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Ocean animals

Blue-lined octopus

Amazing fact

The blue-lined octopus usually has brown bands, but blue markings appear when it is disturbed.

指宿市
Blue-lined octopus in its habitat (illustration)

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An illustration based on the real animal.

A little discovery to share.

The blue-lined octopus usually has brown bands, but blue markings appear when it is disturbed.

Source指宿市 — 危険生物「ヒョウモンダコ」に注意してください

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THE REAL WORLD

The real Blue-lined octopus

Scientific name
Hapalochlaena fasciata
Japanese name
ヒョウモンダコ
Group
Ocean animals
Class
Cephalopoda
Order
Octopoda
Family
Octopodidae
Genus
Hapalochlaena
Facts about the real animal.
01

An octopus that lives in the seas south of the Boso Peninsula.

鳥羽水族館 — ヒョウモンダコ
02

It has a deadly poison called tetrodotoxin in its salivary glands, its muscles and its skin.

鳥羽水族館 — ヒョウモンダコ
03

It has blue markings on its body. If you see it in the sea, never touch it.

鳥羽水族館 — ヒョウモンダコ

How the Blue-lined octopus lives

It lives on rocky shores washed by the tides and in coastal waters. It catches and eats crabs and small fish. It hides beneath rocky ledges and in crevices.

Australian Museum

Basic data

Range
The Boso Peninsula and southward
鳥羽水族館

Where the Blue-lined octopus has been recorded

World map with dots where the Blue-lined octopus has been recorded
Each dot marks a place with observations or specimens shared on GBIF. Some records are of animals that strayed or were brought by people, so the dots are not always where the animal lives.

Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF

Where it livesJapanOcean

Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.

Names around the world

简体中文
豹纹蛸
繁體中文
藍紋章魚
Português (Brasil)
Polvo-de-linhas-azuis

Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.

Sources and how we check

We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.

The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.

The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.

This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.

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