This flapjack octopus is so cute that it might officially be named “adorabilis.” Specimens of this unnamed octopus have been collected since 1990; now Stephanie Bush, a postdoctoral researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, said that she is considering the scientific name Opisthoteuthis Adorabilis.
Opisthoteuthis is the same genus as Pearl, the pink flapjack octopus in “Finding Nemo.” The octopus is 7 inches (17.8cm) in diameter, lives in the deep sea, and has a web between its tentacles, allowing it to “parachute” through the water. It uses the fins on its mantle to steer.
See this tentacle? It's actually shorter than the other tentacles, but you can't really tell. Especially when I twirl them like this.
This species has been reported off Eureka Bar, California, at 350 m. It is also known from Japan, off Kashima-Nada, at 530–560 m. Nesis (1982/87) reports it from the Bering Sea to the Sea of Okhotsk to off central Honshū in the northwestern Pacific and to off southern California in the northeastern Pacific.
Species of the Pink Flapjack Octopus are typically compressed and have a flattened appearance which gives them the common name of flapjack or pancake devilfish. Species are thought to be primarily benthic although they are capable of swimming and in some species the swimming may be an important component of their pouncing on minute prey.
The Flapjack Octopus has been made famous by Pearl in Finding Nemo. However, according to one of the scientific consultants on the film, Adam Summers, "Pearl would be pink mush since flapjack octopuses are abyssal creatures. They reside only at great depths” (since Pearl, in the movie, is often seen in more shallow areas of the reef).