Join Tom and I as we talk about veined octopuses observed off the coast of Indonesia carried coconut shell halves under their bodies, and assembled them as necessary into shelters — something that wasn’t supposed to be possible in their corner of the animal kingdom. Amazing. Geeky. Awesome.
And, we get a great reader submission from Doug, and his awesome dad time with computer components.
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Actually octopusses are one of the, if not the smartest creature of the sea. They have eight brain hemispheres (eight tenticles as well)
years ago I remeber how scientist would intorduce favorite foods into the octopusses tank, but the food would be inside jars with screw top lids. Having never seen such a thing the octopusses in all cases were able to figure out how to unscrew the jars in 15 minutes or less. Plus remeber that large sea aquarium that was losing sharks left and right. Video cameras eventually discovered the octopus was waiting for a shark to pass by and would then grab the shark and keep it from swimming forward, thereby making it impossible for the shark to force water through it’s gills and cause it to suffrocate.
Oftopic: Will every episode end with the testicle quote ?
is it wrong that I wanted this one to end with “tentacles” instead of “testicles”? (Yes it is).
It was fun listening to octopus talk on a podcast again. The first true octopus-centered podcast was Diggnation Episode 6. The Rose Man and Actor Boy discussed a Canadian TV clip showing an octopus in an aquarium attacking and killing sharks. Here’s a link to the original video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7004909622962894202#
Just as an aside, I read a translation of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” many years ago which described a famous episode in the journey of the “Nautilus” as an attack on the ship by a giant “cuttlefish”. You wonder whether the translator actually spoke English.
I’d love to see a picture of a dolphin wearing an octopus helmet.