An octopus has eight arms covered in suction cups.
Each arm has hundreds of little suckers. They help an octopus grip things — and even taste its food.
🐙 Amazing Octopus Facts
Octopuses are soft, clever sea animals with eight arms, three hearts and blue blood.
An octopus's biggest heart almost stops when it swims.
Two of its three hearts pump blood to the gills and one pumps to the body. That body heart nearly stops while swimming, which is why octopuses would rather crawl.
An octopus has blue blood because it uses copper instead of iron.
Our blood is red because it carries iron. An octopus uses copper, which turns its blood blue and works better in cold sea water.
An octopus has no bones — its only hard part is its beak.
The beak sits in the middle of its arms and is hard like a parrot's. An octopus uses it to break food into small pieces.
An octopus can squeeze through a hole no bigger than its beak.
With no bones in the way, it can slip through a jar opening, a bottle neck, or a pipe only a few centimetres wide.
An octopus can unscrew a jar lid to reach its food.
Octopuses are among the cleverest animals in the ocean. They solve mazes, remember the way home, and recognise the people who look after them.
An octopus can change its colour, pattern and skin texture in seconds.
Camouflage helps it hide from enemies and sneak up on food. It is a real ocean ninja.
An octopus sprays a cloud of ink to escape — and can grow a new arm if it loses one.
The dark cloud hides it so a predator cannot see which way it went. And if an arm is lost, a tiny new one sprouts in its place and slowly grows back.
Octopuses have short lives, caring mothers, and more than 300 different kinds.
Most octopuses live only one to three years. A mother guards her eggs for months without eating, and octopuses live in every ocean, from warm coral reefs to the cold, dark deep sea.
Quiz time: how much do you remember about octopuses?
Five questions to try: how many hearts does an octopus have? What colour is its blood? Why does it spray ink? Does it have bones? Why can it change colour?
Try it yourself: be an octopus scientist and test camouflage.
Put a piece of grey paper on different coloured backgrounds and look at how it stands out. If you were an octopus, which colour would you turn so a predator could not spot you? Camouflage means changing colour to blend in and stay safe.