New Species of Tiny Blue Octopus Discovered in the Galápagos Islands

Nature can be a lot of things—beautiful, bloody, sweet, savage. And, sometimes, it's just plain cute. For the latest example of nature at its most adorable, look no further than the little blue octopus—small enough to fit in the palm of your hand—just described in the journal Zootaxa, along with photos and videos of its discovery near Darwin Island in the Galápagos.

The little blue octopus was spotted in 2015 by researchers aboard the submersible Nautilus in 5,800-ft. deep waters. The sub's remotely operated camera was visually combing the ocean floor when it caught sight of a flash of blue and zoomed in to spot a little eight-armed creature all alone in the water.

The cute little guy, alas, was not long for his ocean world. The researchers scooped it up and brought it aboard the sub. It was then placed in a bucket of chilled seawater, and—as is common practice in collection expeditions—soon after immersed in 4 percent formalin, a toxic preservative, for 24 hours. After that, it was transferred to a 95 percent ethanol solution for storage, to be catalogued and saved in the collection of the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.