Mother Nature never cease to amaze, that’s for sure. This time, one of the most mysterious underwater creatures is baffling the marine biologists – the octopus. All after a rare, yet adorable footage shows these creatures could have dreams. But what’s more fascinating is the creature is changing its color whilst sleeping
The lovely video is part of the PBS documentary series ‘Octopus: Making Contact,’ which aired last month. And it shows an octopus named ‘Heidi,’ while sleeping in a water tank and within moments it starts to change its color. According to the marine biologist David Scheel at Alaska Pacific University, the animal is actually having dreams.
“If she is dreaming, this is a dramatic moment,” Scheel said. “You could almost narrate the body changes and narrate the dream. She sees a crab and her color starts to change a little bit, then she turns all dark, octopuses will do that when they leave the bottom. This is a camouflage, like she’s just subdued a crab and she’s just going to sit there and eat it, and she doesn’t want anyone to notice her.”
A marine biologist films this octopus changing colors while dreaming and it’s spectacular pic.twitter.com/hrHaYdVnsc
— Domenico Calia (@CaliaDomenico) September 27, 2019
However, what’s quite incredible and almost unexplainable for the scientists is that the octopus’ mantle is a very sensitive part of its body. And thanks to the creature’s multiple brains, there is a highly precise control over the skin color changing. So is very rare for the octopuses to use it while sleeping.
“It’s a very unusual behavior to see the color come and go on her mantle like that, just to be able to see all the different color patterns flashing one after the other, you don’t normally see that when an animal’s sleeping,” Scheel said. “This really is fascinating!”
Until the marine scientist will be able to find an explanation for the rare phenomenon, there’s nothing we ca do, but admire the lovely footage:
h/t: DailyMail
