Soft-Eared Creatures Of The Deep

“expn2379” by NOAA Photo Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

When people picture life in the deep sea, they often imagine frightening, or perhaps bizarre creatures lurking in the darkness. The giant squid, the anglerfish, and even the peculiar blobfish have all earned reputations for being the strangest inhabitants of the sea. These creatures don’t seem to be animals at all, appearing as though they are from an alien planet with their unusual features and appearances. However, not every creature that lives under there is so strange or intimidating. Hidden among these uncanny creatures are animals with unexpected charm and endearment. Some of them are so cute, that you might even want them in your fish tank, granted they could survive outside the crushing pressure of their environment.

The creature that fits these traits perfectly is the dumbo octopus! A magnificently mystical animal named after Disney’s famous flying elephant, the Dumbo Octopus uses its ear-like fins to drift through the water like a balloon alongside its enigmatic inhabitants.

“Dumbo Octopus (49203817176)” by NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research from the USA is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

What octopus is it?

So what exactly is a dumbo octopus? The answer depends on what you mean by the term. Although it most commonly refers to members of the genus Grimpoteuthis, the nickname is also informally applied for several finned octopuses within the suborder Cirrina. Members of suborder Cirrina generally possess a pair of ear-fins on their head, giving many of them the “dumbo” appearance that the nickname could refer to. Among these finned octopuses, members of the Grimpoteuthis genus are by far the most talked about when people refer to dumbo octopuses. Grimpoteuthis belongs to the family Grimpoteuthidae, and at the time of writing (July 2026), the genus contains 18 accepted species, although that number has changed over time as species have been periodically discovered and reclassified. The most recent species discovered was Grimpoteuthis feitiana, which was as recent as 2025! While the nickname “dumbo octopus” can refer to different genera and families within Cirrina, this article focuses primarily on the characteristics of members within the genus Grimpoteuthis. For simplicity, “dumbo octopus” and “dumbos” will primarily refer to Grimpoteuthis unless otherwise specified.

Not part of the genus Grimpoteuthis, but bears similarities and could colloquially be called a “dumbo” octopus. “Cirrothauma murrayi (cropped)” by NOAA Photo Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The first species in the Grimpoteuthis genus, Grimpoteuthis umbellata, was described by malacologist P. Fischer back in 1883 and formally accepted the following year (1884). Even today, scientists are still discovering new species, like Grimpoteuthis feitiana (2025). If you would like to go deeper and research specific species, you can go here. One of their most recognizable features are their ear-like fins on either side of their head, which help them glide through the water, while the webbing between their arms helps them steer and maneuver around the ocean depths. When they aren’t drifting through the sea, they use their arms to crawl on the sea floor, like many of its shallow water relatives. Despite living in such a harsh environment, they have been estimated to live for 3-5 years, which is surprisingly longer than shallow water octopuses. Population status for these creatures hasn’t been evaluated since they are so rare, so whether or not they’re endangered is unknown. Human activity and deep sea mining may harm the habitats of these octopuses, but clear specifics should be investigated further before their conservation status can be explicitly determined.

Dumbo octopuses have been found in New Zealand, Australia, Monterey Bay, California; Oregon, Philippines and in Papua, New Guinea, but they could live in areas not yet explored by humans. Just think about the amount of dumbo octopuses that haven’t been discovered. Tens? Hundreds? The vastness of the deep ocean makes it hard to know for sure. Dumbo octopuses have been spotted living slightly above the seafloor at depths of 3000-4000m (9800-13000 ft) but some live as deep as 7,000 m (23000 ft) below sea level (one rare sighting was at the bottom of the Indian Ocean’s Java Trench). Dumbo octopuses drift along deep-sea currents and have been observed near hydrothermal vent regions, but they likely inhabit a variety of deep-sea environments.

Adaptations?

Dumbo octopuses are characterized by a soft and gelatinous physical body, being semi-translucent with an internal “U”/”V” shaped cartilaginous shell that helps support themselves. This adaptation helps them survive in the crushing pressure environment of the deep. They are also neutrally buoyant, allowing them to hover in the water, gliding through it like a tiny spaceship slowly navigating the cosmos of the deep sea. Due to the variety of species, dumbo octopuses vary in size and shape. Some are short and squat, while others are much larger and darker. They have eight webbed arms with suckers and little cirri (hair-like projections). These cirri are quite the spectacle, allowing them to waft and maneuver food into their mouth. Their simplistic yet delightful eyes provide limited vision at best, but the deep has almost no sunlight anyway, making exceptional eyesight unnecessary. Most creatures down there have poor eyesight, so the dumbo octopus having poor eyesight is not rare. The size of dumbo octopuses is usually around 20-30 cm (7.9-12 in) in length, but the largest was found to be around 1.8 meters long and weighed 5.9 kg (13 lbs).

From NOAA OKEANOS EXPLORER Program; Our Deepwater Backyard, linked

What’s on the menu for the dumbo octopus?

Their feeding habits are quite different from other octopuses. Unlike surface octopuses which hunt and pursue their prey, dumbos prefer to slowly drift along the seafloor, flapping their ear-fins or simply drifting, collecting prey as they encounter it. It’s like wandering through a buffet, collecting tasty treats as you pass by. Their underdeveloped beak forces them to swallow food whole rather than cracking the shells of prey, as if they’re taking and swallowing a pill each time they eat. Their cirri act as extensions of their “hands,” being able to create microcurrents to funnel food straight into their mouth. Imagine being able to manipulate air currents to effortlessly drift food into your mouth; It would definitely be strange yet surprisingly efficient. Scientists have found that their diet consists of bristle worms, amphipods, isopods, copepods, oysters, snails, and other small crustaceans/mollusks.

Dumbo Octopus Predators?

Unlike crowded, colorful reefs up on the surface, the deep comes with desolation, silence, and boundless emptiness. Encounters between predator and prey are sparse, giving dumbo octopuses fewer threats than other shallow octopus species. This makes it easier for the dumbo octopus to survive. The deep also changes the rules of the game per se. The environment itself lacks light, making characteristics that would usually be helpful, like an ink sac and camouflage, far less useful for the dumbo octopus than shallow-water octopuses. Predators for dumbo octopuses isn’t widely studied, but it’s speculated that larger sharks and diving fish/mammals like sperm whales prey on the dumbo octopuses. Their methods of escaping predators isn’t well known, but researchers suspect that they use sudden thrusts via compressing their tentacle webbing and shooting water through their funnel. This remains one of the unanswered questions of these creatures. How do they escape predators? Are there any other mechanisms they use? Do they simply avoid them entirely? These questions will remain hidden beneath the waves until further research is done.

Baby Dumbo Octopuses?

Reproduction for dumbos is quite complex. Scientists have observed that females can hold their eggs for extended periods of time, each at different developing stages. They have no breeding season, and can lay them continuously under small rocks or shells in the deep. There’s no evidence of parental care, they seem to just lay their eggs to survive on their own. Males don’t have a hectocotylus for sperm transfer (an extra arm for breeding present in most octopuses); they have a separate protuberance on one of their arms for encapsulated sperm, which can be used by the female at any time. Since the deep ocean is a desolate place, this is quite useful since dumbos come across each other infrequently.

Dumbo octopod hatchling on-board NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown on August 31, 2005. Video can be found in the journal Current Biology here.

Baby dumbo octopuses are tiny, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Despite this, they look remarkably similar to their adult counterparts. One observation of these hatchlings was documented in a paper published on February 19, 2018, in the journal Current Biology, which showcased a freshly hatched baby dumbo swimming around aboard a NOAA research vessel. It was essentially a fully formed, miniature version of an adult dumbo octopus, like nature shrunk an adult dumbo octopus down to size and called it a day. Even at birth, it already possessed fully formed cirri, fins, suckers, eyes, digestive system, and an internal yolk sac that provides nourishment for its first few days. Unlike many marine animals, dumbo octopuses skip the “larval” stage entirely, hatching ready to survive. If you’re interested in reading more into this, you can find said paper here.

To Conclude…

Dumbo octopuses are among the most fascinating (and cute) inhabitants of the deep ocean. Even though they differ widely from well-known octopuses in coral reefs, they are perfectly adapted to life thousands of meters beneath the surface in their own special ways. Somewhere deep below us, countless dumbo octopuses continue to drift through the abyss, never to be seen by us. Sometimes, the cutest animals on Earth are hiding in places you wouldn’t expect.