One of my professors once put up a picture of a plain-looking grasshopper on the board,

and then he put up a picture of a much more colorful grasshopper right next to it.

And he turned to all of us, and he said,

Which one would you rather eat?

I know the answer for almost all of us listening is neither,

but the consensus response,

given a forced choice scenario, was the less colorful one. Why? Why did we all instantly choose

to eat the less colorful one? Well, color in nature, spectacular color, means don't eat me.

Spectacular color says, look, mate, I'm not even trying to hide from you.

What does that tell you about what I can do?

Spectacular color is a way of saying, eating me will be lethal for you.

In nature, if you are a tiny prey animal, you basically have two approaches.

You can either invest all your energy into becoming invisible, hiding, camouflage, adapting so that you're really hard to find.

Or, you can invest your energy into becoming

poisonous or venomous and then invest whatever's left over into telling everyone that you're

packing heat. If someone eats you and they die, that's fine, but it's already too late. You

already got selected out. Ideally, you want to carry a big stick and never have to swing it. Two approaches. Invisibility or audacious visibility. Today, we are going to talk about an animal that does both. The Greater Blue Ringed Octopus.

Hapalotlina, Lunalata.

I'm Mackin. This is Species.

Welcome.

Today we're going to talk about an animal that hides until they're found and then makes themselves impossible to miss.

The Species Podcast Twitter at Species Podcast has been impossible to miss this week.

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