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<\/p>\nOn the ocean floor near the Galapagos Islands, a submersible controlled by scientists came across a mysterious octopus as blue as the ocean and no bigger than a golf ball.<\/p>\n
“He’s tiny! It’s blue!” one excited scientist was recorded as saying when she first caught sight of the cerulean cephalopod on footage transmitted from the sub.<\/p>\n
The team from the Charles Darwin Foundation had just discovered a new species of octopus nearly 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) below the water’s surface, according to research published Monday.<\/p>\n
“Right away, I knew it was something really special,” said octopus expert Janet Voight, who was asked to identify the strange species.<\/p>\n
At first, the curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago had to make do with photos of the animal.<\/p>\n
Then she received its preserved body in the mail.<\/p>\n
“When it arrived, I was like ‘Oh! My goodness! It’s beautiful,'” Voight told Agence France-Presse (AFP).<\/p>\n
She was immediately interested because the closest known octopus of that shape lives off the coast of Uruguay \u2013 in a different ocean on the other side of South America.<\/p>\n
Normally, to describe a new octopus species, a specimen needs to be cut open so that its mouth, beak, teeth and other parts can be examined.<\/p>\n
“We only had the one specimen, so I didn’t want to take it apart,” Voight said.<\/p>\n
Instead, the team at the Field Museum used CT scans to take thousands of X-ray images, then compiled them for a 3D model of the octopus, revealing its insides.<\/p>\n
“There’s nothing like spending the day looking at something no other human has ever seen,” the Field Museum’s X-ray lab head Stephanie Smith said in a statement.<\/p>\n
‘Deep purple’ <\/p>\n
The new species, named Microeledone galapagensis, stands out for reasons other than its blue hue, which is believed to be the rarest color in nature.<\/p>\n
The octopus appears to be the runt of the Megaleledonidae family, whose members are normally much larger and live in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica.<\/p>\n
“Its stubby little arms with only one row of suckers set it apart from most octopus we are familiar with,” Voight said.<\/p>\n
Even among “other species with short little arms and a single sucker row, its colouration and smooth skin on the back surface separate it,” she added.<\/p>\n
While the octopus is light blue on its back, underneath it is a “very deep purple,” Voight said.<\/p>\n
“We think this color pattern helps keep it safe. If the octopus grabs a prey item that emits light, that light may attract predators that might then eat the octopus,” she explained.<\/p>\n
“So the octopus puts its dark-colored web over the prey item, keeping itself safe.”<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, it is not uncommon to find new species of octopus in the deep sea, particularly in areas that have not been well explored, which is a massive portion of the ocean floor.<\/p>\n
“If you took all the land on Earth and pieced it together, you would not cover the Pacific Ocean,” Voight pointed out.<\/p>\n
She added that she had last seen a new octopus in 2023, off the coast of Costa Rica.<\/p>\n
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