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World Animal Protection in partnership with World Cetacean Alliance recognise outstanding destinations for responsible wild whale and dolphin watching
Animal Awareness Days
Celebrate World Octopus Day with us! Learn about these beautiful, intelligent marine creatures — and find out what you can do to help them.
Not heard of the World Octopus Day celebration before? Here’s everything you need to know in a series of quick-fire questions.
While octopuses are not considered endangered, they face a number of threats in the wild.
Octopuses are sensitive to water quality. Their reproduction and immune systems are impacted when pollution from industrial and agricultural activities enters their habitats.
Octopus are targeted by fishers across the world as a source of meat and for the aquarium trade. This has led to unsustainable fishing practices and the use of destructive fishing gear.
In Gran Canaria in Spain, there are plans to launch the planet’s first high-density octopus farm. Here, around one million octopuses could be reared for food, with animal advocates around the world gravely concerned for octopus welfare.
Saving octopuses from the threats they face is a great way to celebrate World Octopus Day. Here are some of the things you can do:
Many animals need your help. Find out about other animal awareness days.
Octopuses mainly eat crabs, molluscs, small fish, snails, and shrimp.
Octopuses tend to hunt at night. They pounce, use their beaks to inject poison, and wrap their prey in the webbing between their arms before pulling it into their mouths.
Octopuses are highly intelligent and sentient beings with thoughts, feelings, and individual personalities.
An octopus doesn’t have lungs so it can’t breathe on land. Instead, like fish, it uses gills to extract oxygen from seawater.
An octopus has three hearts. Two of these hearts pump blood through the gills. A central heart moves oxygen-rich blood around the rest of the body.
Octopuses live in every ocean, in both deep and shallow waters. However, the biggest populations of octopuses are found in warm, tropical seas.
All octopus species carry venom but their venom varies in toxicity. The blue-ringed octopus has enough venom to kill a human. Its poison weakens and paralyses muscles, which leads to respiratory failure and death. Luckily, bites from blue-ringed octopuses are very rare.
An octopus is an eight-armed cephalopod mollusc. Molluscs are soft-bodied invertebrates and cephalopods are a group of highly advanced molluscs that includes octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish.
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