The giant Pacific octopus is the largest kind of octopus in the world. It has eight arms. The suckers on its arms help the octopus grip things and taste them. A female has about 2,240 suckers on her eight arms. The only hard part of its body is its beak, which looks like a parrot's. It can squeeze through a very small space.

A giant Pacific octopus can change the color of its skin to blend in. It can also change the texture of its skin, raising bumps to match its surroundings. That helps it hide. It also has sharp vision, so it can see well.

Giant Pacific octopuses are smart. In tests, they can learn to open jars to get at the food inside. They can also tell individual people apart. That means an octopus can learn who is who. All this thinking is done with a well-developed brain. A good brain helps an octopus learn.

Giant Pacific octopuses live in the Pacific Ocean, near the coast. They live from southern California north to Alaska and the Bering Sea, and across the Pacific to Japan. Each one lives in a den, a small hiding place in rocks or caves. They live alone and are not social animals, so each octopus has its own den.

Giant Pacific octopuses are mostly active at night, and they hunt at night. Night is when the octopus is busy. Their food includes crabs, clams, shrimp, scallops, snails and small fish. Crabs and clams are food, and so are small fish.

A giant Pacific octopus lives about 3 to 5 years. A female breeds only once in her life. She lays about 20,000 to 100,000 eggs in a den. She stays with them, usually not eating, until they hatch. A baby is about the size of a grain of rice when it hatches. That is very small. After hatching, the tiny octopuses drift near the ocean surface as plankton.

Words to know

• texture: how it feels
• suckers: grippy cups
• plankton: drifting life
• den: hiding place