Content
- Octopus feeding
- What do octopuses of other species eat?
- How do octopuses hunt?
- digestion of octopuses
Octopuses are cephalopod and marine molluscs belonging to the order Octopoda. Its most striking feature is the presence of 8 ends that come out from the center of your body, where your mouth is. Their bodies have a white, gelatinous appearance, which allows them to change shape quickly and can adapt to places such as crevices in rocks. Octopuses are peculiar invertebrate animals, intelligent and have a highly developed vision, as well as an extremely complex nervous system.
The different species of octopuses inhabit a wide variety of environments, such as the abyssal zones of many seas, intertidal zones, coral reefs and even pelagic zones. Likewise, meet in all the oceans in the world, it can be found in both temperate and cold waters. Want to know what the octopus eats? Well, keep reading this article by PeritoAnimal and we'll tell you all about the feeding of this wonderful animal.
Octopus feeding
The octopus is a carnivorous animal, which means that it feeds strictly on foods of animal origin. The diet of cephalopods is very variable and almost all species are predators, but in general it can be distinguished two basic models:
- Fish-eating octopuses: on the one hand, there are octopuses that feed mainly on fish and within this group are the pelagic species, which are excellent swimmers.
- Octopuses that feed on crustaceans: on the other hand, there are the species that base their food mainly on crustaceans and in this group are found the species of benthic life, that is, those that inhabit the bottom of the sea.
What do octopuses of other species eat?
It is important to highlight that on many occasions what the octopus eats will depend on the habitat where they live and the depth, for example:
- Common octopus (octopus vulgaris): an inhabitant of open waters, it feeds mainly on crustaceans, gastropods, bivalves, fish and occasionally other smaller cephalopods.
- deep sea octopuses: others, such as deep sea dwellers can consume earthworms, polychaetes and snails.
- Benthic species octopuses: Benthic species generally move between rocks on the sea floor while groping between its crevices in search of food. They do this thanks to their ability to adapt their shape, as we have seen, the octopus is invertebrate, and its excellent eyesight.
How do octopuses hunt?
Octopuses have a very sophisticated hunting behavior due to their ability to mimic their surroundings. This happens thanks to the pigments present in their epidermis, which allows them to go totally unnoticed by their fangs, making them one of the most secretive organisms in the animal world.
They are very agile animals and excellent hunters. How can they boost themselves by emitting a jet of water, can quickly attack their prey while they take it with their extremities covered with suction cups and take it to their mouth. Generally, when they catch prey, they inject toxins present in their saliva (cephalotoxins), which paralyze prey in approximately 35 seconds for shortly after being dismembered.
In the case of bivalve molluscs, for example, they act by separating the valves with their tentacles in order to inject saliva. The same is true for crabs that have a harder shell. On the other hand, other species are capable of swallow the fangs whole. .
Their ends have the ability to extend in any direction in a very coordinated way, which allows them to achieve capture your prey through powerful suction cups covered with taste receptors. Finally, the octopus attracts its prey to its mouth, endowed with a strong beak with a horny structure (chitinous), through which it is able to tear its prey, even including the strong exoskeletons of some prey, such as crustaceans.
On the other hand, it should be noted that in species belonging to the genus Stauroteuthis, the majority inhabiting the seabed, part of the muscle cells present in the tentacles' suction cups are replaced by photophores. These cells capable of emitting light allow them to produce bioluminescence, and in this way he is able to deceive his prey into his mouth.
Another PeritoAnimal article that might interest you is this one about how fish reproduce.
digestion of octopuses
As we know, the octopus is a carnivorous animal and feeds on a wide variety of animals. Due to this type of diet, its metabolism is highly dependent on protein, as it is the main component of energy source and tissue builder. O digestion process is performed in two steps:
- extracellular phase: Occurs throughout the entire digestive tract. Here the beak and the radula act, which is endowed with strong muscles that can be projected out of the mouth and thus act as a scraping apparatus. At the same time, the salivary glands secrete enzymes that start a pre-digestion of food.
- intracellular phase: Occurs exclusively in the digestive gland. In this second step, pre-digested food passes the esophagus and then the stomach. Here the food mass possesses its degradation thanks to the presence of cilia. Once this occurs, nutrient absorption takes place in the digestive gland, and then the undigested material is transported to the intestine, where it will be discarded in the form of fecal pellets, ie, balls of undigested food.
Now that you know what the octopus eats and how it hunts, you might be interested in this other article by PeritoAnimal that talks about 20 fun facts about octopuses based on scientific studies. In addition, in the video below you can see the 7 rarest marine animals in the world:
If you want to read more articles similar to What does the octopus eat?, we recommend that you enter our Curiosities section of the animal world.