Octopus adorabilis, the adorable octopus

This isn't a Dumbo octopus - it's ears are smaller, for a start. (Dumbo octopuses are of the genus Grimpoteuthis, and this one is of the genus Opistthoteutis.) But it is at least as cute as a Dumbo, so cute in fact that Stephanie Bush of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who is describing it for the literature, suggested calling it "adorabilis", the adorable octopus.




All octopuses are adorable, though.

Coconut Octopus in all its finery

Gorgeous photograph of a Coconut Octopus.




The site I got it from, All That Is Interesting, had no attribution details. It's a beautifully composed picture so kudos to whoever took it.  The rows of little blue glow-in-the-dark Jelly Babies along the edge of the tentacles are so even and precise. (Yes, I know they are suckers seen edge-on, but they look like Jelly Babies to me.)

Beautiful Dumbo Octopus video from Okeanos

From: September 27: Okeanos Explorer Atlantic Canyons and Seamounts 2014



Previously:

Here
Here
And here

Sighting of huge dumbo octopus

The Dumbo Octopus is one of the most popular posts on the blog, so I'm overjoyed to present a follow-up - a huge dumbo octopus.




other sightings:

Here
And here

Dumbo Octopus revisited

Five years ago I put up a picture of Grimpoteuthis, the Dumbo Octopus, so called because it can 'fly' using its large 'ears' like Disney's Dumbo the Elephant.

It was so freakin' cute that it remains one of my most popular blog posts.

Recently Stephanie Bush put a picture of an octopus she photographed on Facebook, with the caption We found THE CUTENESS.  And so she did - and it appears to be another Grimpoteuthis, not 'flying' but sitting on the ocean floor looking as cute as a button.

Awww.

(Via Stephanie Bush)

Edit Jun 2015 to add: For video of Octopus adorabilis, see here. :)

World's Cutest Octopus

World's cutest kawaii octopus, from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium.

Is that really how you spell aquarium? What an odd word.

Wednesday Octopus

Except this is a cuttlefish, which is the same as an octopus or a squid, except instead of playing up the Cthulu-Weird and Glittery-Alien roles, a cuttlefish just gets down to business.



A cuttlefish is the bubba of the octopus world. Sashays along, sees a prey animal, shoots it, boogies right on. I'm glad I'm not on the cuttlefish menu, as their hunting seems...lethal.

Seen via James Nicholl.

Here, have an octopus

I love octopuses.

It's from National Geographic.

Sunday Octopus

Kali Durga sent me this octopus gif (via I Can Has Cheezburger)

Their ability to change color so rapidly fascinates me[1].


[1]The octopus, not Kali, who is a nice blue color.

Best movie ever - Syfy's Sharktopus!

I haven't seen it, but I know it's going to be the best ever. It's by Roger Corman, it's on Syfy, and it has a half-shark, half-octopus monster in it. I wonder if it has a frikkin' laser on its head? And it has Eric Roberts in it! And the CGI is just...classic!



Is it possible to kill more bikini-clad women in a trailer? I think not. I think that's the maximum.

It's not quite as touchy-feely as my usual octopus posts, is it?

Baby octopus!

Told you so.

Via Oceangal.

Octopus gadget frenzy

Back to the world of living seafood. Here, an octopus and a free-diver meet. The octopus wants his camera. And octopuses are pretty strong, so he gets the camera. Diver offers his spear-gun instead and the octopus finds that acceptable.



I couldn't do negotiations with alien life forms even if I had oxygen tanks with me, so I don't know how this person manages to do all this outside his own atmosphere. But humans are amazing too, as well as octopuses. Between the two, it's a wonderful moment (from Gizmodo).

Octopus break

Here is a video of an octopus that pretends to be a flounder.



Macrotritopus defilippi performing flounder mimicry.
Video courtesy of R. Hanlon

Yes, I know, but what other fun can you have on the ocean floor?

More Octopus

Two people sent me this one. An octopus takes up living in a coconut shell, not only using it as shelter but carrying it along when it needs to move, and using two half shells to make armor - making the octopus the first inverterbrate filmed using tools.



The man they interview is a bit annoying though, what with all his "lower life forms" talk. Nothing living today is a lower life-form - we all took the same journey and the idea that life is a ladder leading all the way 'up' to us is incorrect.

Here's the original footage without Dr. Higher Lifeform and his dramatic music.



Veined Octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, showing sophisticated tool use behaviour. Footage shot by Dr Julian Finn of Museum Victoria.

Finn, J.K., T. Tregenza and M.D. Norman. (2009) Defensive tool use in a coconut-carrying octopus, Current Biology, Volume 19, Issue 23, R1069-R1070, 15 December 2009

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (DVD)

As a bit of a change from yesterday's film Cold Mountain, a masterclass in wrenching a screenplay out of Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, I'm watching "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1961) featuring Barbara Eden and Peter Lorre amongst others, walking around a giant, spacious nuclear submarine with massive forward viewing windows. This is the famous planarian-shaped Seaview.

The plot is simple and nobody in the crew is called Walker or Hiro or Turner or Inman or any other Deep Names. The Van Allen belts are on fire, and the world has heated up so much that everyone not on a submarine is dead. Admiral Thingy has to go to the marianas trench to fire a missile to douse the Van Allen belts. All kinds of obstacles present themselves, such as minefields in the middle of nowhere (as if someone knew during WWII to tether mines in case a big nuclear submarine wanted to get through in a hurry 15 years later).

We had a bet which Denizen of the Deep the divers laying phone lines would face. I uncharacteristically let STB lay claim to the giant inert rubber squid trying to Swallow Our Seamen and claimed for myself the old "getting your flipper caught in a giant clam horror". STB, of course, was right.

A giant octopus turned up later - go cephalopods! - but nothing daunted the Seaview and the world (slightly scorched and presumably barren, so I hope Barbara Eden's up to having a lot of babies) is saved once again.

This is an Irwin Allen production, of course. The set was so expensive The Master of Disaster kept it and persuaded ABC to make VTTBOTS into a series. I remember watching it as a kid and one of my very early science fictional efforts was based on the TV series. I think I was seven. I should look it out.

Octopus news

Dana Point Institute's 2-spot octopus has had 300 babies! Four mm long, they are currently eating brine shrimp. Apparently they'll graduate to eating crabs later. The Institute is hoping that around 30 of them will survive.




Cute!

The LA Times reports:

Their mother -- unnamed, as are all the animals at the institute -- tended the eggs faithfully, cleaning and aerating them, without stopping to feed herself, Steers said.And she didn't have time for her usual entertainment: unscrewing jars to find treats, dismantling Mrs. Potato Head toys and taking apart Legos.

One wonders what octopuses do for lulz in the wild, since they seem so keen on Mr and Mrs Potato Head in aquaria.

Kawaii Octopus

Megaleledone setebos. Many octopuses evolved from a common ancestor that lived off Antarctica more than 30 million years ago, according to a "Census of Marine Life" that is seeking to map the oceans from microbes to whales.

Kawaii!

From Marine Census, Reuters.


***

Dumbo Octopus

Grimpoteuthis, the Dumbo Octopus. Isn't he cute?

They swim, like Dumbo, by flapping their ears. Or whatever those things are.

Or whatever it was Dumbo did. (I saw the movie when I was four. I realize it was seminal but I'm not that sure on the plot.)



Update 12/2013: A new picture of an even cuter Dumbo Octopus here.

Update 5/2014: A rather more frightening look at a Dumbo Octopus here.
Update 9/2014 a lovely video here.
A new sighting here.
Update Oct 12 2014: A new video here.

Octopuses - new facts to impress your friends!

From Oceangal, news of a fascinating Octopus discovery.



According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, based on research at Sea Life centers across Europe, octopuses don't have eight legs. They have two legs and six arms. Researchers looking into whether octopuses were right-handed or left-handed found that they were ambidextrously third-from-the-front handed, and that two of their hands are legs, anyway.

This means that when another smart-alec friend says to you, "Man -the featherless biped!" you can reply, "No - octopus the featherless biped!" And then you can argue about the plural. (It's bipodes.[1])

[1] Only kidding. It's bipeds.

Octopuses

Courtesy of octopus scout Oceangal, more fascinating octopus footage. Er, tentaclage. First a pair of them chatting together in their eggs as one hatches, and then a startling bit of footage as an adult is trained to open jars to get at crispy juicy crabs inside.

Octopus skilz

(The site has embedding instructions but I couldn't manage to follow them, so that's an old fashioned link instead.)