Occantin

The creature known as the 'Skinchanger', or more forrmally as an occantin, is a land-bound relative of the water-dwelling octopus. Its body is spherical and with no defined head, with a ring of eight muscular tentacles surrounding it. Eyes are placed between pairs of tentacles, and the entire body is covered in a layer of colour-changing chromatophore cells.
Able to mimic its surroundings with remarkable precision, the occantin is an ambush hunter. Its powerful arms coil like springs as it lies in wait indistinguishably amongst tree branches, then when suitable prey approaches it leaps, wrapping them in coils of muscle and swiftly strangling and crushing them. Once its prey is dead, its mollusc-like beak rasps away strips of flesh to gradually devour it.
The chromatophores covering the occantin's skin can produce a vast range of colours, and its eyes can perceive fine degrees of colour change, all the way to infrared and ultraviolet. Other occantins can read the colour signals as they chase across the creature's body in bands, ripples and waves almost too fast to see, and coordinate between one another. It is not uncommon for one occantin to stampede a herd of grazers into the path of a waiting pack of fellow hunters.
Come mating season the occantins compete with displays of almost eye-searing colour, until a pair of the hermaphroditic animals choose one another to fertilise their leathery eggs, which are laid in small caves dug out underneath the embankments of fast-flowing streams. The eggs are guarded until they hatch, and the adults bring prey to the young for their first six months, until they are large enough to join a hunt on their own.
The skin of an occantin is highly prized as a spell component in illusion magic, adding a fair degree of power to even low-level castings. It is expensive to obtain thanks to its rarity, due to the danger of sourcing it. Both intelligent and able to learn, occantins will recognise when they are being hunted, and band together to turn the tables on hunting parties. Would-be hunters often find themselves with angry occantins wrapped around their heads or chests, unable to breathe as muscular tentacles hold weapons immobile, until they themselves become prey.