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Author Name: BoingBoing
This story was originally published on Boingboing.net. [1]
License: CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0.[2]


Watch this mesmerizing underwater video of a beautiful blanket octopus

2021-10-13 00:00:00

This video is cool on its own, but I thought I should include something else about blanket octopuses to make this post more interesting. So I did some googling, and discovered a claim that blanket octopuses are one of "the most extreme sexually dimorphic animals." This felt like a pretty ridiculous accolade, so naturally, I kept reading. Apparently, the blanket octopuses that are (assigned) female at birth can reach sizes of up to about two meters, or a little over six feet. By contrast, the (assigned) males tend to max out around … 2.4 centimeters.

Yes, you read that right. That's like me having sex with a walnut but also I'm a cephalopod.

Given that information, I feel pretty confident that octopus in the video above is a female.
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[1] URL: https://boingboing.net/2021/10/13/watch-this-mesmerizing-underwater-video-of-a-beautiful-blanket-octopus.html
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

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