There's a type of octopus called the Giant Pacific. It's pretty big, arguably the biggest on our planet. They can be found in the coastal North Pacific—places like Japan, Korea, Russia, California, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. But it's recently been found out that what we've been calling the Giant Pacific octopus actually includes two different species.
Enter Alaska Pacific University undergraduate student Nathan Hollenbeck, who, while working on his senior thesis on shrimp fishing bycatch, made the discovery. After setting shrimp traps, some giant octopuses, who were probably looking for a good meal, got themselves stuck in the contraption, Earther reports.
Hollenbeck noticed that one of the animals was a Giant Pacific, but realized that a second octopus looked markedly different, with frill on its body and two white spots on its head. To confirm that the frill octopus was different, Hollenbeck took samples. He cut off pieces of the animal's arm (which sounds horrible—and lightweight is—but they do regenerate) and took some skin samples to peep the whole DNA situation.
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