{"id":474322,"date":"2026-05-30T06:48:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T06:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/474322\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T06:48:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T06:48:25","slug":"this-newly-discovered-blue-octopus-from-the-galapagos-islands-could-curl-up-in-the-palm-of-your-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/474322\/","title":{"rendered":"This newly-discovered blue octopus from the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands could curl up in the palm of your hand"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\""Is<\/p>\n

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video:\u00a0<\/p>\n

A video of the octopus taken using the ROV, with audio of the scientists viewing the feed exclaiming that it’s “a cute little guy.”<\/p>\n

view more\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Credit: Courtesy of the Charles Darwin Foundation<\/p>\n

The Gal\u00e1pagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador are home to more than a thousand plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth\u2014 things like marine iguanas and giant tortoises. In a new paper in the journal Zootaxa, scientists announced the discovery of the newest animal found in the Gal\u00e1pagos: a tiny blue octopus.<\/p>\n

The octopus was first spotted during a 2015 deep-sea expedition conducted aboard the E\/V Nautilus, in collaboration with the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and the Gal\u00e1pagos National Park Directorate. From the ship, the crew used a remotely operated underwater robot to explore the ocean floor near Darwin Island, an island at the northern edge of the Galapagos archipelago named after the biologist whose work there helped him formulate the theory of evolution.<\/p>\n

As the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) camera moved over the sea floor near an underwater mountain, 5,800 feet (1,773 meters) below the water\u2019s surface, the researchers noticed an octopus. The audio from the ROV footage includes the scientists\u2019 first reactions to the animal:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s tiny!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s blue!\u201d<\/p>\n

Using the ROV, the crew was able to collect the octopus; over the course of their mission, they captured video footage of two others that looked like it. When the scientists returned from the mission, they brought the dozens of deep sea specimens that they had collected to the Charles Darwin Research Station. There, CDF researchers sorted through the specimens, and the tiny blue octopus\u2013about the size of a golf ball\u2013 stood out. Unsure what species it belonged to, they contacted octopus expert Janet Voight and sent her a photo of the animal.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight away, I knew it was something really special,\u201d says Voight, curator emerita of invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago and the lead author of the study describing the new species. \u201cI\u2019d never seen anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research team at the Research Station in Gal\u00e1pagos preserved the octopus\u2019s body in alcohol and formalin, and they sent the specimen from the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands to Chicago for Voight to examine at the Field Museum. The little octopus was indeed one-of-a-kind, which posed a challenge for scientific research.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you describe a new species of octopus, you have to look at all the parts, including the mouth, the beak, and the teeth. And to see those things, you have to cut the specimen open. We only had the one specimen, so I didn\u2019t want to take it apart,\u201d says Voight.<\/p>\n

So, she worked with Stephanie Smith, the manager of the Field Museum\u2019s X-ray computed tomography laboratory, to create micro CT scans of the octopus instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause CT imaging is non-destructive, it’s especially important for type specimens like this one. And that’s great for me because people are often bringing me these incredibly rare and stunningly beautiful specimens that I get the privilege of virtually opening up,\u201d says Smith, a co-author of the paper describing the new species. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like spending the day looking at something no other human has ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

With CT imaging, thousands of X-rayed slices of an object are digitally compiled to create a 3D model of that object, inside and out. They can reveal what\u2019s inside of an object without cutting it open. In the case of the little blue octopus, the researchers were able to see fine details of its internal organs, including its mouth, that helped provide the information needed to declare it a new species to science and suggest where it fits among other octopods.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat really struck me was that the scan of the little octopus revealed so much information on its internal organ systems\u2014 usually, soft-part imaging using micro CT requires the use of heavy-metal-based contrast agents whose use would not be desirable with such a rare specimen. This made the 3D modeling of relevant organs really an easy task,\u201d says Alexander Ziegler, a researcher at the University of Bonn in Germany and senior author of the paper.<\/p>\n

The new species, Microeledone galapagensis, has another claim to fame beyond being a cute little blue octopus from the Gal\u00e1pagos: it\u2019s the first new octopus species that Voight has officially led a team of scientists in describing, in her four-decade career studying octopus evolution. \u201cThese are little octopuses that live in the deep sea, and hardly anybody on Earth has ever gotten to see them. I just feel lucky that I got to work with them,\u201d says Voight. \u201cIf you took all the land on Earth and pieced it together, you would not cover the Pacific Ocean. The oceans are so big, and there\u2019s so much left to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this exploration of the oceans is critical to conservation efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were sorting through dozens of specimens collected during the expedition, this tiny blue octopus fascinated us,\u201d said Salome Buglass, marine scientist at the University of California of Los Angeles, former researcher at the Charles Darwin Foundation and co-author of the paper. \u201cThere was something unusual about it, so we went out of our way to find the right person to help us identify what it was. Getting the specimen to Janet was a long process, but one I would gladly repeat if it means getting to know the most precious parts of our ocean just a little bit better. Discoveries like these remind us how much of the deep ocean in Gal\u00e1pagos remains unexplored. Every new species helps us better understand these hidden ecosystems and why protecting them matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

Article Title<\/p>\n

A new species of Microeledone from Gal\u00e1pagos Islands and an amended diagnosis of the Megaleledonidae (Octopoda: Incirrata)<\/p>\n

Article Publication Date<\/p>\n

24-May-2026<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"video:\u00a0 A video of the octopus taken using the ROV, with audio of the scientists viewing the feed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-474322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}