I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my Squishy

Good morning everyone! As a little hump day treat, I’m going to tell you about one of the prettiest little animals in the ocean: the blue-ringed octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa).

There are at least 10 members of the blue-ringed octopus family and they all live in the Pacific Ocean between Japan and Australia. Like many other octopuses, the blue-ringed octopus spends its day sleeping and its night working the tidal pools – hunting for crabs and shrimp. They are tiny little things, with the biggest family member only being only about 15cm long (about 6 inches) and coming in at whopping 28 grams (0.06 lbs). If you catch one of these little buggers resting it will look wrinkly and covered in brown spots, but the minute you spook it or get it agitated, the brown spots will darken. Specialized cells around each of the brown spots then create bright iridescent blue rings that pulsate. Scary looking, huh? Well I hope you think it’s scary – so scray that you leave the little octopussy alone.

If this octopus cannot scare you away with its colors, don’t worry, it will still get you. The blue-ringed octopus is considered one of the most poisonous animals in the world. One bite from this tiny little swimmer will inject enough toxin into an adult human to completely paralyze and kill them in minutes. There is no antivenom available. The fun thing about this toxin is that it is not actually made by the octopus.

You are about to behold an example of Mother Nature making best friends. Inside the salivary glands (throwback to yesterday) of the blue-ringed octopus lives a strain of bacteria that produces tetrodotoxin – the toxin that puts you into respiratory arrest. The bacteria produces this toxin (which the octopus has evolved a resistance to) to help the octopus survive. In return, the octopus provides the bacteria with a happy and safe home. In science, two organisms working together to help each other survive is known as a symbiotic relationship (more specifically a mutualistic symbiotic relationship since both are benefiting and neither at the expense of the other). You have seen relationships like this all the time, but this is one you may not have ever thought of.

So what have we learned today? Organisms work together, evolution can help build these relationships, a bunch of random facts about octopuses, the fact octopuses is the proper plural form of octopus, and don’t touch brightly colored things.