There are many startling videos of octopuses doing surprising octopus things. This video, by Flora Lichtman for Science Friday, is one of the most very all of that: The scientist is Roger Hanlon. The octopus is nameless. (Thanks to investigator Susan Kany for bringing this to our attention.) BONUS: From long ago, Bill Saidel and […]
Tag: octopus
Septipus?
Whither a seven-armed octopus? Wonder whether it’s a case of wither? So does the author of this study: “An Octopus With Only Seven Arms: Anatomical Details,” Ian G. Gleadall, Journal of Molluscan Studies, Volume 55, Issue 4. 1989, pp. 479-487. The author, at School of Medicine Tohoku University Seiryo cho Sendai, Japan, reports: “A male […]
Octopus goes twice as fast, with a wheel
How fast does an octopus typically run in an exercise wheel? That has yet to be determined. But one value is reported in the study: “Cutaneous Respiration in Octopus Vulgaris,” J.J. Madan and M.J. Wells, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 199, pp. 2477–2483 (1996). The authors, at the University of Cambridge, UK, explain, citing two […]
How to hypnotize an octopus
Lyle Zapato delves into the historical writings, which are quite old, about how to hypnotize an octopus, and about how to defend yourself against a charging octopus on land. On the first subject, he begins: The earliest known work on octopus hypnotism was done by professor B. Danilewsky of Kharkiv University as part of his research […]
Prediction: Will the fly replace the octopus?
The fruit fly will replace the octopus as an unreliable predictor of soccer match outcomes, if a new experiment succeeds. If the experiment fails, then Paul the Octopus will remain the false-gold standard of such prediction methods. Roland Houben, the noted scientist/singer, alerts us to new research, of sorts, from the Martin Heisenberg group in the […]
Tentacled-ness in octopuses?
So far as we’re aware, the project described in this July 2008 Scientific American report is the only one to even claim to investigate the question of handedness, or tentacled-ness, in octopuses, or octopi. In an attempt to find out if octopuses are right- or left-handed, er, tentacled, scientists from the Sea Life Center in […]
Ig winners comment on “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus”
We asked three Ig Nobel Prize-winning experts on sea life to comment on the soon-to-be-released horror film “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus.” [The image below will, if you click it, show a trailer for the film]. Charles Paxton (co-winner, 2002 Ig Nobel biology prize for the study “Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming […]