One more night before we head home!

 Hello! Today is Saturday which means tomorrow is our last day here unfortunately. I had such a good time while we were here and I feel like we have learned so much. I wanted to focus half of my last blog post on my general experience and the other half focusing on my favorite organism while we were here. I think this trip really helped with my confidence in myself in a lot of ways. I have never really seen myself as an outdoors person but I have found myself having a lot of fun here! It has taught me that half of doing something is trusting yourself. I think it just took the right environment and people for me to have fun.

As I was saying before, I also wanted to focus part of my blog post on my favorite organism I found while we were here: The Fitch's pygmy octopus! At first glance, this little creature blends in really well with the sand. We found a bunch of them at Cholla Bay along the mudflat, especially under and in shells. They are tiny compared to the other octopuses we found, the two-spotted octopus.

Octopuses are known for their intelligence! These little guys were definitely very shy and when we had them in tiny tanks they would cover their head with their tentacles. Octopuses are invertebrates and a part of the phylum mollusca. Since they are invertebrates, they have no bones which helps them change shape and move so well in the water. They were actually kind of hard to hold since they were so slippery and able to slip between our fingers. One last fun fact: octopuses have blue blood! This is because their blood contains a protein, hemocyanin, which carries blood around their bodies similar to how hemoglobin does for us. However, hemocyanin contains copper instead of iron which makes their blood blue.