Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know?
Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck Brian is
Speaker 1: seated across from me, and that would make this stuff
Speaker 1: you should know? Yes, Yes, how you doing. I'm feeling
Speaker 1: a little rough, my friend, are you? Yeah? All right?
Speaker 1: You look good? Ted White? You know Timmy my hazardous
Speaker 1: waste stuff. But he turned forty yesterday, so we went
Speaker 1: out at a nice dinner and then you know, went
Speaker 1: out afterwards. Italian. Yeah, Italian. Can you create a little
Speaker 1: hazardous waste of our own? It's gross, it is I'm sorry. Um, well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you made it in. I'm here, man, I'm
Speaker 1: Ready're sitting up right, as I said, and seated across
Speaker 1: from me. Yeah. So I'm gonna tell you a story, Chuck,
Speaker 1: please try not to fall asleep. Okay, there's an octopus
Speaker 1: that you probably have never heard of because he got
Speaker 1: almost no press coverage whatsoever. But his name is Paul.
Speaker 1: You have, yeah, the World Cup octopus. Okay, Well, I
Speaker 1: forget you do lots of research most people haven't heard
Speaker 1: of this octopus. Right. His name is Paul, and he
Speaker 1: lives in the Sea Life Center in Germany, a German
Speaker 1: town that I am not familiar with. And um, he
Speaker 1: had a tendency, believe it or not, to pick the
Speaker 1: winner of the eight final World Cup matches in two thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't heed like pick up whatever flag he picked
Speaker 1: up or something. No, it was they would present him
Speaker 1: with two boxes with the muscle in each box and
Speaker 1: you know one box that would have like you know
Speaker 1: who's playing who? And he ate the muscle out of
Speaker 1: the right box every single time. In my mind's eye,
Speaker 1: he waved a little I just totally created that or
Speaker 1: he sucked it up in his beak because octopi have beaks,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to say octopi. I think probably most
Speaker 1: of this pod has, but I'm gonna go with octopuses.
Speaker 1: Octopuses is a way to go. You could also say octopods. Um,
Speaker 1: there are at least three plural forms of octopus, so
Speaker 1: you could say cactuses. I guess cactipods maybe. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't think the pods would transfer over because octopi are cephalopods, right,
Speaker 1: which means head foot. It means head foot, literally means
Speaker 1: head footed, and that means when you look at an
Speaker 1: octopus and all you see is a head and arms.
Speaker 1: And that's why. That's whether whether you get that name
Speaker 1: all right? And um it turns out that the area
Speaker 1: of its eyes are not its head. Chuck. Oh, really,
Speaker 1: as far as I understand, what's that? That the the
Speaker 1: big part that you would think is its head, it's
Speaker 1: its mantle. Okay, we're getting ahead of ourselves. So you
Speaker 1: want to classify this thing a little better. Yes, we're
Speaker 1: going to classify it um as the phylum mollusca um
Speaker 1: with snails and slugs and clams and things like that,
Speaker 1: and um in the ass of Cephalopoda, which along with
Speaker 1: their buddies the squid, and like nautilus and things like that.
Speaker 1: But they don't have um like an outer shell like
Speaker 1: a lot of moloks too, No, or an inner shell,
Speaker 1: which apparently squid have as well. And we'll we'll get
Speaker 1: to that though, and why. But what they lack in
Speaker 1: you know, what they lack in um shellness, they make
Speaker 1: up for in spunk and pluckiness. Because they are probably
Speaker 1: the most interesting mollusks of all. Dude, octopuses are extremely fascinating.
Speaker 1: Then that's why I picked him. We don't do like
Speaker 1: And this one is on cats. I mean, I love cats,
Speaker 1: but they're not fascinating. Cat lowers are gonna hate you, um,
Speaker 1: but octopuses are definitely fascinating endlessly to me at least.
Speaker 1: And uh, since you mentioned the mail, I guess we
Speaker 1: should talk about that. Well. Yeah, if you look at
Speaker 1: an octopus, you see the eyes, and there right behind
Speaker 1: the eyes, it looks like its head. Now, the eyes
Speaker 1: are actually attached to the head. And what's behind is
Speaker 1: called the mantle. Yeah, and the mantle is where all
Speaker 1: of its internal organs are stuffed in. Everything is in
Speaker 1: that bulbous sack, the anus, the gonad. Uh, the posterior
Speaker 1: salivary glandges giggled when you said anus and go next.
Speaker 1: Good lord. Sometimes I lets walk past her in the
Speaker 1: hall and just be like anus, go nad until start
Speaker 1: to doing so. Everything's up in there, right, yeah, digestive
Speaker 1: gland right, the anus, the gonad. Right, she's still laughing.
Speaker 1: And the mantle is like an extremely strong muscle. And
Speaker 1: part of the reason for that is as to protect
Speaker 1: all those organs, obviously, and it also helps with um respiration.
Speaker 1: And there's also a funnel. This is awesome too that um,
Speaker 1: we will get to you later. Yeah, it's gonna come
Speaker 1: up here there for funnel. If this for Peewee's Playhouse,
Speaker 1: that would be the secret word of the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well let's just make it that, okay. And also they
Speaker 1: call that a siphon. And then, like you said, we'll
Speaker 1: explain what that does, but we should talk about we
Speaker 1: should just go and lead off, I think with the
Speaker 1: most fascinating part of an octopus to me is the
Speaker 1: camouflaging abilities. Yeah. I was gonna say it's blood was blue. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, go ahead and say that. That's good.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Blue blood. Alright, Well, your blood is
Speaker 1: red as his mind, as is all of our listeners,
Speaker 1: because we're American, that's right. Um, And we're not wealthy,
Speaker 1: but um octopi apparently are because they have blue blood.
Speaker 1: And the reason our blood is red is because we
Speaker 1: have an iron um iron containing protein called hemoglobin that
Speaker 1: binds oxygen together in a bloodstream for more efficient delivery. Right,
Speaker 1: Octopi have blue blood because they have a protein in
Speaker 1: their blood called um hemocyanin, and cyan is another name
Speaker 1: for blue, and their blood is blue because hemocyanin is
Speaker 1: uh copper based, right, it's a copper based protein, and
Speaker 1: I guess that makes the diff It makes all the dif.
Speaker 1: But that's really interesting because you pointed out something that
Speaker 1: has to do with one of their most saying features.
Speaker 1: It because they have low oxygen levels. They have three hearts, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: two pumping pump blood to the gills, right, and then
Speaker 1: one handles the rest of the body. That's so awesome.
Speaker 1: It is nature finds a way always like, you know,
Speaker 1: another heart. Six hundred million years, we're gonna be three hearts. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that is awesome. But back to what we were saying,
Speaker 1: which I think is the most awesome, the color changing
Speaker 1: Well it's not mine. The color changing camouflaging ability of
Speaker 1: the octopus. If you've never seen it, go to YouTube
Speaker 1: and type in octopus color change. Dude, it's unbelievable. There's
Speaker 1: there's there's there's one. It's like fifteen seconds long where
Speaker 1: the beginning of the shot you literally are going like,
Speaker 1: all right, where's the octopus and then it's you know,
Speaker 1: part of this reef. It shoots off, changes color and
Speaker 1: like under a second, which it can do and then
Speaker 1: attaches to another reef and boom, it's that color and
Speaker 1: looks exactly like that. Read it's mind blowing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we have no idea how it knows what color to
Speaker 1: change two right now, we don't know how it knows,
Speaker 1: but we know how it does, right exactly there. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's through chromatophores, right, yeah, that's the secret. Okay. So
Speaker 1: chromatophors are little cells that have like three pigments sacks
Speaker 1: in each. It's a very tiny pigment sacks that depending
Speaker 1: on the muscles surrounding the cell um, whatever color needs
Speaker 1: to be featured is expanded or contracted, so the other
Speaker 1: two will be hidden while one is is expanded. And
Speaker 1: that's a cell as I said, just means it's very
Speaker 1: very tiny, and the octopus's skin is covered tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of them, right, and each one is controlled by
Speaker 1: a different nerve, right. Yeah. And the way they put
Speaker 1: in the article to understand how that works is pretty good.
Speaker 1: I think Jennifer Horton did a great job. It's like
Speaker 1: if you put a few color section of rubber band
Speaker 1: and then you stretch it out in an instant, it's
Speaker 1: gonna look completely different. Color wise, and that contracts and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be very deep color and that's what it's doing.
Speaker 1: Bread it's over a larger surface area too. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: since each crematophores is controlled by its own nerve um,
Speaker 1: it's own nervous system, right, No, the nervous system controls
Speaker 1: each one independently. So it's like the nervous system is going, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna end in this crematophori right in tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of them, so you have all these mind boggling
Speaker 1: different combinations. So the color change can be very It's
Speaker 1: not just like Okay, I'm going to be blue now,
Speaker 1: it's it's like I'm going to be speckled like this
Speaker 1: coral reef that you were just talking. I'm gonna look
Speaker 1: exactly like whatever I'm next to, or a sandy bottom.
Speaker 1: And it also doesn't hurt that they have um, what
Speaker 1: are they called the little mirror like reflective ritophores. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they mirror the surrounding environment, so that helps. And then
Speaker 1: for the texture, they have projections called pope on their
Speaker 1: skin and they can actually change textures to blend in
Speaker 1: as well, which is these videos on YouTube. It's insane.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like nature should be able to do
Speaker 1: what these things do in a second and really awesome.
Speaker 1: At least one researcher UM said that chameleons camouflages hum
Speaker 1: Drum by comparison. Have you seen, though, that one chameleon
Speaker 1: on YouTube with the different colored sunglasses. I think it is.
Speaker 1: I got the impression that that was a photoshop something.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that they could change that quickly. But
Speaker 1: they still got nothing on these octopuses. Okay, so even
Speaker 1: if it were photoshops, they still learn as good as
Speaker 1: an octopus, not by a long check those out, um,
Speaker 1: so chuck. One of the well, the main reason why
Speaker 1: they can change colors not so they can be on YouTube. Um,
Speaker 1: it's so they can evade predators, right yeah, and hunt
Speaker 1: better and hide for prey and stuff like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But one of the one of the I guess, one
Speaker 1: of the characteristics they're most famous for, um is for
Speaker 1: evading predators is their ink, right yeah. Octopus can blow
Speaker 1: a bunch of ink in your face. Yeah. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned the siphon funnel earlier. They use that in conjunction
Speaker 1: with the ink sact, so they'll spit out some ink.
Speaker 1: Which itself would be just like a very concentrated ink
Speaker 1: blob or yeah, it could be like little globules. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll do that sometimes. Um they I think, what do
Speaker 1: they do that too? Yeah? Decoy, But if they want
Speaker 1: to like evade something, if they're in a major threat mode,
Speaker 1: they'll squirt out some of the ink and then shoot
Speaker 1: out a big puff of water from their funnel that
Speaker 1: they're holding, and all of a sudden that creates the
Speaker 1: big like James Bond oil slick probably actually would be
Speaker 1: more like a cloud that you can't deep horizon oilson
Speaker 1: it was all octopus that wasn't. The ink though, also
Speaker 1: contains a trio synaise and that impairs taste and smell
Speaker 1: so that you not only if you're a predator like
Speaker 1: your shark, let's say, not only can you not see
Speaker 1: your you remember the things in the nose of the shark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll affect that and they'll just get all wacky and
Speaker 1: they won't know what to do. It starts swimming around
Speaker 1: in circles and smoking cigarett It's frantically exactly get a
Speaker 1: little upset with that. So um, especially with the kind
Speaker 1: of nervous system that octopuses have to have to um
Speaker 1: for each chromatophore to be controlled by its own nerve
Speaker 1: ending um to be able to release in that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that this process is that an octopus goes through.
Speaker 1: It shows that they do have a big central nervous system,
Speaker 1: but they also have like a pretty decent sized brain
Speaker 1: as well. Right, Yeah, and you know, um, before we
Speaker 1: move on from the disguising thing that the brown octopus,
Speaker 1: we should point out kind also contorted shape to look
Speaker 1: like other things. And they think that it chooses what
Speaker 1: to look like depends depending on what's going on. Like
Speaker 1: I think the example in the article was um, damsel fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: confronted by a damselfish, they'll all of a sudden be
Speaker 1: like form of sea snake because the damselfish is afraid
Speaker 1: of the sea snake, and the octopus will look like
Speaker 1: a sea snake. It's like, it's crazy. You have seen
Speaker 1: the se snake video? No, did you watch any white
Speaker 1: snake videos today? I love white snake though. So, an
Speaker 1: octopus's brain is um proportionately speaking, in some cases as
Speaker 1: as big as the mammals um or a bird's. Birds
Speaker 1: don't have the smallest brains well, and it's definitely the
Speaker 1: most evolved of the cephalopods for sure. Yes, smartest of
Speaker 1: a lot from what we can tell it is. And um,
Speaker 1: again they the nerve endings that we were talking about, UM,
Speaker 1: the central nervous system. I keep wanting to say, nerve endings.
Speaker 1: The central nervous system. UM is separate from the brain. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what they They've learned through studies show that they
Speaker 1: like what may happen is they operate independently. So the
Speaker 1: brain will like send the order out to do something
Speaker 1: and then just kind of take it off at the list,
Speaker 1: and then each arm has its own nervous system and
Speaker 1: it will decide how to accomplish that. Tabs right. Apparently
Speaker 1: three fifths of the nerves in the octopus's body is
Speaker 1: in its arms and its tentacles, and there's eight independent
Speaker 1: nerves systems. Because Chuck tell them how how they figured
Speaker 1: out that arms have their own system is mean. It
Speaker 1: sounds very mean. What they did was they severed the
Speaker 1: nerves and the arms from the other nerves in the
Speaker 1: bodies and brain, and then they tickled it and then
Speaker 1: they found out with some delight. I would imagine that Look,
Speaker 1: they're still ticklish even though their brain doesn't know this
Speaker 1: is going on. So that's how they proved it. And
Speaker 1: these researchers were pretty, I guess a little intrepid because
Speaker 1: the arms are very powerful. It's almost all muscle um,
Speaker 1: and they can since they don't have any bone in them,
Speaker 1: and there's tons of muscle and nerve endings, and they
Speaker 1: can um do just about anything, including go semi rigid
Speaker 1: and bend at a spot like we can bend our arms. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is very They were talking about in here wrestling sharks,
Speaker 1: and if you want to also delight yourself, go to
Speaker 1: YouTube and type in shark battles octopus And this octopus
Speaker 1: is like camouflage and this shark swims by like a
Speaker 1: decent size shark, and all of a sudden, this octopus
Speaker 1: just like leaps and wraps this thing up and and
Speaker 1: the shark cannot get free. Do you see this? Like
Speaker 1: massive strong shark like wrestling, and the octopus will not
Speaker 1: let it free. So you know, octopuses have a feature
Speaker 1: that we're going to get to in a minute, um
Speaker 1: that I find as unsettling as anything, which one the beak.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but first let's talk about the eyes while
Speaker 1: we're on like the basic physiology of it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like our eyes, right, they're they're actually
Speaker 1: better than our eyes. They have eight layers of um
Speaker 1: of films makeup like their corny, I guess, or what
Speaker 1: would be our corny and their couge too, because they
Speaker 1: need to capture more light because it's dark down there.
Speaker 1: But actually, camera manufacturers figured out that they could basically
Speaker 1: replicate an octopus's eye, uh cornea for camera lenses, and
Speaker 1: the actually led to a huge decrease in um the
Speaker 1: cost of cameras. Yeah, because before you had to have
Speaker 1: eight different lenses because lenses blurred, so you had to
Speaker 1: have eight different lenses to to kind of work out
Speaker 1: that blur. But that's all. That's pretty big, big camera.
Speaker 1: And they figured out after replicating octopus eyes that they
Speaker 1: could do it for a lot cheaper. So by bye
Speaker 1: octo lens, No, hello octo lens. They still use eight
Speaker 1: they well know what it's now as an octopus is
Speaker 1: lens octo lens, So it's good bye octo lens, Hello
Speaker 1: octo lens, right exactly. Oh. The other thing too, Josh
Speaker 1: I found remarkable is you always see octopus. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like you know, monkey in their way along the
Speaker 1: bottom very slowly. They can jet like twenty if they
Speaker 1: need to, which is forty kilometers. Bro, that's really fast,
Speaker 1: it is. And and remember we were talking about the siphon.
Speaker 1: That's how they do it. They suck in a bunch
Speaker 1: of water into the mantel, seal it off, and then
Speaker 1: blow it out the siphon and they can angle it
Speaker 1: and steer themselves that way. Right, Yeah, that's crazy. At
Speaker 1: the very least, they can shoot in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: Add up to twenty through water by the way, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is this isn't through the air. No, they don't
Speaker 1: shoot out of the water. Wouldn't that be a weird
Speaker 1: world if you just looked out in the ocean there
Speaker 1: octopis jumping out. I remember the first time I saw
Speaker 1: the shark breach on the Discovery Channel. It was like
Speaker 1: mind blowing for me when the shark leaps from the water,
Speaker 1: completely out of the water, the great white I have
Speaker 1: not seen that. Yeah, it was one of the It
Speaker 1: was one of the like money shots for Planet Earth
Speaker 1: that caught it on like the super slowm camera. It's
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable. So should we talk about where they hang
Speaker 1: out their their life, basically their little solitary octopus life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize that, although now that I learned it,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. Octopuses live um on their own. They
Speaker 1: pretty much only are around other living octopuses when they mate,
Speaker 1: and even that's kind of a letdown. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and they live by themselves in uh den's. Wherever they
Speaker 1: happen to be living right then is called their den.
Speaker 1: And that can be anything from from uh, you know,
Speaker 1: beneath some rocks to an old jar or something that
Speaker 1: made it down to the bottom of the floor of
Speaker 1: the ocean floor if it's a small one obviously, but
Speaker 1: they can squeeze into some pretty right areas because again
Speaker 1: they have no bones. Um. But they change location like
Speaker 1: every couple of weeks, and no one's ever been able
Speaker 1: to figure out why they do that. Yeah, that's for
Speaker 1: some reason that struck me as sad. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just picture like the lonely octopus getting lonely, paranoid
Speaker 1: octopus getting sick of his den and like moving every
Speaker 1: two weeks. But maybe just wants to change the scenery,
Speaker 1: he knows, uh, And octopi generally walk right. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: use their suckers. Everyone knows about the suckers on the
Speaker 1: underside of the arm and they helped to propel it
Speaker 1: a long on the bottom of the ocean. And those
Speaker 1: little suckers are really, really sensitive. They have ten thousand
Speaker 1: neurons apiece. So while they're swimming along and or walking
Speaker 1: along the ocean, they're also like checking things out with
Speaker 1: their suckers, like food and stuff like that, or threats.
Speaker 1: And we should say at this point that we've been talking.
Speaker 1: We probably should have said this at the beginning. But
Speaker 1: if you are an octopus nerd um, we've been talking
Speaker 1: the entire time about the nonfinned octopus insurrate, not the
Speaker 1: much rarer and less discussed and less studied serrate or
Speaker 1: finned octopus. I didn't look up a picture of those
Speaker 1: you know what they look like either. I feel bad
Speaker 1: for those guys because they don't No one ever talks
Speaker 1: about them. Well, they keep to themselves. Yeah, like I'll octopie,
Speaker 1: So chuck. We've gotten to the point now where the
Speaker 1: the most unsettling part of any octopus for me emerges,
Speaker 1: and that is the beak. It's awesome. Octopus is squishy, boneless, uh, muscular,
Speaker 1: little weird things have a beak very similar to a parrot's,
Speaker 1: from the center of the underside of their head where
Speaker 1: all their legs come together. Yeah, it's in the up
Speaker 1: inside the mouth, and they don't have standard teeth per se,
Speaker 1: but they have the beak and they have something called
Speaker 1: a radula, which is a barbed tongue. And so basically
Speaker 1: they'll use the beak to crack a clam open and
Speaker 1: then they'll use the radula to like scrape out the
Speaker 1: meat like a little finger to scoop it out. And
Speaker 1: then the last thing I want you to say, because
Speaker 1: that's that's really awesome the cell very pepia. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like this, um it's a bone. It's it's like
Speaker 1: a tooth covered organ that they can shoot out from
Speaker 1: between the beak, which by the way, is surrounded by lips. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can shoot it out and drill into a shell.
Speaker 1: Like a shell they can't open. They'll just drill into
Speaker 1: it and suck out. Have you seen Starship? Ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you remember the brain worm or the brain but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's based on the brains. Out to remind you of that.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty cool. That they have those just
Speaker 1: those little it's like a little Swiss army knife. They're
Speaker 1: depending on what they want to use or what they
Speaker 1: need to use, they can just like use whatever tool
Speaker 1: that's inside their little mouth. And when they come upon pray,
Speaker 1: most likely what they'll do is they'll wrap their legs.
Speaker 1: They'll catch it like in a net, and then pull
Speaker 1: it close to them and and just envelop it completely
Speaker 1: and just go to town with it on with the
Speaker 1: beak right or one of the other tools. The other
Speaker 1: cool thing too about the salivarry papilla is that or
Speaker 1: papilla is it peppi or papilla papilla, tortilla tropella. Uh,
Speaker 1: they secrete that that thing secretes something that erodes the shell.
Speaker 1: So if it's like a really tough clan to get into,
Speaker 1: while they're drilling in, it secretes this thing that like
Speaker 1: erodes the shell as it's digging in to make it easier.
Speaker 1: It's just another amazing like evolutionary feet to me, How
Speaker 1: did you know octopuses were so interesting to select this article?
Speaker 1: I didn't. I think always thought they were cool looking.
Speaker 1: And I just happened upon the article and read the
Speaker 1: first page and it's like, yeah, this is the male
Speaker 1: pillow octopus. Gotcha, Yeah, we should talk about that. We
Speaker 1: definitely will. We will talk about that guy with reproduction,
Speaker 1: how about that. So first we're gonna talk about being born,
Speaker 1: and that feeding goes directly into that appropriately enough, because
Speaker 1: octopuses are masters at metabolizing food. Actually, an octopus, by
Speaker 1: the time it dies, it will weigh one third of
Speaker 1: all the food it's ever eaten. It puts food to
Speaker 1: the use. That well, yeah, and apparently, um, a young
Speaker 1: octopus grows body weight, increases its body weight five percent daily.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. And they don't know a lot about the
Speaker 1: the little baby octopus, but some of them, they do know,
Speaker 1: will like kind of float near the ser po says, tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny little specs and as they grow, they start to fall.
Speaker 1: And then some of them though, are born uh slightly
Speaker 1: larger like on the sea floor. But they're like they're
Speaker 1: on their own once they're born. That's yeah, once the well,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk of us back it up, reproduction, Chuck,
Speaker 1: how is that little thing born? So tell tell everybody
Speaker 1: about the male pillow octopus. Well, the male pillow octopus
Speaker 1: is uh, one of the cool things about it is
Speaker 1: that it's tiny, tiny, tiny, Um. How big is this thing?
Speaker 1: About a cent a couple of centimeters, a couple of
Speaker 1: centimeters long, weighs less than a graham the trick and
Speaker 1: you think, all right, and that's cool. There are small
Speaker 1: things in the world. I think I've eaten one of those.
Speaker 1: The trick is by accident. Okay, never again. Uh. The
Speaker 1: trick is though they the females of the same species
Speaker 1: are more than six ft long and way a hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: There's forty times the size of the male. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: Jennifer Horton put in a perspective of here, that would
Speaker 1: be like, um, one of us asking out the um, well,
Speaker 1: asking out right? We put that in air quotes a
Speaker 1: woman five times four times, four times as as large
Speaker 1: as the Statue of Liberty. Proportionally, it's a lot of women. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But so you might think, well, how in the world
Speaker 1: would these things mate if this octopus is so much bigger?
Speaker 1: What happens in the case of the male pillow octopuses?
Speaker 1: He will um, he has an arm. All octopuses, and well,
Speaker 1: all octopus have the arm that contain the sperm. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah, it's called the heck toe Cautus hectocotalus,
Speaker 1: and instead of doing what some octopuses do, which is
Speaker 1: to put that with the woman, they will actually break
Speaker 1: it off and just say here, just take this and
Speaker 1: use it whenever you need it. Please don't hurt me.
Speaker 1: And then then then they swim away and die. Well,
Speaker 1: the males actually um die within a couple of months
Speaker 1: after um reproducing once, so they pull off their hectic.
Speaker 1: It's like a naturalization class in here. Hector catillus hectic catillus,
Speaker 1: thank you um, and and giving it to the to
Speaker 1: the female, which she just stores in her mantle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she keeps it until she's ready to have babies basically,
Speaker 1: so then she lays the eggs, takes out the sperm
Speaker 1: arm the little magic wand the hector catillus right um,
Speaker 1: and then basically just spreads it over the eggs to
Speaker 1: fertilize them. Or there are some species of octopi that
Speaker 1: um where the hectic catillus is inserted into the females overduct,
Speaker 1: so there is some sort of sexual act. The traditional
Speaker 1: thing that you think about happened sometimes in before we
Speaker 1: move on from the little guy though, the little pillow
Speaker 1: case guy, I'm sorry the little pillow guy, there's no case.
Speaker 1: He also has been known to rip off the tentacles
Speaker 1: of a man of war and use it as a
Speaker 1: sword to protect himself because he's like build up a
Speaker 1: resistance to the poison. I love this little guy. He's
Speaker 1: like the fiercest little beast in the ocean. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting is he's not supposed to be doing that because
Speaker 1: that's tool use. Yeah, we there was, actually, um, I
Speaker 1: think like a couple of months back, there's a big
Speaker 1: sensation on the internet about an octopus being filmed using
Speaker 1: coconut shell halves as portable, like story portable habitats. I guess,
Speaker 1: so we just carried around then every wants while to
Speaker 1: look around and like get under it. Um, it was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. But animals aren't supposed to use tools right now,
Speaker 1: they're not, but octopie do. Yeah. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: they'll have the little egg hatch and the female will
Speaker 1: die as well after hatching the egg, which is really sad.
Speaker 1: And yes, but she protected the entire time. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: like blows water over it and keeps it nice and clean,
Speaker 1: and she might be she might be caring for these
Speaker 1: eggs for between two to ten months. And she's not
Speaker 1: eating at all. And then yeah, and then once they
Speaker 1: start to hatch, she's out of there. She may not
Speaker 1: she doesn't die quite then, but she's gone. So they're solitary.
Speaker 1: She's aside from the moment when they're mating and the
Speaker 1: moment these eggs hatch, they're on their own, like octopi
Speaker 1: or solitary animals. Well, and not a very good chance
Speaker 1: of survival either, right, don't want of them die? Yeah.
Speaker 1: With the giant Pacific octopus, which can grow up to
Speaker 1: I think six pounds. Um, yeah, they um, they have
Speaker 1: a one percent survival rate for going from hatchling to
Speaker 1: ten millimeters just a ten millimeters. Yeah, tragic. We need
Speaker 1: Sally Struthers in here. What else we got, Oh the
Speaker 1: personality stuff, that's pretty cool. Yeah, well we were talking
Speaker 1: about them, you know, using tools. They're not supposed to
Speaker 1: do that because they're cephalopods, so they're supposed to be stupid.
Speaker 1: They're all, you know, mating and eating and evading. Maybe right,
Speaker 1: but octopi kind of buck that trend um among even cephalopods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they found some that have some can open jars, have
Speaker 1: learned to open jars pretty much outside of their tanks.
Speaker 1: Well that too. They found some that have gotten outside
Speaker 1: their tanks and like gotten into the food bends. And
Speaker 1: then they found some that can open jars, some that
Speaker 1: can work mazes, some that know like to pick a
Speaker 1: red ball over a white ball, some that can call
Speaker 1: the World Cup. Absolutely So. Octopi aren't supposed to have personalities, um,
Speaker 1: but we have come to realize that they largely do
Speaker 1: thanks to the work of a marine biologists named Jennifer Mather, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she and Roland Anderson are two biologists that um kind
Speaker 1: of got the feeling that they might, you know, from
Speaker 1: seeing all these things in these aquariums, that they might
Speaker 1: have a personality. And that's kind of a hard thing
Speaker 1: to test, but they did. It was the other guy's name,
Speaker 1: Roland what Roland Anderson Anderson, He was the one who
Speaker 1: was tending or he worked at the Seattle Aquarium. And
Speaker 1: he found out that the keeper's name three um species
Speaker 1: of animals, I think it was otter seals and um
Speaker 1: their giant pacific octopi. And normally like that, you don't
Speaker 1: you reserve naming an animal based on his personality, And
Speaker 1: since octopuses aren't supposed to have personality wanted to know
Speaker 1: what's going on, so he went and found out, and
Speaker 1: he found that um leisure suit Larry. Apparently this is
Speaker 1: a very um, touchy feely octopus. When the handlers would
Speaker 1: get in it's its tank, he'd just be all over
Speaker 1: im like, hey baby, how's that going? Um? And then
Speaker 1: Emily Dickinson was so shy that she eventually had to
Speaker 1: be replaced because she just high but behind the artificial barrier,
Speaker 1: like would never come out and look just like it too,
Speaker 1: so people didn't even know. And then she wrote poetry
Speaker 1: as well, sad poetry, but good stuff. And then there
Speaker 1: was Lucretia mke Evil, right, and the one destroyed her tank,
Speaker 1: the interior tank, so she was obviously pretty feisty she was,
Speaker 1: and apparently they were afraid to get in there with
Speaker 1: her because again, this giant Pacific octopus, they can grow
Speaker 1: up six hundred pounds, So if you have a mick
Speaker 1: evil one, it's trouble. Well. And once you see this
Speaker 1: video that wrestling a shark, I would be like, I'm
Speaker 1: not going anywhere near that thing, right, So they Anderson
Speaker 1: and Mather decided to come up with some I guess
Speaker 1: some stimuli I think they opened the cage. They put
Speaker 1: a brush into the tank see what they would do,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember. There was another one. UM. And
Speaker 1: then they figured out that these these octopus showed nineteen
Speaker 1: distinct behaviors and they put it into three buckets, right, activity, avoidance,
Speaker 1: and reactivity. So what happened, well, what happened was they
Speaker 1: figured out that these these octopus actually were showing personality,
Speaker 1: like they had person like an octopus would you could
Speaker 1: say this octopus right here, number eighty nine is going
Speaker 1: to do this if we do that, but the octopus
Speaker 1: in the next hank over, we'll do something different. That's
Speaker 1: personality and octopus aren't supposed to have that. They also
Speaker 1: the same group. UM. I kind of looked over the article.
Speaker 1: It's in the February two thousand seven issue of Natural History. Right,
Speaker 1: they found that, UM, a couple of octopuses played and
Speaker 1: they gave him a prescription bottle filled with like half
Speaker 1: filled with water. A couple of Yeah, they really played.
Speaker 1: They got really lethar as We kept that. UM. They
Speaker 1: would play with it like they were bouncing a ball
Speaker 1: in their tank. Yeah, these little guys are awesome. The girls, Uh,
Speaker 1: the other cool thing that they did, the octopuses did
Speaker 1: in these tests was they wanted to see how they
Speaker 1: did with problem solving, and so they like wired clam
Speaker 1: shut so they couldn't because traditionally they'll break the clam
Speaker 1: open and scoop it out. And they wanted to see
Speaker 1: if the octopus would just be like, I'll just need
Speaker 1: something else. I can't get into this one right. No. Now,
Speaker 1: what these things did was they said, Okay, I'll get
Speaker 1: up my drill and even though this is not how
Speaker 1: we get into clams, I'm gonna drill into this clam.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but after a few tries, they
Speaker 1: figured out the best point at the clam to drill
Speaker 1: in to get the best meat, like right there in
Speaker 1: the center. They figured all this out. Unbelievable. They're very smart,
Speaker 1: very smart. You could play cards with an octopus. There's
Speaker 1: been octopus gangsters before. Oh yeah, so they're very smart. Sure.
Speaker 1: I mean you have to have an organized brain, an
Speaker 1: organized mind to participate in organized crime, I would think, so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone found this as fascinating as I did.
Speaker 1: I hope so too. All they have to do is
Speaker 1: go and type in octopus, changed color and there's just
Speaker 1: like scores and scores of videos, and you can also
Speaker 1: read this very comprehensive article that was exciting how octopuses work. Remember,
Speaker 1: you can say octopuses octopi. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I think everybody should walk around and call them octopuses
Speaker 1: when they're corrected. You could like, no, jerk, you can
Speaker 1: say octopi octopuses. Can't we all get along? And I
Speaker 1: found out because these other two jerks told me, right
Speaker 1: because they some jerk wrote an article, and they'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: you're a jerk for listening to those two jerks, and
Speaker 1: it'll just go downhill from there. I wonder what the
Speaker 1: octopus's garden is. You know that Beatles song that Ringo sang. No,
Speaker 1: of course you done. Uh, yeah, I'd like to be
Speaker 1: under the sea in an octopus's garden, I guess. Oh,
Speaker 1: is that the name of that song? Yeah? I thought
Speaker 1: that was from the Little Mermaid soundtrack that's under the sea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a different song you just said. Oh. Well, if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about the octopuses, or the
Speaker 1: Beatles or the Little Mermaid, I'm pretty sure you could
Speaker 1: find something about all three of them on our site.
Speaker 1: Just use the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And now it is time for listener mail. Yes, Josh
Speaker 1: Andy and Houston says this, Hey guys, huge fan. After
Speaker 1: listening to your customs podcast about bringing items from embargoed countries,
Speaker 1: took me back to some stuff if I did in college.
Speaker 1: During the Columbus day break in my freshman year at
Speaker 1: Clarkson University, twenty miles from the U S Canadian border,
Speaker 1: Buddy and myself decided to go to Montreal for the day.
Speaker 1: Once we got there, we bummed around the city and
Speaker 1: bought some Cuban cigars, which is I guess what you
Speaker 1: do in Montreal. We decided that if we'd wait until
Speaker 1: we got back to campus too, and we decided that
Speaker 1: we'd wait to get back to campus to enjoy them.
Speaker 1: We pulled off the bands and figured we'd be just fine.
Speaker 1: We got to the border and the officers asked us
Speaker 1: why we were in Canada for six hours, and we
Speaker 1: just said tourism. We were then instructed to pull into
Speaker 1: a garage so we could get searched. I guess two
Speaker 1: college kids hanging out in Montreal. Returning relatively soon through
Speaker 1: the red flag, we were told to exit the car
Speaker 1: so the dogs could check it out. We were brought
Speaker 1: inside and asked if we had any illegal substances, which
Speaker 1: we quickly handed over the cigars and were terrified. They
Speaker 1: said we could be charged with willingly smuggling illegal items.
Speaker 1: Uh and since they pulled the bands off, that could
Speaker 1: have charged them with altering illegally altering material with the
Speaker 1: intent of bringing it into the USA, which is exactly
Speaker 1: what they did. And uh, he said. In the end,
Speaker 1: they let him off with a warning and his Buddies
Speaker 1: cup holder is still broken to this day from the
Speaker 1: car search. We were so angry at customs that we
Speaker 1: decided to spite America by blasting Rush the whole way home.
Speaker 1: It seemed funny at the time, so I guess they
Speaker 1: blasted Spirit of Radio and said Bill smoke something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's Andy and Houston think in Houston, Houston, Texas. That
Speaker 1: is what he said. But he went to school twenty
Speaker 1: miles from the Canadian border, a little shady. If you
Speaker 1: asked me, I wonder he's thrown up red flags talk
Speaker 1: about climate change. Oh well, if you want to shame
Speaker 1: me for that terrible pun, or you have a story
Speaker 1: you want to share with us. You've got anything. Let's
Speaker 1: plug Atlanta first, Okay, yeah, go ahead. We are having
Speaker 1: our Atlanta All Star Trivia event, which is hopefully going
Speaker 1: to kick off a nationwide tour. And it is going
Speaker 1: to be October that the Five Seasons Brewery West Side.
Speaker 1: Sometime in the evening. We'll get a time stamp soon.
Speaker 1: Just show up some time after six po Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say it probably right in there. And should we
Speaker 1: announce our special guests? I think we can now sure? Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: we got some three. We got three people verified. We're
Speaker 1: very excited about. So go ahead. We've got John Hodgeman.
Speaker 1: John Hodgman is coming to Atlanta just to play. He's
Speaker 1: not just going down the block like New York. He's
Speaker 1: coming down to Atlanta to play with us. Also from Brooklyn, uh,
Speaker 1: the esteem Joe Randazzo, who is the editor of the
Speaker 1: Fine Fine Onion newspaper, Yes, America's finest news source. Joe
Speaker 1: and John are both coming down. And then as of yesterday,
Speaker 1: we landed local legend Dave Willis, who is the co
Speaker 1: creator of Aquitine, Hunger Force and Squidbillies on the Cartoon
Speaker 1: Network's Adult Swim Absolutely and we are super super psyched
Speaker 1: that Dave is joining us and we're working on a
Speaker 1: couple of other people. But if no one else shows
Speaker 1: up to me, that's like, that's a stud team right now,
Speaker 1: that is a stud team. We'll see if we can
Speaker 1: beat everybody. I don't even care about that. I'm just
Speaker 1: excited to get those people together. I'm gonna keep my
Speaker 1: mouth shut about Ohio Virginia presidents. Okay, okay, we missed
Speaker 1: that one. So if you want to come play trivia
Speaker 1: with us and Hodgeman and Ran Dazon Willis, Um, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be hanging out Five Seasons Brewery on Wednesday, Oct It,
Speaker 1: and just send us an email about whatever you want.
Speaker 1: How about that? Use your creativity. We have no thesis
Speaker 1: for you today. Um, just wrap it up, spank it
Speaker 1: on the bottom, and send it to stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
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