Callistoctopus furvus (Gould, 1852)
Sand octopus, Caribbean sand octopus, Eastern octopus, Brazilian eastern octopus, Polvo-de-leste
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Synonyms: Octopus furvus Gould, 1852; Octopus bermudensis Hoyle, 1885; Octopus chromatus Heilprin, 1888
After the species description of Octopus furvus (Gould, 1852), it was long neglected in the literature owing to the uncertainty over its taxonomic status (Robson, 1929; Pickford, 1945; Voss & Toll, 1998; Norman & Hochberg, 2005). Robson (1929) considered it to superficially resemble Callistoctopus macropus; Pickford (1945:743) listed O. furvus as a synonym of C. macropus, albeit with some reservation ("?"); Voss & Toll (1998:464) considered furvus a nomen dubium "Due to the ambiguity of the original description and lack of an extant type specimen"; Norman & Hochberg (2005:139) considered furvus to be an available name for West Atlantic “macropus”, but provisionally retained it as a synonym of C. macropus.
The species was validated by (Jesus et al., 2021b), who designated a neotype. The species may belong to Pinnoctopus (González-Gómez et al., 2024 fide Lekas, 2025), and the formal combination Pinnoctopus furvus comb. nov. was made by (Sánchez-López et al., 2025).
Conservation Status
Last record: 1852 or before (Gould, 1852)
Rediscovered in: 2013 (specimen) (Baraniuk, 2021); 12-15 April 2018 (specimens) (Jesus et al., 2021b); 2018 (specimen) (Baraniuk, 2021); 2018-2021 (recognition) (Jesus et al., 2021b)
Into obscurity, and back again
The species furvus was originally described by Augustus Addison Gould based upon a specimen found in a Rio de Janeiro fish market (Gould, 1852). But went unreported for a century and a half (Jesus et al., 2021b). Brazilian octopus fishers reported an “unusual” shallow-water species (Martins et al., 2011; Jesus et al., 2015), and in 2013 a specimen was sent to Manuella Dultra that did not fully comport with C. macropus (Baraniuk, 2021). Then in 2018, two Mexican workers suspected that they had a furvus specimen (Cedillo-Robles & Pliego-Cardenas, 2018; Baraniuk, 2021). Brazilian workers conducted ethnoecological surveys from March 2018 to August 2019 (Jesus et al., 2021a,b), including guided fishing trips with artisinal fishers between 12 and 15 April 2018, that resulted in several specimens being caught (Jesus et al., 2021b). This allowed the designation of a neotype, and the validation of the species (Ibid.).
Distribution & Habitat
Western Atlantic Ocean
It has been reported from:
Brazil (Gould, 1852; Jesus et al., 2021b, 2022)
Colombia (Puentes-Sayo et al., 2021)
Mexico (Cedillo-Robles & Pliego-Cardenas, 2018; Santana-Cisneros et al., 2021; Sánchez-López et al., 2025)
Turks and Caicos Islands (O'Brien & O'Brien, 2022; Lekas, 2025; O'Brien et al., 2025).
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
Media
References
Original scientific description:
Gould, A. A. (1852). Mollusca and Shells, pp. 475-476. In: United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 Under the Command of Charles Wilkes. Boston, MA: Gould & Lincoln.
Other references:
Avendaño, O., Cedillo, C., Roura, Á., López-Rocha, J. A., González, Á. F., Velázquez-Abunader, I., Soto-Vázquez, J. M. and Guerra, Á. (2025). Richness of the exploited species in the octopus fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico. Regional Studies in Marine Science 85: 104149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsma.2025.104149
Baraniuk, Chris. (2021, April 8). Found, Then Lost, Then Found Again: Scientists Have Rediscovered the Sand Octopus. https://www.hakaimagazine.com/ [Accessed 27 May 2021]
Cedillo-Robles, C. E. and Pliego-Cardenas, R. (2018). Shallow water octopuses from off Mexico, p. 246. In: Judkins, H. (ed.). Cephalopod Research Across Scales: From Molecules to Ecosystems. St Petersburg, FL: Cephalopod International Advisory Council Symposium.
González-Gómez, Roberto, Avendaño, Otilio et al. (2024). Biodiversity of octopuses in the Americas. Marine Biology 171: 189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-024-04489-0
Heilprin, A. (1888). Contributions to the Natural History of the Bermuda Islands. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 40: 302-328.
Hoyle, W. E. (1885). Diagnoses of new species of Cephalopoda collected during the cruise of H.M.S. Challenger, I: The Octopoda. Annals and Magazine of Natural History. series (5) 15: 222-236.
Jesus, M. D., Gouveia, M. T. J., Zapelini, C. and Schiavetti, A. (2015). Pesca artesanal e cadeia produtiva de Octopus insularis: o caso dos ambientes recifais do sul da Bahia, Brasil. Gaia Sci. 9: 195-204.
Jesus, M. D., Zapelini, C. and Schiavetti, A. (2021a). Can citizen Science Help Delimit the Geographical Distribution of a Species? The Case of the Callistoctopus sp. (“Eastern Octopus”) on the Brazilian Coast. Ethnobiology and Conservation 10: 03. https://doi.org/10.15451/ec2020-09-10.03-1-15
Jesus, M. D., Sales, J. B. L., Martins, R. S., Ready, J. S., Costa, T. A. S., Ablett, J. D. and Schiavetti, A. (2021b). Traditional Knowledge Aids Description When Resolving the Taxonomic Status of Unsettled Species Using Classical and Molecular Taxonomy: The Case of the Shallow-Water Octopus Callistoctopus furvus (Gould, 1852) From the Western Atlantic Ocean. Frontiers in Marine Science 7: 595244. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.595244
Jesus, M. D., Zapelini, C., Santana, R. O. D. and Schiavetti, A. (2022). Octopus Fishing and New Information on Ecology and Fishing of the Shallow-Water Octopus Callistoctopus furvus (Gould, 1852) Based on the Local Ecological Knowledge of Octopus Fishers in the Marine Ecoregions of Brazil. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 10: 788879. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2022.788879
Lekas, Emily. (2025). Substrate Complexity is not Correlated with Skin Pattern Complexity in Callistoctopus furvus. Honours thesis, University of Richmond.
Martins, V. S., Schiavetti, A. and Souto, F. J. B. (2011). Ethnoecological knowledge of the artisan fishermen of octopi (Octopus spp.) in the community of Coroa Vermelha (Santa Cruz de Cabrália, Bahia). An. Acad. Bras. Ciênc. 83: 513-522. doi:10.1590/S0001-37652011000200011
MolluscaBase eds. (2025). MolluscaBase. Callistoctopus furvus (A. Gould, 1852). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: https://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=534740 on 2025-06-02
Norman, M. D. and Hochberg, F. G. (2005). The current state of octopus taxonomy. Phuket Mar. Biol. Cent. Res. Bull. 66: 127-154.
O'Brien, Sydney L. and O'Brien, C. E. (2022). First record of bipedal locomotion in Callistoctopus furvus. Journal of Molluscan Studies 88(3): eyac020. https://doi.org/10.1093/mollus/eyac020
O’Brien, C., Lekas, E. and Leite, T. (2025). Deception in the dark—an ethogram of Callistoctopus furvus skin patterning and behavior. Journal of Molluscan Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/mollus/eyaf010
Pickford, G. C. (1945). Le poulpe Americain: A Study of the Littoral Octopoda of the Western Atlantic. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 36: 701-811.
Puentes-Sayo, Alejandra, Torres-Rodríguez, Javier and Lecompte, Orlando. (2021). Solving the identity of the common shallow-water octopus of the Colombian Caribbean based on the analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Journal of Molluscan Studies 87(4): eyab039. https://doi.org/10.1093/mollus/eyab039
Robson, G. C. (1929). A Monograph of the Recent Cephalopoda, Part I: Octopodinae. London: British Museum (Natural History). 236 pp.
Sánchez-López, Levita Irene, Villegas-Sánchez, C. A., Jarquín-González, J., Rosas-Luis, R. and Leite, T. S. (2025). Identification of octopus species and genetic structure of Octopus insularis in the western Atlantic. Aquatic Ecology 59: 577-595. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-025-10181-2
Santana-Cisneros, Mariana L., Rodríguez-Canul, Rossanna, Zamora-Briseño, Jesús Alejandro, Améndola-Pimenta, Monica, De Silva-Dávila, Roxana, Ordóñez-López, Uriel, Velázquez-Abunader, Iván and Ardisson, Pedro-Luis. (2021). Morphological and molecular identification of Octopoda (Mollusca: Cephalopoda) paralarvae from the southern Gulf of Mexico. Bulletin of Marine Science 97(2): 281-304. https://doi.org/10.5343/bms.2020.0027
Voss, Gilbert L. and Toll, Ronald B. (1998). The systematics and nomenclatural status of the octopodinae described from the western Atlantic Ocean, pp. 456-474. In: Voss, N. A., Vecchione, M. and Toll, R. B. (eds.). Systematics and Biogeography of Cephalopods. II. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology.