Eight days a week πŸ™ πŸ¦‘
June 21, 2017 10:48 AM   Subscribe

In honor of eight-day-long Cephalopod Week, here are eight fantastic facts about octopuses and their ilk. For example: the Humboldt squid can turn itself blood-red and effectively become invisible in their usual depths, where they exhibit the behavior that earned them the nickname "red devils."
posted by Johnny Wallflower (16 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Finally, Johnny Wallflower reveals his true colors! Dogs and cats were just a front!
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:58 AM on June 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


They are also "...the floppy, floppy spider of the sea."

Tangentially related, I have a semi-regular octopus blog called Octopodal Motion (or, alternately, Tenticular Gesticulation) that you are more than welcome to check out.
posted by Lokheed at 11:02 AM on June 21, 2017 [9 favorites]


Yaaaaay, Cephalopods! ~o~

(or, alternately, Tenticular Gesticulation)

Lokheed, now I have a total earworm (...earcephalopod?) to the tune of Stephen Sondheim's "Perpetual Anticipation" from A Little Night Music. (Your blog might even make that very reference--I can't check to see at the moment, as my workplace fiendishly blocks the site. The anti-octopus lobby is powerful. >:-( )
posted by theatro at 11:31 AM on June 21, 2017


Humboldts are fascinating animals I wish we knew more about. I wish, too, that they weren't as consistently portrayed as sensationally Vicious, Brutal Monsters. Like any large predator, they can of course be dangerous, and have displayed aggressive behaviors, but there is some debate as to how much the observed aggression is due to metabolism and feeding pattern, provocation by humans or misinterpreting curiosity as attacks. All animals deserve respect for their individuality and space, and many can be potentially dangerous when we approach too close, too aggressively. That doesn't make them monsters, even if they're big and we think they look weird.

Also, if we're going to do Steinbeck, I think we ought to honor the smartest, handsomest, most persistently tenacious videogame hero of all.
posted by byanyothername at 12:10 PM on June 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


Also also, love the emojis.
posted by byanyothername at 12:11 PM on June 21, 2017


Seeing, in the case of octopus camouflage, is sometimes hard to believe.

p.s. The other day I found this definition of octopus online: "a cat with one less life remaining."
posted by LeLiLo at 12:20 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Dogs and cats were just a front!

Mammals are feedstock for our Tentacled Overlords, blessed be They.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:39 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I added your blog to my feed, Lokheed!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:51 PM on June 21, 2017


How the hell would you even begin to fight off a fucking Humboldt squid?

Befriend this guy.
posted by Splunge at 1:41 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I love octopuses!
posted by sarcasticah at 8:18 PM on June 21, 2017


The octopus emoji on my chromebook has six arms... Hexopus?
posted by dougfelt at 8:23 PM on June 21, 2017


Meet Our Inkredible Cephalopod Aquarists! (Monterey Bay Aquarium video).
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:48 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


If you want to learn about octopuses, you need to get Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life - I'm half way through at the moment, and now possessed of an urge to go an meet an octopus in person.
posted by Vortisaur at 10:23 PM on June 21, 2017


Or, if you want a quicker octo read, there's always Sy Montgomery's Orion article "Deep Intellect":
For its color palette, the octopus uses three layers of three different types of cells near the skin’s surface. The deepest layer passively reflects background light. The topmost may contain the colors yellow, red, brown, and black. The middle layer shows an array of glittering blues, greens, and golds. But how does an octopus decide what animal to mimic, what colors to turn? Scientists have no idea, especially given that octopuses are likely colorblind.

But new evidence suggests a breathtaking possibility. Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and University of Washington researchers found that the skin of the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis, a color-changing cousin of octopuses, contains gene sequences usually expressed only in the light-sensing retina of the eye. In other words, cephalopods β€” octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid β€” may be able to see with their skin.

The American philosopher Thomas Nagel once wrote a famous paper titled β€œWhat Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Bats can see with sound. Like dolphins, they can locate their prey using echoes. Nagel concluded it was impossible to know what it’s like to be a bat. And a bat is a fellow mammal like us β€” not someone who tastes with its suckers, sees with its skin, and whose severed arms can wander about, each with a mind of its own. Nevertheless, there are researchers still working diligently to understand what it’s like to be an octopus.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:38 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Solid opportunity to share a weird little song I found ages ago: Octopus I Love You by Dalmatian Rex https://youtu.be/a1tQJa6c028
πŸ˜πŸ™πŸ™πŸ˜
posted by supercrayon at 11:20 PM on June 21, 2017


I gave up eating cephalopods a few years back. Both due to calamari being a very hit-or-miss menu item, with much opportunity for disappointment, and also because of their general amazingness. They are off my list, as are pigs. Ducks, however. I have no compunction about eating ducks. They are rapist jerks.
posted by jetsetsc at 9:16 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


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