Octopoda | Evolution at insanity
Octopuses are strange, colorful, masters of camouflage, despite of being colorblind. They live in all oceans , and as diverse as their surroundings. Their head has all the internal organs.
The world “octopus” comes from the Greek, októpus, meaning “eight foot.”
Cephalopods are group of highly intelligible marine creatures including octopus, cuttlefish, squids and relatives.......
Octopus are invertebrates ; they have no bones in their body. Their lower body is divided into eight arms and upper body is solely of just head. An octopus has all it's internal organs in it's head. Including their brain, stomach, liver etc. Octopuses arms are covered with tough skin on the upper side and suckers cups on the lower side. These suckers help them in grabbing objects, prey and moving around. The first Octopus lived around 400 Million years ago before any fish or any real mammal. It has gills and takes in oxygen from water gives out carb-di-oxide like other marine animals through a tube called Siphon. They have gills and their blood looks blue as it is copper based, animals with iron based blood have it in red color. Octopuses have three hearts; a systemic or main heart that circulates blood around the body and two branchial or gill hearts that pump it through each of the two gills. Each branchial heart consists of a single chamber. They pump blood through the gills via the (afferent branchial) veins. Since they only circulate venous blood, branchial hearts function under predominantly anaerobic conditions.
Their digestive system starts with mouth at the center of the origination of the eight arms, esophagus, crop, stomach and then at last anus which is channeled to siphon. (Breathing and pooping with the same hole ?!! ).
Their ancestor had a shell (very tough one) as after of all they are molluscs, animals with hard shells (Of calcium and silica mainly). Around 140 million years ago they lost their shells making them extremely vulnerable and volatile. This exposure of their soft bodies didn't make them evolve hard or strong (like pistol shrimps) Instead something better ......
Camouflage. They are masters of camouflage, they can change their color within 200 milliseconds (1/5th of a second) that is so fast in the world of camouflaging animals as they take about 20 to 30 minutes or more for changing their color. This is because that is hormonal change and it takes time for the hormones to flow through blood and act upon, whereas in octopuses this is in neural control completely and even though they are color blind they can imitate any colored surrounding. An octopuses nervous system has 500 million ; Half a billion( , for reference humans have 100 billion cells ) and 2- thirds of these half billion are in it's arms which can smell, feel or touch, taste, and even see !!! (But don't form and image in the conscious mind ). Thus even color blind octopuses are great in disguise, not only this they can even change the texture of their skin from smooth to rough or spiked, jagged, randomly shaped or any texture possible.
revealing the color of the sacs and followed by them further are Iridophores which reflect only specific colors of light once at a time in a cell (also in conscious control , shown as color bands parallel below chromatophores in the image), adding hue and colors out of red black and yellow combination. This on the whole enables octopuses form various textures, color patterns and whatever blah blah blah ......
These characteristics are evolved in octopuses due to heavy pressure of various predators and their ancients being completely exposed with no hard covering , lacking bones , shells had to somehow survive the vast and dangerous world of Waters.
When an octopus has a brain stroke , "Let me think with my arms ' 🤣😂
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