This Baby Octopus Just Hatched And Is Already A Master Of Disguise

You have probably seen the birth of various aquatic animals. They are either live births, where the baby animal comes out of the mother and starts swimming right away or they develop in an egg sack and comes out a while later. But we have not seen the birth of a baby octopus, until now.

In a curious video posted by the Virginia Aquarium on their Twitter feed, a baby Caribbean octopus, no bigger than the nail on your pinky finger, hatches from a bundle of eggs that look like a fragile bouquet. You will notice that right away it changed color, going from a milky white to a bright purple.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the Caribbean reef octopus is known to be a master of disguise. They use special muscles to open and close little sacs of pigment in their skin called chromatophores and this little guy was probably responding to the black tabletop beneath its tank.

The mom of this baby octopus came to the aquarium six months prior to the babies hatching and when she said the eggs, they had already been fertilized. It turned out that this incredible species, no bigger than a softball, can store their partner’s sperm for up to 100 days.

The survival rate of baby octopi is pretty low, sometimes only one or two will survive out of an entire clutch. But the team at the Virginia Aquarium plans on raising whatever babies do survive and exhibit them at the aquarium.