopus’s fascinating use of the jellyfish tentacles. I also made an educational interactive collage for a friend about this awesome animal! A blanket octopus tattoo idea is swimming around in my head, even.

boyqueen:

pussytooth:

Blanket Octopus

things you should know about the blanket octopus:

The females are 40,000 times heavier and 100 times larger than the males & grow up to 6.6 feet long. The males only grow to 0.9 inches.

To mate, the males will fill their tentacles with sperm and tear it apart from their bodies, giving it to a female who uses it to fertilize the eggs. Then the male floats away and dies.

To defend against predators, the female tears off tentacles of passing Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish as they are immune to the sting. When they encounter predators they wave the poisonous tentacles about using their two upper arms. This provides a painful deterrent while greatly increasing their size.