1. They get their names from their ‘ears’.
The most obvious characteristic of dumbo octopuses is their rounded ‘ears’ sticking out of the sides of their heads. No other kind of octopus has these and they are quite large so they look like elephant ears, in particular, the ears of the famous Disney character, Dumbo. That’s how they got their name.
They are also sometimes called winged octopuses because the ‘ears’ can also look like ‘wings’. (Remember how Dumbo could fly?)
However, they are neither ears nor wings but fins and just as fishes use their fins to swim, dumbo octopuses flap these fins to float above the ocean floor and move in different directions. That’s the main way they swim around to conserve energy, although they can also swim via jet propulsion like other octopuses – swallowing a large amount of water and then letting it out all at once to push the octopus forward quickly. They can also crawl across the ocean floor.