9 Feet Rare Octopus Found In Japan, Mutant Animal?

Gurita (Unsplash / Janayara Machado)

JAKARTA - A rare nine-armed octopus has been caught off the coast of Japan. The scarcity of the creature was only realized when this octopus was about to be used for dinner. Luckily, one of the family members hastily realized the weirdness of this creature.

Initially, the rare octopus was trapped with three other octopuses on November 13 in Shizugawa Bay, in the northeastern city of Minamisanriku, Japan, as reported by The Mainichi. Kazuya Sato (40), a wakame seaweed farmer is the one who set the trap. He then took the catch home.

The octopus that Sato caught was then boiled by his mother. When his mother poured the creature into the pot, she realized that there were nine arms of the octopus. Different from octopus, which usually only has eight legs at most.

The rare octopus is indeed dead, but his body is still intact. So Sato took him to the Shizugawa Nature Center museum, where the octopus is preserved and will soon be exhibited.

Mutant?

Shizugawa Bay, where the rare octopus was found, is about 200 kilometers from the now decommissioned Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The nuclear power plant was destroyed by an earthquake of 7.9 magnitude and a tsunami in 2011.

On that basis, there is speculation that the octopus is a mutant due to nuclear impact. However, Michael Vecchione, a zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC hastily denied it. He thinks it is impossible for the octopus's ninth arm to be caused by radiation.

Furthermore, Vecchione explained to Live Science that octopuses are indeed able to regenerate their arms. And according to his analysis, the extra arm might have come from his regeneration ability.

"But sometimes regeneration doesn't work well," he said. "If the arm is damaged, it may regenerate wrongly, it could also end up with extra tissue growing out and that extra tissue can turn into an arm," he concluded.