Surprisingly, the suckers on an octopus are individually controlled. The suction cups of octopus are so powerful, in fact, each one has more taste receptors than that of a human tongue! They’re considered to be muscular structures and they can be used to taste, smell, and grip. Octopuses suction cups don’t contain any teeth. However, each arm of the octopus can have up to 280 suckers each. So how many suction cups does the giant pacific octopus have? And how strong are they? Read on to find out and learn more about the power of suction cups! How Many Suction Cups are on Each Tentacle?Īll eight arms of an octopus have a whopping 2,240 suction cups, each used to taste, grip and smell. They are easy to distinguish being the largest species of octopus.Īs you can imagine, their great size not only determines the magnitude of their body, but also their suction cups. On which note, they have blue blood just like horseshoe crabs.The giant pacific octopus is known for its intelligence and immense size. The beak of a small octopus won’t do much damage, but a larger octopus can be painful and even draw blood. Chitin and keratin (like a rhino horn) are the toughest biological matter. Made of chitin (like a parrot beak) and wrapped in muscle tissue, it’s a structurally sound and difficult to break or even scratch. Octopuses have powerful arms with suckers that give them an almost unbreakable grip (~100lbs per square inch), and they’re capped off with pointed teeth.Īnd that’s not even to mention their powerful beak. We’ve all seen the aquarium footage of an octopus wrestling a shark. Of course, octopuses are hardly limited to venom use. Octopuses have a sharp beak which they can use to drill into prey with shells or tough skin, and then they use their venomous bite to actually kill. Still, this venom gives us a better idea of how octopuses actually kill.
Since the blanket octopus stops using the Physalia tentacles when they’re small they can’t deliver a fatal blow to an adult human. Granted, only the blue-ringed octopus has powerful enough venom to kill a human. As recently as the past decade, marine biologists have come to discover that octopuses carry a venom protein similar to that found in snakes.Ī study from Bryan Fry of the University of Melbourne Australia identified that all octopuses are venomous, and this appears to extend to other coleoids, cuttlefish and squid. The blanket octopus with its makeshift stinging weapons, and the blue-ringed octopus with its fatal bite, are not the only venomous octopuses. Which is about 1/10,000th the mass of a female. The female tremoctopus can reach about 2 meters in length.Īn extreme example of sexual dimorphism, the males may only grow to 2.5 cm. Once the octopus hits about 7.5 cm they seem to discard the tentacles. It’s like having your daddy give you a roll of nickels or a can of mace. They start off pretty small, so to keep themselves safe they need to arm themselves. This behaviour has only been observed in juvenile tremoctopus. The crazy thing is, it’s only the little fellass packing heat.
“Float like a deflated balloon, sting like a million bees.” They can paralyze, stun, or kill their prey as well as fending off potential attackers. The blanket octopus uses it both offensively and defensively. Regardless of their origin, their use as a weapon is devastatingly effective. Their sting raises whip-like welts that can cause pain for 2-3 days.Īlthough often mistaken for a jellyfish the man o’ war is actually a siphonophore (basically a large jellyfish-like organism made out of several, smaller organisms).
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