![]() “They've found a way to forage over those environments during the daytime, relying solely on their capacity to deter predators by their similarity to other species.”Īnd the pickings are good. “It's colonized the most dangerous habitat you could have as a cephalopod, in that you've got very little in the way of defenses and you're just meat walking around, very edible,” says Norman. And they advertise this unpleasantness with that wacky-ass Beetlejuice coloration, scaring off predators so they can roam freely looking for food.īy aping these creatures, the mimic octopus muscles into a market few other octopuses can. So the sea krait has its deadly bite, which doubles as an offensive and defensive weapon, while the lionfish has its spines. But their mimicry may have evolved in a very “smart” way to help the octopus procure food, not just avoid becoming it.Ī creature would be a damn fool to venture out on the seafloor in daylight without some sort of defense. Of course, it would seem smartest for the octopus to hole up in a crevice like other octopuses. ![]() The octopus couldn’t attack the intruder directly, what with the bristles and all, so it tried pushing the worm away with a wave of sand, kind of like a bulldozer. “I think we're failing to ask the right sorts of questions, or understand the nature of the intelligence or the kind of sharpness of their responsiveness.” (That said, Norman has seen other octopus species pull off incredible tricks of their own, such as one octopus that cleverly faced down an intruding bristle worm. “I think our biggest problem is that we almost give an English language test to an octopus,” Norman says. The cuttlefish, for instance, is a master of camouflage, blending seamlessly with its surroundings, while squid opt for sheer speed or, you know, growing to over 1,000 pounds in the case of the colossal squid. Then something went awry-perhaps a more powerful predator appeared that could make short work of the shells-and the cephalopods were forced to evolve more novel defenses (the nautiluses are the only cephalopods to have retained their shells). Long ago, the ancestors of octopuses, and indeed the ancestors of all other cephalopods like cuttlefish and squid, took refuge in the safety of their shells. The mimic octopus isn’t just a copycat-it’s a copycat that’s evolved a strategy far more brilliant than would appear at first glance. But this is no random assemblage of impressions: All of these creatures are toxic or venomous. True to its name, it impersonates a variety of other animals on the fly, morphing from an octopus to a banded sole to a lionfish to a sea snake. Being something you’re not could well keep you out of a stomach.Īnd no copycat is stranger or more accomplished than the mimic octopus. But in the animal kingdom, natural selection loves a copycat. Copycatism is adolescent plagiarism, through and through, and potentially devastating to one’s social standing. No schoolyard insult is more dreaded, more cruel, more head-turning than calling someone a copycat.
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