Mayan Octopus
Octopus maya
Mexico's own octopus, with a second pair of eyes that aren't eyes at all.
The Mayan octopus lives only in Mexico's waters, mostly off the Yucatán Peninsula, in seagrass and around coral. Under each of its eyes is a dark, ringed spot that looks like another eye, which is why it's also called the Mexican four-eyed octopus. It has no bones, three hearts and blue blood, and it lives for only about a year.
On the conservation status
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, assessed in 2016. But it lives in just one region, and the sea there is warming: when the water stays above 27 °C, females stop laying eggs.
- Body
- About 12 cm, arms much longer
- Weight
- About 0.5–1 kg (1–2 lb)
- Lifespan
- About a year
- Diet
- Crabs, clams, snails, fish
- Depth
- Shore to about 60 m (200 ft)
- Home
- Mexico, mostly off the Yucatán
The good stuff.
Four eyes, two that see
Under each real eye is a large, dark spot ringed with colour, called an ocellus. It looks like a second pair of eyes, which may leave a hungry fish confused about where the octopus is looking.
No bones at all
An octopus is a mollusc, like a snail or a clam, but with no shell. The only hard part of its body is its beak, so it can squeeze through almost any gap the beak fits through.
Three hearts and blue blood
Two hearts pump blood through the gills and a third sends it round the body. The blood is blue, because it carries oxygen with copper instead of the iron in ours.
Babies that skip the plankton
Many octopuses hatch as tiny drifting specks. Mayan octopus eggs are big, up to 17 mm, and the babies hatch looking like tiny adults, ready to live on the seabed straight away.
A mother's last job
A female lays hundreds of eggs, sometimes a couple of thousand, and guards them for over a month without leaving to eat. Soon after they hatch, she dies.
Too hot to lay eggs
Scientists in Yucatán found that when the water stays above 27 °C, females stop spawning, and the eggs that are laid do badly. As the Gulf of Mexico warms, that's the biggest worry for this octopus.
Wait, really?
- ✦
It makes up about 80% of the octopus caught around the Yucatán Peninsula.
- ✦
Fishers there use a traditional method called gareteo: drifting boats trail lines from bamboo poles, baited with crabs and no hooks. The octopus grabs the crab and holds on while it's lifted aboard.
- ✦
Its saliva holds a toxin that stops a crab moving while the octopus eats it.
- ✦
Scientists only described it in 1966, from octopuses brought in by fishers in Campeche.
What it sounds like
Silent. Octopuses have no known calls of any kind.
Where you might see one
Seagrass beds and reefs along the coasts of Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, mostly in shallow water, though adults live as deep as 60 m.
The trouble
- Warming seas that stop females from spawning
- Overfishing, if catches aren't kept in check
- Pollution and damage to the seagrass beds it lives in
One real thing
If your family eats octopus from Yucatán, choose octopus caught by gareteo, the traditional hook-free method, and only in the open season. It lets small ones go back, and leaves the mothers alone to guard their eggs.
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