---
title: White-Spotted Octopus (Callistoctopus macropus)
scientific_name: Callistoctopus macropus
common_name: White-Spotted Octopus
taxon: Cephalopods
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-02T18:39:00.670Z
updated: 2026-08-11T19:10:24.529Z
tags: White-Spotted Octopus, Callistoctopus macropus, Cephalopods, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/cephalopods/white-spotted-octopus
---

# White-Spotted Octopus (*Callistoctopus macropus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cephalopods (*Cephalopoda*)
- **Size:** 150 cm
- **Depth:** 1-17 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sand, rubble and seagrass near reef, buried by day
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric, Semelparous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- brick red with round white spots over body and arms
- first pair of arms far longer than the rest, to about a meter
- hunting coral heads at night with a following of groupers and wrasses
- mantle to 20 cm

A striking red octopus scattered with round white spots, with a first pair of arms far longer than the rest - up to a meter (3 ft) against a mantle of 20 cm (8 in). The red intensifies when the animal is disturbed, which is a warning rather than camouflage, and makes it one of the few octopuses that is easier to see when it wants to be.

It hunts by feel, at night, in coral. The long arms are pushed deep into branching Acropora and Stylophora heads to flush small fish and crustaceans out of the branches, working one head at a time. The prey that escapes the arms comes out into open water, which is where the accomplices are waiting.

Those accomplices are fish. Groupers, goatfish and wrasses follow this octopus through the night and take what it drives out, and the association is stable enough that a diver can find the octopus by following the fish. This is one of the best-studied cases of interspecies hunting on a coral reef, and the octopus tolerates rather than benefits from it.

By day it is gone: buried in sand or wedged into rubble, with only the mantle edge showing. Like the rest of its family it breeds once and dies, the female starving beside her eggs.

## Also known as

- **English:** Atlantic White-Spotted Octopus, grass octopus, longarmed octopus
- **French:** Poulpe points blancs, poulpe tacheté
- **German:** Atlantische Weißfleckenkrake, Großer Krake, Langarmiger Krake
- **Dutch:** witgevlekte octopus

## Scientific synonyms

- *Callistoctopus macropus* (Risso, 1826)
- *Octopus alderii* Vérany, 1851
- *Octopus didynamus* Rafinesque, 1814
- *Octopus frayedus* Rafinesque, 1814
- *Octopus granosus* Blainville, 1826
- *Octopus macropodus* San Giovanni, 1829
- *Octopus macropus* Risso, 1826
- *Polypus macropus* (Risso, 1826)

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/cephalopods/white-spotted-octopus)*
*Updated: August 11, 2026*