Video shows 1,000+ octopuses in Monterey Bay šŸ™

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/07/video-shows-more-than-1000-oc.html

ā€¦

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Octopiā€¦

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Or not as Octopus is Greek not Latin.

ETA /pedant :smile:

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No doubt biding their time for the terrestrial invasion. Cthulhu slumbers lightly. ia ia phtaghn.

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There is only one:

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Octopedant

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I, for one, welcome . . .
nah, Iā€™m outta here.

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4

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He so cute!

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Brooding

I DONā€™T SEE ANY HOODIES!

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Iā€™ve a feeling Cthulhu just keeps hitting the snooze button.

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Booklovers among you may recall that H.G.Wells wrote a short story called ā€œThe Sea Raidersā€ in 1896. This was a suspenseful tale of octopods turning up in great numbers around the south coast of England, and dragging a few victims to their deaths. Apparently the motivation for this story was the sudden arrival of large numbers of the creatures a year or so before. Co-incidentally, there was a similar news report around a hundred years later - 2015 maybe - I canā€™t recall exactly - when unusual numbers were again sighted off the south coast of England. There were no reports of anyone being dragged to their deaths, though.

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Good thing those are not Dosidicus gigas (dā€™Orbigny, 1835). These also come in swarms of larger 1k, as far as I remember.

I like cephalopods, but Humboldt squid squads give me the shivers.

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Octopieā€¦

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Iā€™llā€¦Iā€™ll just have the calamari, please.

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Yeah; Iā€™m going to file this under ā€œpsionics are unlikely to exist; but if they do this is where we learn that sufficient density of marginally psionic entities in one location produces a gestalt consciousness of terrible powerā€.

(In a more realistic(or at least not physics violating) take on thT that vein, the octopus has a substantially distributed nervous system, plenty of arms; and skin with chromatophores, some chemical sensors; and some suggestions of light sensitivity.

This sounds like it might allow for at least modest data transfer between two individuals with arms interlocked; and each one has 8, so a mesh network of sorts, with octopodes like neurons linked by their 8 ā€˜dendriteā€™ arms to others nearby; is at least conceivable. Link bandwidth would likely be lower than for the internal nervous system; but not zero.

Iā€™m not sure what would drive the evolution of such behavior(so we might need to assist in that area); but Iā€™d give my seal of approval to octopus clustering capabilities.)

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That is not Calamari which can Cthulhu Pie.

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Well then maybe Iā€™ll just sip on a Cooler out of Space. That sounds refreshing.

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Might I tempt you with some Funghi dello Yogurt???

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The word just makes me happy, I wasnā€™t correcting anyone.

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