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 […]
Tag: octopus
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 […]