• Question: What do octopuses eat?

    Asked by to Thon, Catherine, James, Natalie, Shaylon on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Natalie Pilakouta

      Natalie Pilakouta answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Interesting question! There are two types of octopuses: the bottom-dwelling octopuses which spend most of their time “walking” or crawling at the bottom of the ocean (as their name suggests!) and the open-ocean octopuses which swim around in the open water.

      Bottom-dwelling octopuses eat crabs, marine worms, and other molluscs (such as clams). Open-ocean octopuses eat prawns, fish, squid and other octopuses. They paralyze their prey by injecting them with their saliva and then they dismember the prey into small pieces using their beaks.

    • Photo: Catherine Offord

      Catherine Offord answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Most eat animals that live on the sea floor, like crabs, clams and other shellfish. Some larger octopuses live in the ocean and may attack fish. Octopuses (and squid, which are closely related) have a large ‘beak’ at the centre of all those arms, which can tear apart food and break through shells.

      Take a look at these beaks!

      Squid on the left, octopus on the right)

    • Photo: James Bell

      James Bell answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Natalie and Catherine are quite right – most bottom dwelling octopuses, squid and cuttlefish eat crabs and other crustaceans. They make use of their powerful beaks to crush animals that live in shells.

      The biggest squid (colossal and giant squids) live between around 400m to 1000m in the oceans and use their huge eyes and massive tentacles to search out and catch fish. The colossal squid even has suckers with big hooks in to make sure once it’s got hold of a fish, it never lets go

      Octopuses are often ambush predators – this means the hide and wait for their prey to come to them. One amazing thing about octopus camouflage is that they can change the colour and texture of their skin, to perfectly blend in with the background (see the link below)

    • Photo: Shaylon Stolk

      Shaylon Stolk answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Octopuses are also very clever predators. They can recognise faces, solve complex puzzles, and are serious escape artists when kept in aquariums. If they see food, they’re usually quite determined to get it! Here’s a video of one stealing fish bait from a fish researcher’s project:

      And here’s one opening a jar to get the treat inside:

    • Photo: Anthony Caravaggi

      Anthony Caravaggi answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      As Catherine says, octopuses generally have beaks which help them crush and eat their prey. There is, as far as I know, one exception. There are a group of octopuses called ‘dumbo octopuses’ which apparently swallow their food whole through a unique opening.

      Learn more about the dumbo octopus here:
      http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/dumbo_octopus

      This is off-topic a bit, but you might be interested to know that while ‘octopuses’ is the commonly used word for a group of them and so is correct (if a word is used commonly often enough it can ‘become correct’), the word ‘octopus’ is Greek. The plural of a Greek word ending in ‘us’ is ‘odes’, so another name for a group of octopuses is ‘octopodes’. Some people use ‘octopi’, but that’s Latin and is just wrong. ^_^

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