Speaker 1: Octopuses known for being wiggly, famous for being eight wiggles, specifically,
Speaker 1: nobody thinks much about them. So let's have some fun.
Speaker 1: Let's find out why octopuses are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey
Speaker 1: they're folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode of
Speaker 1: podcast All about why being Alive is more interesting than
Speaker 1: people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and
Speaker 1: I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co host, Katie Golden. Katie,
Speaker 1: what is your relationship to or opinion of octopuses?
Speaker 2: I love them. I love them one of my favorite animals.
Speaker 1: I take your time to think about it. I know,
Speaker 1: I know it's difficult to figure out how you feel.
Speaker 2: I love them. I love octopuses so much they are Yes,
Speaker 2: I really think they are one of my favorite animals.
Speaker 2: They're just so weird, so different from us, and yet
Speaker 2: so cute and cuddly except for some of them, which
Speaker 2: shouldn't touch because you'll die. But other than that, very
Speaker 2: cute and cuddly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're really cool and generally they don't set off
Speaker 1: my phobia of sea creatures oddly. Oh good, even though
Speaker 1: they're pretty wiggly, like especially the biggest ones like the
Speaker 1: giant Pacific octopus. It just seems like a megafauna in
Speaker 1: a way where that doesn't bug me. Basically, all the
Speaker 1: huge sea creatures except maybe giant squids. I know that
Speaker 1: sounds similar, but basically all the huge sea creatures don't
Speaker 1: really bug me very much.
Speaker 2: Ah, you don't like a giant squid. It's they're huge eyeballs,
Speaker 2: isn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 1: That, and I feel like two of the tentacles are
Speaker 1: just too long, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like there's smaller ones, and then there's two that are
Speaker 1: just way out there twice as long, like NBA player
Speaker 1: arms or something, but in a bad way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are ship grabbing r.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like it feels like I'm gonna lose
Speaker 1: my crew. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I do like octopuses more than I like squid. I
Speaker 2: like squids as well, but octopuses they hold a special
Speaker 2: place in my heart. They're cute, they're smart. They are
Speaker 2: just kind of spluty, which I like. I like a
Speaker 2: good splooty animal. Technically, a splute is sort of what
Speaker 2: a squirrel or animal does when they like flatten out
Speaker 2: on the pavement to kind of cool off. So it's
Speaker 2: a kind of pancaking motion a splute. So an animal
Speaker 2: to me that is somewhat gelatinous in either behavior or
Speaker 2: actual physiology and just sort of splutes out when you
Speaker 2: PLoP it on something. To me, that's a spluty animal.
Speaker 2: Something like a a cat is a spluty animal, But
Speaker 2: so is an octopus because it just kind of it
Speaker 2: pank it flattens that it pancakes out. A long time ago,
Speaker 2: I talked to Professor David Shiel, who's a professor of
Speaker 2: marine biology at Alaska Pacific University, and he kept an
Speaker 2: octopus in his living room for I think pretty much
Speaker 2: the octopus's entire lifespan like about a year, and just
Speaker 2: interacted with it daily, made friends with it and observed it.
Speaker 2: And it was really interesting because it would do things
Speaker 2: like play around. It seemed to do things like dream
Speaker 2: because it would change color while it was sleeping into
Speaker 2: sort of these patterns that are typically associated with hunting.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I would love to befriend and octopus, but
Speaker 2: their lifespans are a little bit short, so it'd be
Speaker 2: kind of heartbreaking. It'd be like getting a dog and
Speaker 2: having it only last a year. Just heartrending.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that oddly leads us into the numbers
Speaker 1: for this topic. Numbers and by the way, thank you
Speaker 1: to Gannick ganame on the discord. Also to Jason Stash
Speaker 1: and other folks too for selecting this topic as you
Speaker 1: know supporters.
Speaker 2: Sorry, that's like an action figure name like Jason Stash. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be in Fast and Furious two thousand.
Speaker 1: See. That's why if you join the discord, you get
Speaker 1: to give yourself a Lance Armstrong style name. Even though
Speaker 1: that's a real guy. I just always think he has
Speaker 1: a superhero name. Oddly, but yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: The thing with Lance Armstrong is shouldn't be Lance leg Strong.
Speaker 2: Thank you, I'm here all week. All right, numbers, Alex,
Speaker 2: let's get get into them. Stop distracting us.
Speaker 1: So every episode, our first fastening thing about the topic
Speaker 1: is a quick set of fastening numbers and statistics. This
Speaker 1: week that's in a segment called I Like to be
Speaker 1: statistically on an octave plus fact podcast with you.
Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was submitted by Cleo Mancer teed it up for this.
Speaker 1: Thank you Cleo Mancer having a name for this every week.
Speaker 1: Please make a missillion making bed as possible. Submit through
Speaker 1: that discord where Jason Stash hangs out or to sippod
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. The first number here is about
Speaker 1: five years, because about five years is the usual total
Speaker 1: lifespan of the giant Pacific species of octopus, and that's
Speaker 1: one of the longest octopus life spans in the world.
Speaker 1: As Katie was saying, these animals don't live a super
Speaker 1: long time, even though they're very intelligent, very advanced as
Speaker 1: an animal, and often very large.
Speaker 2: It's so sad. I just you know, like, there is
Speaker 2: that other documentary called My Octopus Teacher, and it's I
Speaker 2: definitely recommend it. It's documentary, lovely film about a man
Speaker 2: in an octopus. But yeah, it is one of those
Speaker 2: things where it's it's very sad to us humans, I
Speaker 2: think because we put a lot of stock in a
Speaker 2: long lifespan, because you know, the idea of not having
Speaker 2: a future or only living five years is very sad.
Speaker 2: I wonder though, if that is too much of a
Speaker 2: human perspective, like it octopus maybe doesn't have any concept
Speaker 2: of longevity of tomorrow, so it's just kind of vibeing
Speaker 2: in the moment and enjoying itself and uh yeah, so
Speaker 2: I don't know, I mean, are we going to get
Speaker 2: into one of the interesting reasons why their live spans
Speaker 2: are so short.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have one here also, as always, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you here, Katie, but especially for animal episodes. You
Speaker 1: know so much. It's great and octopus. It seems like
Speaker 1: with many octopus species they just sort of opt to
Speaker 1: pass away after reproducing. One source this week is the
Speaker 1: book The Soul of an Octopus by naturalist and writer
Speaker 1: Si Montgomery, and she describes how in many species, the
Speaker 1: female octopus just sort of dedicates the rest of their
Speaker 1: life to tending and hatching eggs mm hm, because these
Speaker 1: are mollusks that lay eggs. But the male also will
Speaker 1: sort of just consider its life complete after mating. The
Speaker 1: female will consider its life pretty complete. After the eggs hatch,
Speaker 1: they'll both enter what's usually called senescence, which is a
Speaker 1: life stage where they stop feeding and maintaining themselves, and
Speaker 1: their reproductive hormone can also deactivate their bodies digestion. Another
Speaker 1: number this week is more than three hundred species. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of different kinds of octopus, but a lot
Speaker 1: of them just sort of stop living after they have
Speaker 1: completed their evolutionary reproductive task. They say, okay, camel set.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's simil paris, which means when you reproduce once
Speaker 2: and you die. And a lot of species of animals
Speaker 2: do this. What's interesting about the female octopuses, Yes, for
Speaker 2: so many species, she devotes so much of her energy
Speaker 2: into caretaking for her offspring, which while she's alive, there
Speaker 2: generally speaking, like egg sacs full of like little embryonic octopuses,
Speaker 2: and she'll do things like she gives up on eating
Speaker 2: and she just guards them and maintains a constant water
Speaker 2: flow over them because a flow of water is important
Speaker 2: to oxygenate the eggs, and she will pretty much just
Speaker 2: start to die at that point because, like you said,
Speaker 2: she's not eating, her hormones are kind of causing this senescence.
Speaker 2: Researchers were able to increase the female's lifespan by doing
Speaker 2: a surgery where they went into the brain. And the
Speaker 2: brain is kind of interesting in the octopus because it's
Speaker 2: we might talk about this more later, but it's not
Speaker 2: as central as a human brain is, where it's like
Speaker 2: kind of the tentacles even contain a lot of sort
Speaker 2: of neural matter in it, but they essentially turned off
Speaker 2: a gland that produces this reproductive hormone, and so when
Speaker 2: the female then would because like even if females don't
Speaker 2: breed necessarily, they still have this like short life span.
Speaker 2: But when they surgically turned off that hormone, even after
Speaker 2: the female laid eggs, it ignored the eggs completely and
Speaker 2: kept eating and kept living. So, man, I don't know
Speaker 2: if they've ever done a study to see how long
Speaker 2: the female can live in that circumstance, but they've at
Speaker 2: least established that it will continue eating and it can
Speaker 2: increase its sort of lifespan after that. What's interesting is
Speaker 2: that in theory, the male could continue living right, but
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, perhaps just due to the way in
Speaker 2: which octopuses develop, you know, the male has a similarly
Speaker 2: short lifespan as the female, and it ends up working
Speaker 2: out in terms of the species maintaining a healthy population size.
Speaker 1: That's just astounding. I feel like if you could talk
Speaker 1: to an octopus as that scientist who turned off that land,
Speaker 1: you would be like, I've essentially discovered immortality for you,
Speaker 1: Like your body will wear out eventually, but what you
Speaker 1: thought was the end of your life span, No, you
Speaker 1: could live kind of forever by your standards. But what they.
Speaker 2: Wanted, Like, that's the thing is, you know, is it
Speaker 2: would it be more fulfilling for an octopus to live
Speaker 2: out its short life doing all the things an octopus
Speaker 2: does and caring for its young and reproducing, or would
Speaker 2: it prefer a long life? But in terms of that
Speaker 2: long life, it has no interest in taking care of
Speaker 2: its offspring. So it's an interesting thing. We can't ask
Speaker 2: an octopus what it wants though, until we learn octopus
Speaker 2: sign language, which requires more arms than we have.
Speaker 1: You just have to sign really fast, use your legs.
Speaker 1: Our greatest soccer players will be recruited for the Octopus
Speaker 1: Language project.
Speaker 2: I just think of that squid Word episode where he's
Speaker 2: doing interpretive dancing and all his tentacles are wiggling. I
Speaker 2: know you have recently started getting into Spongebobs, so those.
Speaker 1: Big news folks, I have not two episodes into SpongeBob SquarePants,
Speaker 1: and it's it turns out it might be the best
Speaker 1: show ever made. Very exciting. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2: It all started when I was like, Alex, have you
Speaker 2: heard of this square yellow man? He's very funny.
Speaker 1: I don't know, he'd better live in a pineapple under
Speaker 1: the sea. Otherwise I'm not interested. Also, it just turns
Speaker 1: out canonically squid Word is an octopus, not a squid.
Speaker 1: Is he From interviews with Stephen Hillenberg, Apparently it's more
Speaker 1: fun to draw like an octopus bulbous head. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: if you look at like the show Bible or whatever
Speaker 1: of SpongeBob, squid Word is an octopus.
Speaker 2: But he's kind of the cross between an octopus and
Speaker 2: a squid because he's got a couple of squid tentacles,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of the long tentacles with the diamond
Speaker 2: shaped ends is something that you'll see in a squid,
Speaker 2: but not an octopus, whereas the rest of its tentacles,
Speaker 2: I guess there're someone octopus like. So he's the unholy
Speaker 2: mix between an octopus and a squid.
Speaker 1: That's why he's so mad. Both societies have rejected him.
Speaker 1: These octopuses. The whole show could just be how they
Speaker 1: think and how we try to understand how they think.
Speaker 1: It's honestly, this happened with a few topics on the
Speaker 1: show before. Is this topic too interesting on its face? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: octopuses are very popular, very cool, and this is such
Speaker 1: an enormous and vast topic just the thinking could be
Speaker 1: the whole show. We'll talk about that and a bunch
Speaker 1: of mother stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they are amazing creatures, I think, especially
Speaker 2: when you consider that they have evolved a brain and
Speaker 2: cognition and eyes and all these things pretty much independently,
Speaker 2: like parallel to our own development of a brain and eyes.
Speaker 2: Because when our last common ancestor between like mammals and
Speaker 2: octopuses and other fish was I think this little flatworm.
Speaker 2: It's sort of a nematoade like flatworm that was just
Speaker 2: very simple. It maybe had an eye spot, like a
Speaker 2: couple of photosensitive cells, but in like a few nerves,
Speaker 2: not really a brain. So all of these things like
Speaker 2: eyes and brain involved completely parallel to our own development,
Speaker 2: and so it's really fascinating that they exist in such
Speaker 2: complexity at all.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, there's another number for that, which is five hundred
Speaker 1: million years ago, because that's the minimum amount of time
Speaker 1: ago when we diverged from octopuses evolutionarily octopuses in humans. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it was that thing. And I know all millions
Speaker 1: of years evolution numbers just see them giant and hard
Speaker 1: to follow it all. But for context, the extinction event
Speaker 1: that killed the dinosaurs was about sixty five million years ago.
Speaker 1: Five hundred million years ago is shortly after what's called
Speaker 1: the cam And explosion, where life on Earth rapidly diversified,
Speaker 1: So we're about as far away from octopuses as we
Speaker 1: can be in terms of life evolution. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: also partly think they found this number by finding a
Speaker 1: similarity between human serotonin receptors and octopus serotonin receptors. And
Speaker 1: one study that helped find this was scientists taking two
Speaker 1: octopuses and dosing them with MDMA, which is a drug
Speaker 1: nicknamed ecstasy by the cool kids.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine an octopus at a rave, just tinnagles
Speaker 2: going everywhere, flopping around.
Speaker 1: We kind of don't have to imagine that. This study
Speaker 1: it was JOHNS Hopkins University and Woodshole Oceanographic Institute, so
Speaker 1: two very distinguished organizations. But they took two octopuses and
Speaker 1: gave them each a Star Wars action figure. And then
Speaker 1: octopuses are also not very social with each other in
Speaker 1: a way we'll talk about more later, Like they don't
Speaker 1: really live in groups very much or want to see
Speaker 1: each other. Right, So they had these two octopuses, each
Speaker 1: with their own action figure. They mostly played with their
Speaker 1: action figure, and then when dosed with MDMA, the octopuses
Speaker 1: got quote cozy with its pal wow and like kind
Speaker 1: of cuddle a bit of stuff.
Speaker 2: That's interesting because, like I've heard this about MDMA and
Speaker 2: other sort of psychedelics in humans, where someone who's maybe
Speaker 2: a bigot or maybe sort of more buttoned up will
Speaker 2: take it and being like, well, I just want to
Speaker 2: love my fellow man. Man, I'm not saying that's exactly
Speaker 2: the same thing that's happening with these octopuses, but that
Speaker 2: there's some kind of neural expansion happening for the octopus
Speaker 2: that is making it behaviorally act in a way that
Speaker 2: is not, you know, typical, Like in nature, they will
Speaker 2: occasionally interact with each other, but they just it's not
Speaker 2: they're not a social species.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And another one of these huge differences. The next
Speaker 1: number is nine, because that's the number of clusters of
Speaker 1: neurons and the bodies of some octopuses, like Katie, as
Speaker 1: you were saying, they have a distributed brain more or less, yes,
Speaker 1: And that's takeaway number one. In some octopus species, consciousness
Speaker 1: might be spread across the equivalent of nine brains, which
Speaker 1: is one central brain and then a brain in each arm,
Speaker 1: each of the eight arms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the arms almost move and act like individual organisms,
Speaker 2: which is really weird. I mean, it'd be like having
Speaker 2: sort of brains in your arms and your fingers just
Speaker 2: kind of doing stuff and then reporting their behaviors back
Speaker 2: to your brain to some extent, Right, we have a
Speaker 2: cent nervous system, and we have a brain, but we
Speaker 2: do actually have some distribution of brain activity throughout the body.
Speaker 2: We have, you know, the spinal cord. We have actually
Speaker 2: a lot of feedback between our gut and our brain.
Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons that like you can get
Speaker 2: a tummy ache when you're anxious, or if you're getting
Speaker 2: a stomach ache, you can get anxious. So that's kind
Speaker 2: of this like feedback loop. Like you eat something a
Speaker 2: little off, you can feel a little more anxious, or
Speaker 2: if you're anxious, that can actually cause the stomach ache.
Speaker 2: You have kind of a gut brain, which is weird,
Speaker 2: and you have a lot of like sensory information that's
Speaker 2: coming from the rest of your body. Obviously, it's just
Speaker 2: not to the extent that octopuses probably experienced because octopuses
Speaker 2: have so much activity in their tentacles compared to say,
Speaker 2: like the distribution of neural activity and say a human body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's occasionally enter headlines that claim octopuses or quote
Speaker 1: unquote aliens, and it usually just means this very different evolution,
Speaker 1: including having clusters of neurons that are brain like or
Speaker 1: fully brains in each of their arms. That's just not
Speaker 1: what we do as a different species humans. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: those those giant Pacific octopuses, the biggest kind, have about
Speaker 1: five hundred million neurons, but it's spread across their body.
Speaker 1: There are various studies of how this works. One found
Speaker 1: that octopuses can do what they call arm up decision making,
Speaker 1: where the arm senses something before the central brain and
Speaker 1: initiates a motor response without consulting with the central brain.
Speaker 3: Right, and arm.
Speaker 1: Up is the opposite of what we call brain down
Speaker 1: with humans and many of our other bodies up here
Speaker 1: on land and in the sea, where there's just one
Speaker 1: brain and related functions that are still at least somewhat
Speaker 1: tied to one brain is kind of our structure and plan.
Speaker 1: There's also there's a twenty twenty two study from the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago. They looked at another active with species
Speaker 1: and found that it's arm neurons linked to each other
Speaker 1: through intramuscular nerve cords, which also suggests that the arm
Speaker 1: neurons could connect to each other somewhat without necessarily going
Speaker 1: through the central brain, Like there might even be some
Speaker 1: ability to bypass it as needed, and this might just
Speaker 1: be sort of more of an interconnected web than the
Speaker 1: top down thing we're used.
Speaker 2: To, which is amazing because when we think about our brain,
Speaker 2: like we do a lot of things with our bodies
Speaker 2: that feel like we're not thinking about right, But that's
Speaker 2: just because we're not consciously aware of thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Like when we're walking moving something, you're not really thinking
Speaker 2: like now I move this leg and now I move
Speaker 2: that leg. But that's just sort of your conscious experience.
Speaker 2: Like you know, you have this feedback between your brain
Speaker 2: and your leg muscles and your nerves. There's even sort
Speaker 2: of this proprioception, like these cells that communicate position in
Speaker 2: space to your brain. Wow, even if you're not consciously
Speaker 2: aware of it, your brain is still doing the work.
Speaker 2: And octopuses, it sounds like a lot of this stuff
Speaker 2: doesn't actually need to go to their central brain. It
Speaker 2: is just being processed in these sort of dispersed brains
Speaker 2: throughout its body, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that could be the whole one hundred puckcasts.
Speaker 1: That could be the whole thing. Like, how do they think?
Speaker 1: How do they feel? Do they feel like they have
Speaker 1: nine identities? Yet another number here is three, because it
Speaker 1: turns out octopuses have three hearts. New Scientist magazine says
Speaker 1: that there are two peripheral hearts that pump the octopus's
Speaker 1: blood past their gills to pick up oxygen from water
Speaker 1: through the gills, and then there's a third central heart
Speaker 1: to circulate that oxygenated blood. So not only do they
Speaker 1: not have brains structured the way we do, they also
Speaker 1: don't have hearts structured the way we do. So either
Speaker 1: the literal or figurative version of thinking and having a self,
Speaker 1: octopuses just do it differently. It's a whole different setup.
Speaker 1: It's why that internet headline framing you see sometimes of
Speaker 1: aliens is like a little bit fair, because that's different. Man,
Speaker 1: that's not from the earth where you ste up here
Speaker 1: on the land.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I feel like that is an app thing.
Speaker 2: I think I've even said that on my podcast that
Speaker 2: if you want to know like the closest intelligent life
Speaker 2: form we have on Earth that is kind of like
Speaker 2: an alien I think would be an octopus because it's
Speaker 2: very distant from us evolutionarily and it's smart. So like,
Speaker 2: there are plenty of things that are extremely far from
Speaker 2: us in terms of evolution, but are maybe a bacteria,
Speaker 2: so they're not necessarily intelligent. But an octopus is intelligent,
Speaker 2: it's complex, and it developed these things almost entirely into
Speaker 2: evolutionary path which is really really interesting, and it's one
Speaker 2: of the pieces of evidence that I use sort of
Speaker 2: to argue that if there are planets that could support life,
Speaker 2: and you have the necessary ingredients for life, I think
Speaker 2: the chance that some form of intelligent life like an
Speaker 2: octopus developing eyes pretty pretty good.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, I guess that on crabs, right,
Speaker 1: there's the Earth evolution thing where stuff is crab shaped
Speaker 1: over time.
Speaker 2: Crabs, crabs, crabs, crabs of crabs. Yes, Nature loves the
Speaker 2: shape of a crab, and things keep independently or in
Speaker 2: parallel evolution evolving to be crab shaped, from spiders to
Speaker 2: various crustacean species, various arthropods. Someday humans, maybe we're going
Speaker 2: to go crab.
Speaker 1: This is This is also why SpongeBob is such a
Speaker 1: rich text, because the krusty krabs owner and first employee
Speaker 1: are the two most effective shapes of being right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool, that's a good business choice.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Scott, I can hear the scuttle of mister
Speaker 2: crabs right now, just in a loop in my little
Speaker 2: length going and they have that like scuttling soundtrack. I
Speaker 2: thought I'd never have to remember that again, but thank you, Alex.
Speaker 2: Now now it's stuck in my head.
Speaker 1: These next couple numbers are about terminology stuff. Ooh, because
Speaker 1: it turns out there's two interesting things here with that
Speaker 1: and with how humans speaking English talk about them. One
Speaker 1: is that we'll probably use tentacles and arms pretty interchangeably
Speaker 1: about octopuses. But I think arms is the less famous
Speaker 1: name for these eight limbs that octopuses have. Yes, apparently,
Speaker 1: tentacles are usually a longer, thinner limb with suckers only
Speaker 1: near the end, and arms are the term for what
Speaker 1: octopus limbs are, which are shorter and stronger and suckers
Speaker 1: on most of the length of it. So a lot
Speaker 1: of like scientists and others will call them arms.
Speaker 2: Turns out yeah, because like squid have both arms and tentacles, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the ones I don't like are the tentacles,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why squidword is a cross between an
Speaker 2: octopus and a squid, because he's got a pair of
Speaker 2: tentacles as well as arms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's usually depicted with six limbs, so you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot going on there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Whereas octopuses, as their name implies, have eight arms.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the other terminology thing, because
Speaker 1: the number for that is four, and four is the
Speaker 1: number of different ways that modern English speakers say the
Speaker 1: plural form of the word octopus. And as folks have heard,
Speaker 1: I've pretty much stuck to octopuses.
Speaker 2: That's me what I say, too good.
Speaker 1: You know, you and me are great. And then there
Speaker 1: are some people on the internet.
Speaker 2: Word objectively the best saying octopuses.
Speaker 1: It turns out, like as I was looking in this
Speaker 1: topic learning about it, some people on the Internet are
Speaker 1: militant about how to say the plural form of the
Speaker 1: word octopus. And I don't want to emphasize how much
Speaker 1: we should all be nice to each other with a
Speaker 1: miniature takeaway number Two, do not let anybody be weird
Speaker 1: at you about your plural form of the word octopus,
Speaker 1: because everybody's drawing on some kind of Latin or Greek
Speaker 1: and putting it into English the best they can. There
Speaker 1: are four common ways people say it, and they're all
Speaker 1: at least a little bit valid, like they're all kind
Speaker 1: of drawing on a language thing. But the four ways
Speaker 1: you hear are octopuses, which we've been using, also octopi,
Speaker 1: and then two pronunciations of a word, either octopodes or octopities,
Speaker 1: depending on how they get to it.
Speaker 2: Octopities is one I have not heard. I've heard octopodes,
Speaker 2: but topitys is that sounds like a Greek hero who
Speaker 2: has eight arms and punches Zeus with all of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should go right that later. It's awesome. But
Speaker 1: the reason there are so many ways English speakers say
Speaker 1: this plural is a weird mechanism with how the ancient
Speaker 1: Greek language also got adapted into Latin, and then how
Speaker 1: both of those got adapted into English. But all of
Speaker 1: it comes from an ancient compound word for eight foot.
Speaker 1: I know we're calling them arms and tentacles, but the
Speaker 1: ancient word called them feet. Oh, there's an animal with
Speaker 1: eight feet. That's where we get the word octopus.
Speaker 2: It's also where we get the word millipedes, right, because
Speaker 2: that's a thousand.
Speaker 1: Feet Yeah right, Yeah, it's these very similar connections between
Speaker 1: these two wiggly animals in our language.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wiggly and squiggly. I used to not like millipedes
Speaker 2: because we had a lot of them in our backyard
Speaker 2: when I was growing up, and like, i'd feel a
Speaker 2: tickle on my leg and I'd look down and the
Speaker 2: marching of many little feats going up my leg, and
Speaker 2: I wasn't a huge fan of that. That upset me.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't live in a millipede region. I
Speaker 1: guess I'd never had that experience, since it would probably
Speaker 1: leave me with some stuff. Yeah, I like them.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I want them on me.
Speaker 1: Linco in a bunch of sources Merriam Webster's Dictionarydictionary, dot Com,
Speaker 1: the Ocean Conservancy, and some more about just how this
Speaker 1: word works. Octopus Octopus is a Latinized form of the
Speaker 1: Greek words for eight and for foot put together in
Speaker 1: a compound word. And so then what people speaking English
Speaker 1: have done is either used the usual way we translate
Speaker 1: Latin words, or the usual way we translate Greek words,
Speaker 1: or the usual way we translate Latinized Greek words. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so, so that's why there's many plurals hanging out,
Speaker 1: And in most cases latinized forms of Greek words get
Speaker 1: pluralized with an es ending, which would be octopuses. And
Speaker 1: that's why I have opted for that one out of
Speaker 1: all the options, but an i ending is often used
Speaker 1: for Latin words. Also, apparently, octopi is the earliest printed
Speaker 1: version in English. Merriam Webster says that there's early eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds examples of octopi and writing and then either octopodes
Speaker 1: or octopities, which are spelled the same. That is probably
Speaker 1: coming from English speakers trying to be overly correct about
Speaker 1: adapting Greek and kind of skipping the Latin part. So
Speaker 1: you know, all of these are broadly fine, especially because
Speaker 1: everybody knows what you're talking about whichever one you use,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I celebrate anyone who has a
Speaker 1: huge passion for one of these specifically, but you can
Speaker 1: let it go when other people use the other ones.
Speaker 1: It's fine. They're all just not me.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm team octopuses, and I'm going to die on
Speaker 2: that hill.
Speaker 1: What if I'm saying all this be cool stuff as
Speaker 1: a trick so we can spring a surprise attack on
Speaker 1: the octopi people like they let their card down, you know,
Speaker 1: we strike it down, and then everyone waves eight weapons.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's much like an octopus's arms,
Speaker 2: just kind of coming in from the side, like a
Speaker 2: pincer movement. Oh, we're back to crabs.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's.
Speaker 2: Everything is crabs.
Speaker 1: That's the gist of this, especially internet thing about plurals.
Speaker 1: This is also oddly one of my favorite stories about
Speaker 1: English being a living language. Right, the language we are
Speaker 1: speaking taping this podcast a language. You probably understand English
Speaker 1: is a living language. If people use a word a lot,
Speaker 1: it pretty much just becomes part of English. There's no
Speaker 1: quote unquote right or wrong when it comes to the language.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite linguists is McCullough, who hosts the
Speaker 1: podcast Enthusiasm and has written extensively about modern and Internet English.
Speaker 1: She says, quote, I think that it can come as
Speaker 1: a tremendous relief to realize that you don't have to
Speaker 1: be angry about language. You don't have to be annoyed
Speaker 1: about people doing something different from you. End quote. Yes,
Speaker 1: and also it turns out the ancient world is just
Speaker 1: amazingly connected to octopuses. You know, the ancient world gave
Speaker 1: us these words. But I'm also going to link a
Speaker 1: digital resource from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, because
Speaker 1: they obtained a large jar made by the Mycenaean civilization
Speaker 1: on the modern island of Crete. It's a jar next
Speaker 1: number nearly three thousand, five hundred years old, three thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred year old jar with amazing octopus art on it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it speaks to how long humans have been
Speaker 1: connected to these animals that are usually deep under the
Speaker 1: ocean and being weird, we've still met them and been
Speaker 1: fascinated by them.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at the jar and it's a typical jar,
Speaker 2: but the octopus art is adorable. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: some very very cute species of octopuses. One of the cutest,
Speaker 2: the blue ring octopus, is something you absolutely don't want
Speaker 2: to touch because it'll kill you dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're weirdly incredibly deadly, those guys. There's even a
Speaker 1: number here, more than one thousand times because the blue
Speaker 1: ring octopus has saliva that is more than one thousand
Speaker 1: times more toxic than a similar quantity of cyanide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so look out, don't let them bite you.
Speaker 2: Look out. The thing that makes my butt pucker. The
Speaker 2: most seeing on the internet is someone taking a photo
Speaker 2: of them holding a blue ring octopus because they think
Speaker 2: it looks cool. And they do look very cool. They're
Speaker 2: bright yellow with these blue rings. They're very very pretty,
Speaker 2: and they're little, so they seem harmless, right, like they
Speaker 2: fit in the palm of your hand. But yeah, it
Speaker 2: if it bites you, I don't know, man, I think
Speaker 2: that's it. I think it's very hard to get you
Speaker 2: to the hospital on time. Basically, the treatment for it,
Speaker 2: as far as I know, is just like replace your fluids,
Speaker 2: try to keep you alive. There's not really an anti
Speaker 2: toxin that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1: That's right, And it turns out people often get good care.
Speaker 1: But it seems like also there are probably unrecorded deaths
Speaker 1: from this because according to Newsweek, another number here is three. Allegedly,
Speaker 1: there are three confirmed human deaths due to the blue
Speaker 1: ringed octopus's toxin. But there's no anti venom or anti toxin.
Speaker 1: There's just keeping an eye on you, supplying you with
Speaker 1: oxygen and making sure you keep breathing while you pass
Speaker 1: this through. The toxin is called tetrototoxin, very toxic. But
Speaker 1: also this animal is so small. Apparently most adults will
Speaker 1: receive an amount where if there's medical intervention right away,
Speaker 1: they'll be Okay, it's just a horrible experience and you
Speaker 1: have to get that intervention. And also these live in
Speaker 1: the waters near Australia, the blue ring octopus, so that's
Speaker 1: the specific region to watch out for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, there's hundreds of these octopus species, and like the
Speaker 1: blue ring octopus is very small. It's the adults are
Speaker 1: about twenty two centimeters long, or less than nine inches,
Speaker 1: and apparently other species that are not so toxic can
Speaker 1: be as small as less than one inch across. In
Speaker 1: the case of a small adult in the starsucker pigmy
Speaker 1: octopus species.
Speaker 2: It's so cute, you know, and tiny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's internet pictures of it on a fingertip, the
Speaker 1: human fingertip, you know, so it's pretty good. That's really cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A thing about like, don't I don't want people
Speaker 2: to be super afraid of the blue ring octopus though,
Speaker 2: because like they are not going to like seek you
Speaker 2: out and bite you for no reason. They generally don't
Speaker 2: want to spin their toksin if they don't have to,
Speaker 2: because it's, you know, it is a resource that they
Speaker 2: want to conserve. So if you don't handle them, you're
Speaker 2: you're gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, and it's yeah, it's a rare thing.
Speaker 1: Enjoy yourself in the ocean and everything. It's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Just leave them alone and they will
Speaker 2: most likely leave you alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And another number here is two, because that is
Speaker 1: the number of parts of an octopus beak. Yes, most
Speaker 1: species have a beak, and it's underneath those famous eight
Speaker 1: arms on their underside, and it can be two sharp
Speaker 1: hooking points, sort of like the beak of a parrot,
Speaker 1: which is also very strange. And it also led me
Speaker 1: to a very adorable Google result where people ask if
Speaker 1: octopuses are related to birds, and the result just kindly
Speaker 1: walked people through. Absolutely not just octopuses and parrots both
Speaker 1: came up with this beak. They are otherwise mega differ.
Speaker 1: They're not related at all.
Speaker 2: I mean, another amazing instance of independent evolution of the
Speaker 2: beak in the parrot or other bird species. And then
Speaker 2: in octopuses, I mean it's you know, it's definitely different
Speaker 2: in its structure and sort of the mechanism of action
Speaker 2: in terms of the muscles, but very similar, weirdly similar.
Speaker 1: That's right. And also it's strong enough to crunch apart
Speaker 1: prey like crabs and clams, and octopuses also will often
Speaker 1: use paralyzing saliva to catch prey, and so that's why
Speaker 1: the blue ring octopus has this toxic saliva. It's not
Speaker 1: out to get you. It's just living in the ocean
Speaker 1: hunting stuff. And it's one of many octopus species that
Speaker 1: toxify an animal in order to then eat it with
Speaker 1: its beak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially something little like the blue ring octopus, it
Speaker 2: is beneficial to be able to incapacitate prey that might
Speaker 2: otherwise be a little too strong for it to do.
Speaker 1: So now I'm just rooting practicuses.
Speaker 2: This feels great, Go little guy, go use that neurotoxin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and folks, that's a heck of a lot of
Speaker 1: numbers and a few takeaways. So we're going to take
Speaker 1: a short break and come back with some more about
Speaker 1: this eight armed, nine brained animal. And folks, we are
Speaker 1: back with a mystery. Ooh, mystery fun ooh, because the
Speaker 1: next number here is one hundred six.
Speaker 2: That's a specific number.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what happened is a few years ago there was
Speaker 1: a research team that sent an underwater camera fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: feet into the ocean's depths and it reached the bottom
Speaker 1: of the fram Strait, which is an Arctic sea passage
Speaker 1: between Greenland and Svalbard, and their camera observed one hundred
Speaker 1: and six matching octagon shapes drawn into the floor of the.
Speaker 2: Ocean aliens underwater aliens.
Speaker 1: That's right, internet headline underwater aliens aka octopuses. Because it
Speaker 1: turns out they said, hey, what's going on with this?
Speaker 1: And then a German university research team new study in
Speaker 1: June twenty twenty three. They shared observations and camera footage
Speaker 1: of an octopus species making these octagon shapes.
Speaker 2: And go, that's very on the nose for them. Are
Speaker 2: they just kind of like sitting and then like sweeping
Speaker 2: each of their legs into the sand or something? Why
Speaker 2: is it seems too good to be true for an
Speaker 2: octagon to be made by an octopus.
Speaker 1: Exactly like octopuses and people who make stop signs are
Speaker 1: the famous octagon things? In the world that it was
Speaker 1: one of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is from an amazing piece by Sabrina Imbler at
Speaker 1: defector dot com. They say that there is a serrated
Speaker 1: species of octopus called Syratouthus mule. It's one of the
Speaker 1: only ones that lives in Arctic waters, and the octopuses
Speaker 1: are usually in warmer waters, but they are octopus species
Speaker 1: in every ocean, and this Arctic water's octopus syra Toothyus muleri.
Speaker 1: It is gelatinous, it is inkless, and so the way
Speaker 1: they hunt for food is they sort of descend all
Speaker 1: the way to the bottom of the ocean, plant their
Speaker 1: eight arms, which have webbing between them, like plant their
Speaker 1: eight arms on the floor of the ocean and then
Speaker 1: just sort of suck up anything that's on the ground
Speaker 1: right there. And then this leaves behind an octagon print
Speaker 1: on the floor of the ocean.
Speaker 2: So it's like the rumba technique, but it's kind of
Speaker 2: a stationary rumba. Yeah, it's like it couldn't be just that,
Speaker 2: like a little octagon shaped thing suckered itself to the
Speaker 2: bottom of the ocean. And yes, that is what it is.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2: That's so cute. Just this little guy just going and
Speaker 2: then sucking things up from the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like the funniest straightforward behavior you could Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it just it seems like something from a cartoon.
Speaker 2: Octopuses are one of the wackier animals, aren't they. It's
Speaker 2: the it's the arms that like wiggle around their uh,
Speaker 2: the inflatable wacky arms of the ocean, just with even
Speaker 2: more arms to be wacky. But yeah, it's interesting because
Speaker 2: some some octopuses have like very distinct arms that are
Speaker 2: all separate, but this one seems like it's kind of
Speaker 2: it's almost like a membranous skirt connects all the arms.
Speaker 1: That's right. It turns out there's a set of octopus
Speaker 1: species where it's a set of webbed arms and sort
Speaker 1: of a gelatinous body and no ink sack and I
Speaker 1: guess a little bit like jellyfish, but also like they
Speaker 1: have a dress on. You know. It's it's a very
Speaker 1: specific and willowy, wafty kind of octopus.
Speaker 2: I want to see them twirl like Maria in the
Speaker 2: Sound of Music with their little little membrane skirt. It's
Speaker 2: very very cute.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's really the vibe. I was thinking of Maria
Speaker 1: a West Side story as well. A lot of Maria's
Speaker 1: out here are a very Maria.
Speaker 2: I guess this the name for a real squirrel twirling' lady.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Did I say squirrel twirling lady? I meant to say
Speaker 2: skirt twirling lady, but I can't say words.
Speaker 1: Look, we're trying to do biology and musical theater. We're
Speaker 1: spinning a lot of plates. We're doing great.
Speaker 2: Maybe they also twirl squirrels. I don't know. That's what
Speaker 2: I'd do if I had a squirrel.
Speaker 1: She's like, the hills are alive, and the squirrels just
Speaker 1: like meet meet meep, meet me and more. Octopuses being
Speaker 1: fun underwater. At the next number here is three forty
Speaker 1: seven BC, because in three forty seven BC, the Greek
Speaker 1: thinker Aristotle recorded an observation of the male octopus's sexual organ.
Speaker 1: And you know, often Aristotle is just guessing that stuff,
Speaker 1: but this was more or less correct. He observed a
Speaker 1: specialized arm that we now call a hectocatalyus, because it
Speaker 1: turns out, in most male octopuses of their species, one
Speaker 1: of their arms has the organs for sperm production. And
Speaker 1: they reproduce by reaching that into a part of the
Speaker 1: female octopus to fertilize thousands of eggs all at once.
Speaker 2: That's kind of interesting. It's like a handshake, but a
Speaker 2: lot more than a handshake, I guess for octopuses. It
Speaker 2: really is true that if you hold hands you can
Speaker 2: get pregnant.
Speaker 1: Wow. Then I guess the one way it's more iNTS
Speaker 1: than that nineteen fifties concept is that in one set
Speaker 1: of octopus species called the argonaut, the male can detach
Speaker 1: that arm and sort of leave it behind and.
Speaker 2: Throws it like towards the female because he's afraid of
Speaker 2: getting eaten. It's really funny. It's like, yeah, here's what
Speaker 2: I's firm. Bye.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some octopus species are also cannibalistic, which is part of
Speaker 1: the not being so social element of octopus. Slice. You
Speaker 1: might get eaten by another octopus.
Speaker 2: Look. I mean it is a type of going out
Speaker 2: to dinner, just one that only one person goes home for.
Speaker 1: I would be so mad if I was a waiter
Speaker 1: and I seated a couple and then one of them
Speaker 1: started eating the other, I'd be like, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get any Like the check's gonna be a
Speaker 1: dollar for iced tea. I'm not gonna get any tip man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't fill up on bread and don't fill up
Speaker 2: on your date.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, like I work for tips man. Come on,
Speaker 1: just chomp, chump.
Speaker 2: Chump, here's a tip and then you throw your reproductive
Speaker 2: organ at them.
Speaker 1: And then related to all that, there's another number here.
Speaker 1: July third, twenty twenty three, So a couple weeks ago,
Speaker 1: July third, twenty twenty three, that's when researchers announce the
Speaker 1: third ever discovery of an undersea octopus nursery. Ooh, because
Speaker 1: another takeaway here. Takeaway number three. Octopuses are pretty antisocial,
Speaker 1: but we've discovered a few undersea octopus breeding colonies and
Speaker 1: that this is probably not an example of octopuses being
Speaker 1: more social than we expected, but they are tolerating each
Speaker 1: other at specific advantageous locations for laying eggs and breeding.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's really interesting because it's almost like you could
Speaker 2: see this as maybe a step in evolution towards being
Speaker 2: more social. But they're not there yet. They're still very introverted.
Speaker 2: They're still all just like busy playing Diablo for on
Speaker 2: their little octopus computers, not paying attention to each other,
Speaker 2: but they don't, you know, they kind of they might
Speaker 2: have these sort of brief interactions and then they get
Speaker 2: really shy and like move away.
Speaker 1: That's the next time I lose at Diablo, for I'm
Speaker 1: going to claim my opponent had eight arms or seven
Speaker 1: if they reproduced recently their mail. But yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 1: There's some headlines that have called these locations Octopolis or Actlantis,
Speaker 1: you know, fun stuff about an ocopas city under the sea.
Speaker 1: It's like, we say, this is octopus is finding a
Speaker 1: space where they all want to be, and this new discovery.
Speaker 1: The key sources NPR. They're also covering research from a
Speaker 1: nonprofit called the Schmidt Ocean Institute. Hey, folks, the former
Speaker 1: CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy are
Speaker 1: fun in a bunch of research and I'm going to
Speaker 1: feel like it's from me. The Schmidt Ocean Institute is
Speaker 1: going on now.
Speaker 2: So a Schmidt with a wife named Wendy and you're
Speaker 2: a Schmidt with a wife named Brenda. Mm hmm, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's all comment. It's too m are you are you?
Speaker 2: Did you try to like ditch your old identity as
Speaker 2: a Google co founder?
Speaker 1: He he was like the CEO who worked with the
Speaker 1: two co founders. Yeah, he's like the third guy who
Speaker 1: made all the money.
Speaker 2: You're really good at speaking in the third person there.
Speaker 1: I didn't say this on the recent Name Alex episode,
Speaker 1: but consistently, if people miss here my name Alex, they
Speaker 1: think I said Eric, and I kind of get it.
Speaker 1: But it's surprising, you know, that that's not the name
Speaker 1: I would think they would hear.
Speaker 2: I would think that they would hear Lex Luthor or something.
Speaker 1: Like that and run screaming ya Wenda. The Schmidt team.
Speaker 1: They announced the discovery in July twenty twenty three of
Speaker 1: a giant breeding group of a deep sea octopus species
Speaker 1: called mus octopus, and they breed near a warm hydrothermal
Speaker 1: vent on the Dorado outcrop near Costa Rica. That's a
Speaker 1: big discovery because the previous two octopus groups were in
Speaker 1: a different place and a different species. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine and again in twenty seventeen, researchers found the
Speaker 1: gloomy octopus species yet another fund name, the gloomy octopus
Speaker 1: congregating and breeding in a location in Jervis Bay near Sydney, Australia.
Speaker 1: The first find was on a piece of discarded metal,
Speaker 1: and they just thought that was a fluke thing. But
Speaker 1: then they found a whole other group of octopuses elsewhere
Speaker 1: in Jervis Bay, and the group was ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: octopuses at a time, so not a atlantis or something,
Speaker 1: but they were finding that these octopuses only live about
Speaker 1: three years, and each successive generation would leave behind burrows
Speaker 1: or piles of shells, and then the next generation would
Speaker 1: use those to build their own homes and burrows. And
Speaker 1: it's vaguely social, vaguely urban in a way we didn't
Speaker 1: think octopuses did.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting because when you look at social
Speaker 2: species of terrestrial animals a lot of time, it is
Speaker 2: limited resources that draws them together. So even there's a
Speaker 2: theory for you social animals, which are animals like ants
Speaker 2: or prairie dogs, where it's like you have this hierarchy
Speaker 2: and you have sort of the soldiers or the sisters
Speaker 2: kind of working together for the good of the colony,
Speaker 2: and you have like a breeding pair. The idea behind
Speaker 2: that is that if you have conditions where resources are scarce,
Speaker 2: it's actually more advantageous to like pool resources and even
Speaker 2: if you're not the one breeding a lot of these
Speaker 2: genes that you actually have into getting passed down and
Speaker 2: so it'll result in someone like you who is more
Speaker 2: use social being in the next generation. So it's cool.
Speaker 2: Octopuses have been around a really long time. It doesn't
Speaker 2: mean just because we see some of these proto social
Speaker 2: behaviors and octopuses where it's like, especially like at the
Speaker 2: bottom of the ocean, when you're near hydrothermal vents, you
Speaker 2: have limited area that is either not too cold and
Speaker 2: desolate and not too hot, so you have kind of
Speaker 2: these like goldilocks areas around these hydrothermal vents, and so
Speaker 2: it would make sense that they would kind of congregate
Speaker 2: in an area that is because basically real estate is
Speaker 2: limited down there where you can live. But you know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean they would necessarily ever evolve into the
Speaker 2: next stage of being social, but it you know, give
Speaker 2: them another few million years. And maybe I.
Speaker 1: Like that because so many of them are highly intelligent
Speaker 1: as much as we can rate animal intelligence, Like they
Speaker 1: have the mental horsepower to hang out if they just
Speaker 1: really aren't choosing to and sometimes eat each other. But
Speaker 1: if they're gathering in these same advantageous spots, maybe they
Speaker 1: get there.
Speaker 2: The key is you would need some evolutionary pressure on
Speaker 2: them to be social, so you need some kind of
Speaker 2: advantage for their offspring for them to be more pro social. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it is. It is interesting to see such
Speaker 2: an intelligent animal that seems to do behaviors that you
Speaker 2: see in more social animals like playing, you know, potentially dreaming,
Speaker 2: have being curious, Like they seem very curious about like
Speaker 2: humans and stuff. And so you'd think it has all
Speaker 2: the markings of an animal that you would think would
Speaker 2: be more social, but it's it just doesn't have the
Speaker 2: necessity to be social. It doesn't have the motivation to
Speaker 2: be evolutionary motivation that is, to be social, and so
Speaker 2: it generally isn't unless it's on MDMA, right, unless it
Speaker 2: is high out of its nine minds.
Speaker 1: It is strange that one team is like, we can
Speaker 1: make octopuses love, and another team is like, we can
Speaker 1: make octopuses want to live forever. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of scientists out there who.
Speaker 2: Are and if you combine them, you create a new God.
Speaker 1: Right, Like we are so close to making these are
Speaker 1: co super animals of Earth, you know, like we're so
Speaker 1: close if we want to do it.
Speaker 2: I would love an all knowing, all loving super being octopus.
Speaker 2: I would probably become religious if that were the case.
Speaker 1: There's one last takeaway for the band show, and it
Speaker 1: is fun in the context of that idea because takeaway
Speaker 1: number four octopuses punch fish and possibly for no reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for funsies. You know, I've heard about octopuses punching fish.
Speaker 2: I think actually from our one of our sister podcasts,
Speaker 2: Just the Zoo of Us, we talked about octopuses punching fish.
Speaker 2: Shout out to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Alana Christian are so great. And and also I
Speaker 1: love the people are studying this observing this. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's mostly a product of good video cameras that
Speaker 1: we are now understanding that just through some recent observations,
Speaker 1: we've seen octopuses following fish around, which we knew they did,
Speaker 1: but then also using one of their arms to suddenly
Speaker 1: punch them. Yes, it's another human like behavior, but also weird.
Speaker 1: That's octopus stuff. It's sometimes human like and also really weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one theory that like, when they're with these
Speaker 2: fish that sometimes they do kind of like co hunting
Speaker 2: behaviors with fish. So there will be like a reef, right,
Speaker 2: and you have little fish trying to escape in the reef.
Speaker 2: And then if you have one fish hunting that is
Speaker 2: like blocking one entrance, and then the octopus who's like
Speaker 2: squeezing its tentacles into all the knicks and crannies, the
Speaker 2: fish and the octopus can kind of it's a friendship
Speaker 2: of convenience, like in badgers and coyotes, where you have
Speaker 2: a burrow, you have some prairie dogs or groundhogs in
Speaker 2: these burrows, and then if you have a coyote on
Speaker 2: one end of the burrow and then a badger digging
Speaker 2: up the other entrance or exit to the burrow, then
Speaker 2: at least one of them is gonna get a tasty snack.
Speaker 2: Theory with octopus and the fish is that if the
Speaker 2: octopus is annoyed that the fish is maybe like eating
Speaker 2: more than it should, maybe it gives it a punch.
Speaker 2: But it's unclear if that's actually what's going on, because
Speaker 2: sometimes it just seems to punch it randomly, so we're
Speaker 2: not really sure why it does that, if it's just
Speaker 2: doing it for fun, if it just gets annoyed with
Speaker 2: the fish, if it's like trying to put the fish
Speaker 2: in its place. Like, Remember, I could punch you at
Speaker 2: any time, so don't get too cocky here. It's hard
Speaker 2: to know exactly what is going through the octopus's mind.
Speaker 2: I would definitely buy it if the octopus just thinks
Speaker 2: it's funny, because octopus is also like, there's octopuses in
Speaker 2: like tanks and aquariums will sometimes play so like they
Speaker 2: take like an empty pill bottle that's buoyant and then
Speaker 2: they toss it into like this stream, like the water
Speaker 2: filter has kind of a jet stream, and they'll like
Speaker 2: basically play fetch with themselves where they toss it over
Speaker 2: and over. So they seem to enjoy stimulation like that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, maybe they just think it's fun, or maybe
Speaker 2: they're punishing the fish. Who knows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all exactly it and what a quote a
Speaker 1: researcher here at Duardo Sempio of the Max Planck Institute
Speaker 1: of Animal Behavior in Germany, who yeah, observed all those
Speaker 1: possible reasons for it, and also says there are different
Speaker 1: octopus punching styles. He says, quote, some punches are almost
Speaker 1: like a small boot, and the other ones that even
Speaker 1: the whole arm curls up and uncurls afterwards, you know,
Speaker 1: like the motion of a boxer doing a punch. End quote,
Speaker 1: and yeah, he says like exactly what he said. It
Speaker 1: could be to guide fish hunting. It could be to
Speaker 1: punish a fish and get the food first. But in
Speaker 1: some cases the octopus punches the fish quote with no
Speaker 1: discernible insensive. So they could just be playing whack a
Speaker 1: mole at an arcade. You know, they could just be bullying.
Speaker 1: It could be just goofing around.
Speaker 2: Just doesn't like the way the fish is looking at it.
Speaker 2: It's like, what are you looking at? The punch?
Speaker 1: And who can blame them? Basically, every fish face is freaky.
Speaker 2: You know, I've got it too it Yeah, unblinking.
Speaker 1: It's Walleye to literally forget it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The lesson we've learned on today's show is that
Speaker 2: Alex is pro punching fish again.
Speaker 1: Bring us back to the rich text of SpongeBob. The
Speaker 1: anchovies are very funny, but also that's a flat face.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot going on there. And if I
Speaker 1: was an octopus, so I'd just be like, get out
Speaker 1: of here.
Speaker 2: The.
Speaker 1: Folks. That's the main episode for this week. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the outro with fun features for you, such as help
Speaker 1: remembering this episode with a runback through the big takeaways.
Speaker 1: Takeaway number one, In some octopus species, consciousness might be
Speaker 1: spread across the equivalent of nine brains. Takeaway number two,
Speaker 1: do not let anybody be weird at you about your
Speaker 1: plural form of the word octopus. Takeaway number three. Octopuses
Speaker 1: are pretty antisocial and sometimes cannibals, but we're also discovering
Speaker 1: some undersea octopus pre colonies. Takeaway number four octopuses punch
Speaker 1: fish and possibly for no reason. Plus a ton of
Speaker 1: numbers about octopus hearts, beaks, toxins, mysteries, and you know,
Speaker 1: enough stuff to get us up to what's eight takeaways
Speaker 1: basically right, perfectly on theme for octopus. Those are the takeaways. Also,
Speaker 1: I said that's the main episode because there is more
Speaker 1: secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If
Speaker 1: you support this show at maximum fun dot org, members
Speaker 1: get a bonus show every week where we explore one
Speaker 1: obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This
Speaker 1: week's bonus topic is a slew of amazing octopus lore,
Speaker 1: either from mythology or from modern security cameras. Visit sifpod
Speaker 1: dot fun for that bonus show, for a library of
Speaker 1: almost thirteen dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and
Speaker 1: a catalog of all sorts of max Fun bonus shows.
Speaker 1: It's special audio. It is just for members. Thank you
Speaker 1: for being somebody who backs this podcast operation additional fun
Speaker 1: things check out our research sources on this episode's page
Speaker 1: at maximum fund dot org. Key sources this week include
Speaker 1: digital resources from Professor Gretchen Rollwagen Bowlands of Washington State University.
Speaker 1: For the resources from NPR London's Natural History Museum, the
Speaker 1: South Carolina Aquarium, the Ashmolean Museum. Also the book The
Speaker 1: Soul of an Octopus by naturalists and writer Si Montgomery,
Speaker 1: and hey the podcast Creature feature by the great Katie Golden.
Speaker 1: That page also features resources such as Native dash Land
Speaker 1: dot c A. I'm using those to acknowledge that I
Speaker 1: recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsi and
Speaker 1: Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy,
Speaker 1: and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in
Speaker 1: many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people
Speaker 1: are are very much still here. That feels worth doing.
Speaker 1: On each episode, and hey, join the Free Sift discord,
Speaker 1: where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life.
Speaker 1: There's a link in this episode's description to join the discord.
Speaker 1: We're also talking about this episode on the discord and hey,
Speaker 1: would you like a tip on another episode? Because each
Speaker 1: week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running
Speaker 1: all the past episode numbers through a random number generator.
Speaker 1: This week's pick is episode twenty one that is about
Speaker 1: the topic of musk oxen. It's me and Katie Golden
Speaker 1: and Elliott Klin, our buddy from the Flophouse to discover
Speaker 1: that fun fact some scientists studying musk oxen do it
Speaker 1: wearing full body polar bear costumes, so I recommend that episode.
Speaker 1: I course recommend Creature, feature, Katie Golden's weekly podcast about
Speaker 1: animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken
Speaker 1: Unshaven by the Buddos Band. Our show logo is by
Speaker 1: artist Burton durand special thanks to Chris SUSA for audio
Speaker 1: mastering on this episode. Extra extra special thanks go to
Speaker 1: our members and thank you to all our listeners. I'm
Speaker 1: thrilled to say we will be back next week with
Speaker 1: more secretly incredibly fascinating, So how about that.
Speaker 3: Talk to you then, Maximum.
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Speaker 1: Of artists owned shows supported directly by you.