Mysterious giant cephalopod washed ashore on beach in Ghana

By Nana Kwasi, MeridianFM, Tema

The remains of a giant sea creature with a warty body and tentacle-like arms have been washed up on a remote beach in Ghana. It was found on the shoreline of the Titanic beach at Tema Community 3, close to Sakumono.
Scientists have yet to identify the strange prehistoric-like “mutant”, which has similarities to an octopus but is 200 times as large as an octopus.
The extraordinary pictures show the carcass of the creature, amorphous and difficult to identify by fisherfolk.
According to a characteristic of the tentacles-like arms, some people believe it is a rare species of “big octopus”.
“I doubt that it lived in our waters. Most likely, the animal was brought by a warm current… I can confidently say that this is some kind of an octopus.However, it has many tentacles-like arms. It’s unusual. Octopus doesn’t have more than eight tentacles,” says a fisherman in the locality.
Pictures of the carcass have caused a sensation on Ghana social media, with many local people speculating about what it is.
One said: “It looks like some mutant sea monster with no head, eyes and mouth.”
Some claim it resembles a Ganges River octopus, which is normally found in fresh water.
With a brownish-green colour and the tendency to swim on its sides, Ganges octopus is different from other species of octopus.
However, crucially, it has a head, eyes and a mouth and only grows to about 16ft in length – much smaller than the carcass washed up on the Ghana coastline.
There are about 300 different species of octopus in the world, which grow to up to 16ft long and are more commonly known as Killer Whales.

Posted by admin on Oct 14 2015. Filed under top stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry