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Friday, March 13, 2009

Octopus Inking: How Does it Work?

In addition to the octopus's uncanny ability to camouflage itself into its surroundings to avoid predators, the octopus has a secret weapon: ink. An ink sac is located near its digestive system, and when necessary, the octopus can eject ink out of the sac along with a burst of water from the funnel. The combination creates a black cloud. The octopus can shoot the ink out in little blobs that serve as decoys, or it can shoot it out in one big mass to obscure a quick getaway. To top it off, the ink contains tyrosinase, a compound that impairs smell and taste, which further confuses the predator.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK I don't know why you make a post that teach how work the actopus ink lauching system, to me in this theme the only important issue, is how much ink have a octopus in it can, it effect is like Generic Viagra effect.

Yuna Kim said...

Hi,I'm a Korean scientist, currently writing a children's book on marine animals. One of the chapter is dedicated for octopus and I would like to use the image to explain the ink of octupus. Would you please allow me to use these images?