An octopus can change its appearance astonishingly fast. Its skin contains tiny color-filled sacs called chromatophores.
Fun fact: An octopus can change its pattern as well as its color.
Look closely at color-changing skin and the many reasons an octopus may change its look.
How Octopuses Change Color
AI-generated narration. Press Play to listen.
Tap ▶ Play to hear the lesson read aloud
Muscles pull these sacs open or let them shrink. That changes how much of each color we can see on the octopus's skin.
Fun fact: Thousands of tiny color-changing structures work together across the skin.
Other structures in the skin reflect light and help make even more colors and patterns. Some octopuses also change their skin's texture.
Fun fact: Changing texture can help an octopus blend with bumpy rocks or coral.
An octopus may use these changes to hide, to signal to another octopus, or to react to what is happening nearby. A color alone does not tell us exactly what it is feeling.
Fun fact: Camouflage can make an octopus difficult to spot even when it is right in front of you.