clipped from: www.pinktentacle.com   
96-armed octopus --

The permanent display at the Shima Marineland Aquarium in the town of Shima includes a 96-tentacled Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) that weighed 3.3 kilograms (about 7 lbs) and measured 90 centimeters (3 ft) long when it was captured in nearby Matoya Bay in December 1998. Before dying 5 months later, the creature laid eggs, making it the first known extra-tentacled octopus to do so in captivity. All the baby octopi hatched with the normal number of tentacles, but unfortunately they only survived a month.


96-armed octopus --

The preserved octopus actually has the normal number of 8 appendages attached to its body, but each one branches out to form the multitude of extra tentacles

believed to be the result of abnormal regeneration that occurred after the octopus suffered some sort of injury

85-armed octopus --

most well-known specimen is an 85-tentacled Common Octopus captured in 1957 at nearby Toshijima island

Toba Aquarium has exhibited 6 other mutant octopi

most of them alive for a time

each with between 9 and 56 tentacles