Octopus adds to its already intimidating arsenal
Filed under: Ideas by Jeremy on Monday, 14th December 2009 at 9:30 pm
I don’t know about you but octopuses (or octopodes–apparently that’s the real plural of octopus) are starting to make me nervous. I feel like they’re getting a little too smart. It started innocently enough with an octopus opening a screw-top jar or fitting its whole body through a tiny hole. A couple of years ago we discovered that they can actually walk on two tentacles while using its other tentacles to disguise itself as a piece of floating seaweed. Then things got really out of control when we found out that they can eat sharks and even render themselves invisible. An invisible shark-eating creature? Does no one else feel threatened? Given the choice I’d rather fight the shark. At least there’s an eHow page for how to do that.
As if that wasn’t enough, according to an article in the most recent issue of Current Biology, octopuses have now found a way to defend themselves. The veined octopus has learned to travel around with two halves of a coconut and, at the first sign of danger, can pull itself inside and hold the coconut shut. Because they pick up the coconut halves and carry it around until it needs it, the octopus is considered to be using a tool, a first for invertebrates and a characteristic that was one thought to be solely human. What’s next, octopus? Are you going to team up with your squid brethren so you can get suckers lined with tiny teeth ? I’m calling CSIS…
This shit really is terrifying. I have seen these dudes cross a room to get at some clams they saw in a lab. They can breathe air!! I am more scared of an octopus invasion then an alien invasion these days, which is saying a lot.. I am going to keep an eye out for random coconut shells, that’s for sure.
I for one welcome our new octopus overlords!
Octopus (and cephalopods and molusks) have long been my favorite animal in the kingdom. They have been underrated and under the radar since the dawn of man. Peters’ acount of the breathing air/escaping octopus is an amazing enlightenment story. In the 70′s a university lab had an octopus in in a tank on one side of the room and crabs in a seperate tank on the other side. Every night more and more crabs would dissapear and they didn’t know how or why, the lab was locked. They set up a hidden camera. And when the lab door locked the octo lifted the roof off his tank, climbed down the tank legs, walked across the lab, climbed up the crab tank, opened the tank, ate the crab and returned before morning. All this required breathing oxygen which no one know octos could do. It also required the octo to know there were crabs and a schedule for attack. amazing observatory skills!!
They are super heros. They can disquise themselves perfectly as any other creature or object. They are incredibaly fast and vicious. They have a conscious control and coordination over every cell in their body! That’s insane!! They are perfect (well, 2nd perfect. Sharks are the only animals that have been here longer, which means in a sense of evolution, sharks are the most perfect, most evolved, but at Jer said, pound for pound octo wins, so you tell me who more perfect. evolution seems to have screwed the shark)
For anyone that doesn’t know, in the middle of all those tentacles is a mouth with a beak like a parrot, just like a parrot, but razor sharp and much stronger.)
A few years ago I watched a documentary with Rob Stewart (Bam! Aquatic Namedrop!) which investigated and animated creditable biologists’ opinions on the next 1000 years. Basically they said it’s impossible to know what the environment will do and hence how the natural world will have to react, but they all speculated seperately that molusks (cephalopods in particular) were most likely to emerge from the oceans (after we’re gone) and be the next intelligent life form to walk and rule the earth. They imagine them taking to the trees. With 8 arms they will be amazing climbers and swingers. Then to the ground much like us. Here come the octos! I wish I could remember the movie cause the animation is amazing!! I’ll get back to you.