Blanket Octopus Size report

The blanket octopus (Tremoctopus violaceus) gets its peculiar name from the blanket-like muscle membrane between its arms and legs. They extend their legs into giant "blankets" when in danger to scare off approaching predators. Usually, the giant blanket octopuses we see are females.

The blanket octopus is an oddball among octopuses that doesn't spout ink to scare off predators and never roams the sea floor. If unfortunately bitten by a predator, the blanket octopus will also cut off its arms and legs to escape, similar to a lizard's tail, to survive. The blanket octopus is an oddball among octopuses that doesn't spout ink to scare off predators and never roams the sea floor.

Blanket octopuses get their name from the webbed "blanket" of females, a feature that males do not have. Extreme sexual dimorphism, like the blanket octopus, is not unusual in the ocean. Seeing a live blanket octopus is so hard. It swims mesmerizingly, dances gracefully through the water, and is so incredibly colorful that you can't take your eyes off it. Let's learn more about this amazing sea creature in this post.

Blanket Octopus Size and Appearance

When you see a female blanket octopus, you will be amazed that its swimming posture is as graceful and soft as gorgeous silk. As you can see, it has a blanket-like membrane of muscle between its arms and legs, where it got its name. The more you learn about blanket octopuses, the more you realize their magic. Male blanket octopuses have one of the most daring defenses in the animal kingdom. They don't have the colossal size of females, but they can control a deadly weapon-the Portuguese Man-of-War jellyfish. The blanket octopus is immune to the man-of-war jellyfish's venom and can tear off its tentacles as a defensive weapon.

Why are male blanket octopuses so tiny? Among sexually dimorphic animals, females are larger because they need a large body to produce more eggs or offspring and more power to give birth. For males, sperm are tiny, so they evolved to accept a smaller-sized body.

Average Size of Blanket Octopus

Blanket octopuses have very extreme sexual dimorphism. Female blanket octopuses can reach nearly 2 meters in length, while males appear tiny, less than 2.4 centimeters long, and even smaller than a female's eye. Females can be up to 10,000 times larger than males and possibly even 40,000 times as heavy as males. Such a huge sexual dimorphism is very rare among animals; the blanket octopus has the largest gender size discrepancy in the animal kingdom.

Quick Facts
Scientific name
Tremoctopus violaceus
Habitat
deep open sea
Average Length
female: 2 m; male: 2.4 cm
Lifespan3-5 years

Living Habits of Blanket Octopus

Male blanket octopuses spend their entire lives searching for females. Finding females in the open ocean is difficult for male blanket octopuses. It needs to be lucky enough to leave an arm after meeting a female. The male blanket octopus injects sperm into a specialized arm, then tears it away from the body, then the arm wriggles into the female. Generally, the female will hardly notice the mating behavior during this process, and the male will float in the water and wait to die. The female blanket octopus may retain multiple male arms at the same time, and it can release sperm by squeezing the arms to complete fertilization. Adults usually die shortly after reproduction. Once the male mates, he will die soon after that, sometimes days.

Final Words

First discovered in 1963, the female blanket octopus stretches its legs to form a blanket-like silhouette to scare away predators. This blanket makes the octopus appear larger and more intimidating to potential predators. Found in subtropical and tropical oceans, the blanket octopus spends most of its time floating in the open ocean, so few people get to see it. So the Blanket Octopus continues to remain another mystery of the ocean.


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