This short clip from PBS Nature’s Octopus: Making Contact is choc-full of wonderous baby cephalopods. Baby bobtail squid hide under a costume of sand grains that stick to their skin. Baby flamboyant cuttlefish look like a cross between an alien and a tropical flower as they snatch prey with speed. Pyjama Squid have sharp-looking high-contrast stripes. And we get to see them hatch and hunt.
Baby cephalopods are independent as soon as they hatch, and can start flashing their color-changing cells from their eggs. Observe this baby Caribbean Reef Octopus hatching at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center. Its chromatophores fire swiftly after breaking free of its egg, possibly from the stress of hatching.
ICYMI: Your daily squee has arrived. #octobabies pic.twitter.com/D9e5T5bkun
— Virginia Aquarium (@VAAquarium) February 7, 2018
Related reading: So You Know, This Is How to Incubate Baby Cephalopods in a Soda Bottle.
Related watching: Baby Octopus at the Vancouver Aquarium, Baby Octopus crawling around out of water, and Squid: Coming to Life, captured in microscopic detail.And of course, The Cephalopod Empire in Woods Hole.
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