Little arms on long arm octopus

What are these little arms?

Pretty sure I've seen them a few times. Will look for a clearer shot.

Alex

Fingers?

Wow - very interesting! They could be re-growing arms that had been lost to autotomy. Is there a way to crop it and show a little more to the left, so you can see where the other arms grow from the web?

I'm also interested if it's due to the regrowing of arms. Here are two photos of the same individual I shot in 2002 in Anilao including a close-up of its missing arms and what I'm now wondering if is indeed the same phenomenon.

Thanks.

Here are some larger images.

The first is another crop of the original image

This is a different photo of the same individual. This time only one of the filaments is visible.

Alex

With no other ideas being suggested, I think that they are regrowing arms is our best hypothesis.

Alex

Alex, the cephalopod anoraks on the Tonmo forum may know more.

I saw a Mimic Octopus yesterday with two small front arms, both the same length. I presume they are re-growing too. But strange that it is again the two front arms, not other ones.

Here's some video I made. There are two Mimic's in the video, the 1st one is the one with the two short arms

[vimeohd]50000489[/vimeohd]

Direct Link to Video

Cheers,

Kaj