Cool Finds

‘Cute Little Guy’: Scientists Discover a Tiny Blue Species of Octopus by the Galápagos Islands

The palm-size creature was spotted and collected during a research expedition more than a decade ago, but scientists have just identified it as a previously undescribed species

Sara Hashemi | Daily Correspondent

June 9, 2026 2:33 p.m.

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Deep below the waters off the Galápagos Islands resides a tiny blue octopus that fits in the palm of a hand. But scientists only recently identified this adorable animal as a new species, nearly a decade after it was first spotted.    

The eight-armed cutie made its debut in 2015, when researchers were conducting a deep-sea expedition in the Pacific Ocean aboard the EV Nautilus. Their remotely operated underwater robot recorded the tiny creature at a depth of about 5,800 feet—and scientists were immediately enamored.

“He’s tiny!” one researcher said during a livestream of the discovery. “Is that a cute little guy or what?” said another. Someone else even compared it to a plush toy.  

The scientists used the underwater robot to scoop up the strange creature, after which it was preserved in liquid. But further research was delayed until it arrived at the Field Museum in Chicago in 2022. Now, the charming little octopus has finally been described as a new species, formally called Microeledone galapagensis, in a study published in May in the journal Zootaxa.

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Study co-author Janet Voight, a zoologist at the Field Museum, was hesitant to dissect the animal, reports CNN’s Avni Trivedi. Although the octopus had been preserved to stop it from deteriorating, the liquid hadn’t penetrated the entire specimen because of eggs in its ovaries. That meant the animal’s flesh was fragile.

“If you make the wrong cut or tear something, it’s gone forever,” Voight tells the outlet. “The cost of going to sea is just astronomical, and the chances of finding another one and successfully collecting it are just not high.”

So Voight and her colleagues turned to a special scanning technique, called micro-CT, which uses X-rays to see the insides of a specimen without slicing it open. Thousands of X-rayed slices were combined to create a high-resolution 3D digital version of the octopus. The model revealed the creature’s fine details, including its smooth skin, single tooth, small number of arm suckers and unique coloring, which pointed to its status as a previously undescribed species. The researchers dubbed the octopus M. galapagensis as an homage to where it was found.

A physical feature that particularly perplexed the researchers was the octopus’ small, stubby arms.

“If they live by moving their arms in the sediment on the seafloor and there isn’t a lot of prey for them there, how do they survive with such short arms that carry so few suckers?” Voight tells Melissa Hobson at National Geographic. It turns out that the animal’s distinct coloration could be key.

Though it appears blue on camera, the octopus seems to have a topside free of color, while the interior of its mantle, the bulbous structure above its eyes, is deep purple. This pattern—where an animal has an underside that is more pigmented than their back—is known as reverse countershading.

The researchers speculate that it allows the octopus to munch on prey while hiding from its own predators, per National Geographic. If it pounces on an animal that starts to glow via bioluminescence, the octopus’ dark webbing between its arms could cover up the light, while its pale backside could help it camouflage with other shimmering marine creatures in the water.

These findings are “not going to cure cancer or anything,” Voight tells Time magazine’s Jeffrey Kluger. But they represent a fresh look into a part of the ocean that is still under-explored, and they offer a reminder that biodiversity is all around us and needs protection, she adds.

Marine ecologist Jim Barry of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute agrees. “We just don’t know enough about the biodiversity of the deep sea in general,” says Barry, who was not involved in the study, to CNN. “So as discoveries like this keep coming up every dive, you may see something new that’s never been seen before.”

Sara Hashemi | Read More

Sara Hashemi is a science writer and fact-checker currently based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Sierra, The Body, Maisonneuve magazine and more.