Il Polipo was painted on a mini poplar wood block. Part of the "Sea Creatures" series.
"Polipo" means "octopus" in Italian.

There are many, many species of octopuses in the ocean, some live in reefs, and some, like the blanket octopus or the vulcanoctopus, in the deep darker waters of the ocean.

The middle layer of the world's oceans receives only faint, filtered sunlight during the daytime. This is because the seawater absorbs the sunlight. This barely-lit ocean layer is called the twilight zone or mesopelagic zone (mesopelagic means "middle sea").
The animals that live in this zone are adapted to life in near darkness, cold water and high pressure. Many of the animals in this zone have large eyes, helping them see in the nearly dark waters.

The octopus has a soft body with a well-developed brain, similar to a human’s. Octopuses are one the most fascinating and intelligent of the invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory. Their short lifespans limit the amount they can ultimately learn. There has been much speculation to the effect that almost all octopus behaviors are independently learned rather than instinct-based, although this remains largely unproven. They learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom young octopuses have very little contact.

Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body.
The octopus feeds on animals such as crustaceans and mollusks, often luring them by wiggling the tip of an arm like a worm. Once caught, the octopus bites the victim, injecting poisonous venom into their system along with a digestive enzyme. It sucks the flesh from the crustacean and discards the empty shell. If an octopus loses one of its tentacles, it will soon grow another one in the same place. The octopus has many characteristics that aid in its survival. Along with its eight arms and hundreds of suckers, the octopus has an eye on each side of its head.While the octopus has very keen eyesight, it is completely deaf. Sperm Whales feed on octopuses living in deep waters [among other animals].