Eight legs. Nine brains. And a list of facts so bizarre they’ll make your head spin. Yes, we’re talking about octopuses. Or octopi. Or octopodes. Honestly, nobody seems to fully agree on that part either.
Here’s the thing though — no matter how impressed you already are by these weird, wonderful sea creatures, there’s a good chance you’re still not impressed enough. That’s the argument being made by Sarah, a TikTok creator with a gift for deadpan humor, who went deep down the octopus rabbit hole and came out the other side a changed woman.
“We are severely underreacting to octopuses collectively,” she says flatly, and honestly, it’s hard to argue with her once you hear what she has to say.
For starters, let’s clear something up. Those things dangling off an octopus? Not tentacles. Arms. Real tentacles only have suckers near the tip. Octopus arms are covered in them the whole way along. A small but important distinction that most of us have been getting wrong our entire lives.
@sarahmakesmelaugh Octopuses are fascinating and I DO want to hold a tiny guy if possible just putting that out in to the universe 😬🐙#creatorsearchinsights #octopus #weirdanimals #animalfacts #didyouknow
♬ Quirky Sneaky Pizzicato for Inide Comedies(1192187) – Kenji Ueda
Then there’s the home décor situation. Octopuses actually collect shells and shiny ocean objects to arrange outside their little underwater dwellings. Sarah naturally wonders whether they silently judge each other’s choices, and whether some kind of cephalopod homeowners association might be operating beneath the waves. For what it’s worth, this very habit reportedly gave Ringo Starr the idea for Octopus’s Garden, so at least something good came of it.
Their intelligence, though, is where things really start getting unsettling. Each arm contains its own independent brain, meaning an octopus is essentially nine creatures loosely cooperating inside one body. Each arm processes its own sensory information and can move and react on its own. Their central brain, by the way, is shaped like a donut, which feels like a detail that deserves more attention.
I’d like to be, under the sea…
Listen as 'Octopus’s Garden' evolves — from the rehearsal to the final master 🐙 pic.twitter.com/qJItnY6PIY
— The Beatles (@thebeatles) November 11, 2025
They can work through mazes. They can manipulate objects with surprising skill. And their bodies are so flexible that if their beak — the only rigid part of them — can squeeze through a gap, the rest of them will follow. A giant Pacific octopus, which can stretch to 30 feet across, can pass through an opening roughly the size of a lemon. Sarah’s reaction to this is essentially, “I hate that,” which feels appropriate.
And they recognize faces. Individual human faces. So if you’ve ever been rude near an aquarium tank, just know that someone remembered.
Perhaps most alarmingly, octopuses have been observed genuinely pranking their prey. They’ll tap a shrimp on the far side, causing it to flee directly into their waiting arms. That’s not instinct. That’s a setup. That’s comedic timing. Sarah is not comfortable with this, and frankly, neither should any of us be.
@sarahmakesmelaugh Replying to @LalainID did yall know about the blanket octopus and didn’t tell me? Except those of you who did thank you 😂 #octopus #animalfacts #science #learnontiktok #learnwithme
♬ L.Boccherini, Minuet from String Quartet No.5 in F major – AllMusicGallery
The colorful ones are beautiful, by the way. Some of them look almost impossibly vivid and decorative. Several of those are also highly venomous, because of course they are.
Part two of Sarah’s deep dive introduced the blanket octopus, and this is where biology stops making sense entirely. The female can grow beyond six feet long. The male tops out at roughly an inch. He is small enough to fit within the pupil of her eye. His entire existence, biologically speaking, is oriented around one task. Sarah discusses this with the kind of restrained bewilderment it genuinely deserves.
@sarahmakesmelaugh More Octopus species, this could go on forever y’all 😂 #octopus #weirdanimals #learnwithme #funfacts #creatorsearchinsights
♬ Gymnopedie No. 1, Slowly, image of wave(1180783) – Dai Hentai Fujishima
She also introduces the mimic octopus, a creature capable of impersonating other animals to an almost theatrical degree. Sarah calls it the Jafar of the ocean, and once you see the comparison, you cannot unsee it.
Part three followed, covering the blob octopus and several other facts that range from delightful to deeply unsettling.
Bottom line? Sarah was right from the beginning. These animals are extraordinary in ways most of us have never properly reckoned with, and it’s well past time we started taking them more seriously.
