96-Tentacled Octopus

July 23rd, 2008

Cephelopods are far and away my favorite sea-creatures. They are fiendishly smart, can squeeze their body through a hole the size of a 50 cent piece and sometimes, sometimes, they come in crazy mutations like the one above, from Pink Tentacle:

The preserved octopus actually has the normal number of 8 appendages attached to its body, but each one branches out to form the multitude of extra tentacles. Apparently there is no theory that fully explains the surplus tentacles, but they are believed to be the result of abnormal regeneration that occurred after the octopus suffered some sort of injury.

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