There’s no denying that Mother Nature never ceases to astonish. The octopus, one of the most enigmatic undersea species, is confusing marine researchers at this moment. All this comes after a rare, though cute video revealed that these animals could have dreams. The creature is changing its color while it sleeps, which makes it much more intriguing.
The gorgeous footage was included in the Octopus: Making Contact documentary series on PBS, which aired last month. It also depicts an octopus by the name of “Heidi” that is dozing off in a tank of water as it soon begins to change color. David Scheel, a marine researcher at Alaska Pacific University, claims that the animal is dreaming.
“If she is dreaming, this is a dramatic moment,” Scheel said. “You could almost narrate the body changes and narrate the dream. She sees a crab and her color starts to change a little bit, then she turns all dark, octopuses will do that when they leave the bottom. This is a camouflage, like she’s just subdued a crab and she’s just going to sit there and eat it, and she doesn’t want anyone to notice her.”
However, what’s quite incredible and almost unexplainable for the scientists is that the octopus’ mantle is a very sensitive part of its body. And thanks to the creature’s multiple brains, there is a highly precise control over the skin color changing. So is very rare for the octopuses to use it while sleeping.
As Scheel noted, “You don’t generally witness that when an animal is sleeping. It’s a pretty rare habit to see the color come and go on her mantle like that, simply to be able to see all the different color patterns flashing one after the other.” “This is extremely intriguing,” I say.
We can only awe at the beautiful film while the marine scientist searches for an explanation for the unusual phenomenon:
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