''Eledone caparti'' is a rare and little known species of

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

octopus An octopus ( : octopuses or octopodes, see below for variants) is a soft-bodied, eight- limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefis ...

from the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Afr ...

off the south-west coast of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. The egg masses of ''Eledone caparti'' have been found in the dissected stomachs of

blue shark The blue shark (''Prionace glauca''), also known as the great blue shark, is a species of requiem shark, in the family Carcharhinidae, which inhabits deep waters in the world's temperate and tropical oceans. Averaging around and preferring c ...

s.Nesis, K.N & Nigmatullin, C.M 1978 A record of egg masses of the bottom octopus ''Eledone caparti'' in the stomachs of blue sharks Zoologichesky Zhurnal, 57(9):1324-1329 (Russian with English summary)

References

caparti Molluscs described in 1950 {{octopus-stub