The California two-spot octopus or Verrill's two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculatus) is an octopus

Octopus

The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms, and like other cephalopods they are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms...

 common in the subtidal and intertidal zone of Southern California

Southern California

Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...

. It is often confused with the related species Octopus bimaculoides

California Two-spot Octopus

The California Two-spot Octopus , also known as the "Bimac Octopus", is an octopus species that lives off the coast of California. One can identify the species by the circular blue eyespots on each side of its head. Due to their friendly temperament and relative hardiness, they are considered by...

, and the common name "California two-spot octopus" is often applied to both species.

Diet

O. bimaculatus is known to prey on crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

s, snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

s, chiton

Chiton

Chitons are small to large, primitive marine molluscs in the class Polyplacophora.There are 900 to 1,000 extant species of chitons in the class, which was formerly known as Amphineura....

s, limpet

Limpet

Limpet is a common name for a number of different kinds of saltwater and freshwater snails ; it is applied to those snails that have a simple shell which is more or less conical in shape, and either is not spirally coiled, or appears not to be coiled in the adult snails.The name limpet is most...

s, and bivalves (Ambrose, 1984).

Lifespan

O. bimaculatus lives about 12–18 months. Young are plankton

Plankton

Plankton are any drifting organisms that inhabit the pelagic zone of oceans, seas, or bodies of fresh water. That is, plankton are defined by their ecological niche rather than phylogenetic or taxonomic classification...

ic for one to several months before settling on the ground (Ambrose, 1986).

Reproduction

Most matings occur in May and June when water temperatures are rising, but they may mate throughout the year. Most females then lay their eggs between April and August (Ambrose. 1988).