This short clip from PBS Nature’s Octopus: Making Contact is choc-full of wonderous baby cephalopods. Baby bobtail squid hide under a costume of sand grains that stick to their skin. Baby flamboyant cuttlefish look like a cross between an alien and a tropical flower as they snatch prey with speed. Pyjama Squid have sharp-looking high-contrast stripes. And we get to see them hatch and hunt.

Baby cephalopods are independent as soon as they hatch, and can start flashing their color-changing cells from their eggs. Observe this baby Caribbean Reef Octopus hatching at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center. Its chromatophores fire swiftly after breaking free of its egg, possibly from the stress of hatching.

ICYMI: Your daily squee has arrived. #octobabies pic.twitter.com/D9e5T5bkun

— Virginia Aquarium (@VAAquarium) February 7, 2018

Related reading: So You Know, This Is How to Incubate Baby Cephalopods in a Soda Bottle.

Related watching:

Baby Octopus at the Vancouver Aquarium

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Baby Octopus crawling around out of water

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Squid: Coming to Life, captured in microscopic detail

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And of course, The Cephalopod Empire in Woods Hole.