The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support Forumstoo cute!
Fla Dem
(23,692 posts)If that's the ocean, it's sad to see that soda can discarded there. I hope that little squid isn't trapped in there.
rug
(82,333 posts)Fla Dem
(23,692 posts)If he was, I'll just have to assume the person rescued him.
rug
(82,333 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Bashful Dumbo Octopus! ❤️
Tanuki
(14,919 posts)Fla Dem
(23,692 posts)SeattleVet
(5,477 posts)Keeps predators out. The octopus can get through pretty much any opening that its beak (the only hard part of its body, other than the lenses of the eyes). The one in the .gif is tasting the tip of the finger (an octopus has taste receptors in the suckers), and they are extremely curious.
When SCUBA divers do beach cleanups we are told that a bottle or can on the bottom for more than a few weeks is probably no longer trash - it's habitat.
(And, to be a bit of a pedant, an octopus doesn't have any tentacles, in the modern usage of the word based on structure and function. The squid and cuttlefish have 8 arms and 2 tentacles, the tentacles having both suckers and toothed or barbed structures. The octopus has 8 arms, though some biologists are pushing to have the 8 arms be called 4 arms and 4 legs, based on the way they sometimes use them when moving across the bottom. The arms of the octopus lack the peduncles that tentacles have.)
Octopuses are amazing creatures. A full-grown (~100 pound) Giant Pacific Octopus can fit through about a 3" opening (about the size of a condensed soup can.) They are extremely intelligent (especially for a mollusk!); can learn to run a maze, open a jar or childproof pill bottle, and even remember faces over a long term. I volunteer at the Seattle Aquarium and one of the really fun parts of the job is feeding the Giant Pacific Octopus. We had an octopus that took about an hour to figure out how to open a peanut butter jar with food in it the first time it was given to it. His personal record was 45 seconds, before he was released back to the wild.
Fla Dem
(23,692 posts)TexasBushwhacker
(20,202 posts)Yup. That's how they harvest octopi for eating. They put out a clay pots on a string and pull them up after a few hours.
forgotmylogin
(7,530 posts)And octopi are very smart. He didn't end up in there by accident.
krispos42
(49,445 posts)I wasn't sure what I was going to see. Perhaps something from "Archer", like the "clone bone".
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)❤️
tclambert
(11,087 posts)boy octopus breaks off one of his arms, which is also his penis, and gives it to the girl octopus. Then he swims away to die. Girl octopus uses boy octopus's arm/penis to fertilize her thousands of eggs, which she lays under a ledge of rock. She then guards the eggs and gently blows water over them until she starves to death. Sigh, it's so romantic, just like Romeo and Juliet. Right about then the eggs hatch and thousands of tiny octopi swim away, mostly to get eaten by fish and crabs and Japanese people. Maybe a few of them survive long enough to find mates and start the cycle over again. But a few, a very lucky few, get selected by Red Wings fans, tucked inside their pants to hide them, and then get thrown on the ice during the Stanley Cup playoffs.