Sunday, January 13, 2008

Random Fact #1

Octopi freak me out.

Described as what is essentially just a big clever brain with arms, they can not only squeeze their entire bodies through a hole the size of a quarter, they can also open jars, solve puzzles, communicate their emotions, have favorite toys, and this:

They change color to blend into their surroundings, plus they can perfectly match texture too.

They also seem to be working on becoming bipedal. Great, just great.

(notice how the octopus is using 2 legs to walk and is mimicking seaweed for camouflage with the other 6) I'm glad that they're not air-breathers - they'd be picking your locks, sneaking into your house, and raiding your fridge in the middle of the night. And then when you venture down into the kitchen to figure out just what that noise was, the octopus would go poof! and disappear into the linoleum or morph into a head of lettuce in the veggie bin.

15 comments:

Christina RN LMT said...

I LOVE octopi, they are so cool.

Maybe in a million years they'll be the dominant species on Earth...if it's not cockroaches.

Anonymous said...

*squee* I, for one, welcome our new cephalopod overlords. ;-) We can learn a lot from 'em...

Carteach said...

Oh great! Thanks!
Like being freaked by spiders wasn't enough....

Intelligent sea-going spiders trying to take over the earth.

Guess I need an Octupi gun now too...

COOL!

Weer'd Beard said...

Cephalapods are some of my favorite sea creatures! Not only are they an evolutionary oddity, being some of the most intelegent non-mamal creatures in the sea, but they're friggin MOLLUSKS!! Their closest reletives outside of Cephalapods are snails and clams! They don't have spinal colums, and a VERY rudementary skeleton, yet they have highly developed brains, eyes, and nervous systems. They communicate by color, and are capable of amazing things.

If they start breathing air they will claim the earth for their own.

My favorite Octopus story is an aquarium that was missing fish. The director figgured somebody was stealing them and selling them to collectors for lots of money. So he hid in the aquarium after closing to catch the theif.

After the lights went out the octopus climbed out of his tank, crawled over to the next tank over, grabbed a fish and took it back to his tank for dinner.

Amazing!

Yarrrrr

-Weer'd Beard

Roberta X said...

Ah, the octopodes! --I think of them as raccoons that breathe water -- and would beat their land-dwelling analogs at checkers.

They're not usually exceptionally harmful, though they will steal snacks if it's even possible to do so. One of my co-workers learned this to his detriment when he adopted one: it kept grabbing whatever looked tasty from the next tank over! I believe this resulted in outplacement.

As for their not being land animals, why, wovere told you that? I ran across this while studying up for the zombie apocolypse: http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

...I'm just sayin'. ;)

Tam said...

That was totally sweet!

Did you know that some octopi have eyeballs that look just like human eyeballs externally? Apparently more than one diver has got a good case of the creeping willies from seeing something that looked just like a human eye tracking them from some grotto or cranny.

Dustbin said...

also this one
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cA8zQw6gDNI
hehehe

phlegmfatale said...

WOW! That's really cool, and I admit the stuff you've informed me about octopi makes them seem exponentially more creepy than I ever realized. Ew.

breda said...

I can't figure out if octopi freak me out in a good way, or a bad way. But tree-octopuses are tipping the scales toward the negative direction. Thanks a lot, roBerta.

BobG said...

They also taste good, when prepared properly.

NotClauswitz said...

I believe octopuses inhabit the House and the Senate, the look like us and talk like us but they are different and not us...

Roberta X said...

Dustbin, that's plain kewl! Hey, they eat sharks, I'm not too unhappy with them.

Breda: Zaptopi should be taken with a grain of...something. But wonderously so.

Ken said...

I'm seeing a loloctopus picture (actually, a head of lettuce): "DIS AKSHUALLY OCTOPUS/SHE SUSPECTS NOTHING."

Anonymous said...

Starfish creep me out more. No brains, just the desire to kill mercilessly.

They are the Terminators of the echinoderms.

breda said...

okay, okay - that settles it. I am never submerging myself in a body of water bigger than a bathtub. Nope. No way.