How Does an Octopus Change Colour? 🐙 | The Scrapbook Crew | Science Song for Kids

A page in the Scrapbook keeps blinking orange... blue... orange! It's an octopus, and it has a very clever trick. Pip, Snip and Old Tuk turn the page and dive (pretend-style!) to the bottom of the sea, where a friendly octopus with eight arms and no bones at all squeezes right into Pip's little jar. Then it vanishes: it turns into sand, into a bumpy rock, into smooth seaweed, faster than you can blink, and a big sleepy fish swims right past. How does it do it? Snip snips a PAPER octopus skin (never a real octopus!) to find thousands of tiny bags of colour, each pulled open by tiny muscles when the brain says "Go!". Here's the big surprise: an octopus has three hearts, its blood is blue, and its suckers can taste what they touch (even Pip's sandwich!). Old Tuk remembers a year-long game of hide-and-seek (or did he read about it?), and then the whole crew sings "Change, Change, Octopus!" In this episode kids learn: • an octopus has eight arms and no bones; the only hard part is its beak • with no bones, an octopus can squeeze into tiny cracks • an octopus can change colour faster than a blink • its skin is full of thousands of tiny bags of colour: yellow, red and brown • tiny muscles around each bag pull it open when the brain sends a signal, and the colour spreads out • when the muscles let go, the bag shrinks back to a tiny dot • an octopus can even make its skin bumpy like a rock or smooth like seaweed • it changes colour to hide from hungry fish • an octopus has three hearts: two pump blood to its gills and one pumps it around its body • octopus blood is blue because it has copper in it (ours has iron, so it's red) • octopus suckers can taste what they touch Chapters 0:00 A page that changes colour! 0:15 Eight arms, no bones 0:37 Now you see it, now you don't 1:00 Tiny bags of colour 1:37 Three hearts and blue blood 2:15 Tuk's game of hide-and-seek 2:37 Song: Change, Change, Octopus! 4:00 What did we learn? Facts checked with: Monterey Bay Aquarium — Giant Pacific octopus Oregon Coast Aquarium — Giant Pacific Octopus Live Science — How do octopuses change color? Smithsonian Magazine — Ten wild facts about octopuses Science News Explores — Let's learn about octopuses The Scrapbook Crew is a hand-made paper cut-out cartoon. Every episode is researched, written and directed by a real person; the characters and voices are storytelling tools.