Cephalophilia #1 - Blue Ringed Octopus - H. lunulata

Blue-ringed octopus swimming
Image by Stephane Bailliez.

I thought a touch of cephalopod love on a beautiful weekend day. A nice example of one of the three genus of known toxic cephalopods: Hapalochlaena lunulata (Greater Blue Ring Octopus) from the Philippines. Highly toxic, they are rarely above 70g in size, but have enough toxins in them to deliver 20+ doses of toxin at lethal levels to an adult human. The chief component of their toxin is the same compound at the heart of cone snail toxins and the toxin of pufferfish and causes paralysis including respiratory and cardiac shutdown. Fortunately this guy hunts small crustaceans mostly, and bites on humans are self defense.

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Mollusca

Class

Cephalopoda

Order

Octopoda

Family

Octopodidae

Genus

Hapalochlaena

Species

Hapalochlaena lunulata