Pharyngula

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak | December 3, 2009 12:35 AM

The best part was the random flonder @ 3:35.

Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay | December 3, 2009 12:47 AM

A plea to any knitters here - I simply MUST make my baby nephew a Cuttle(cuddle)fish for Christmas. Does anyone have a pattern for an adorable, tentacly cephalopod I can knit up in three weeks?

Posted by: Lee Graham | December 3, 2009 12:51 AM

Wowzers! That's hypnotic and otherworldly.

Posted by: rawnaeris | December 3, 2009 1:03 AM

@ Josh #4, I don't have one, but I second the request!

Posted by: DaveX | December 3, 2009 1:17 AM

It would be nicer if James Whoever wasn't being a paranoid copyright freak!

Posted by: Joel | December 3, 2009 1:30 AM

Homo sapiens really got gipped...I mean, we only get the standard 4 limbs to flail around during sex, and we can't even change color at a whim!

Can we get a re-roll on the whole evolution thing or is it too late?

Posted by: Jordan | December 3, 2009 1:44 AM

I can appreciate cephalopods as long as I don't have to look at them. I can't put my finger on it, but something about them just gives me the willies.

Posted by: sjbeach | December 3, 2009 2:33 AM

I love how the first couple got a room. That's style.

Posted by: Pam | December 3, 2009 2:57 AM

Longtime reader, first time poster.

HE'S ADORABLE. I want one. The purple spots are the best thing ever! What a cutie.

Sending a link to everybody I know, especially my wee nephew, who has a thing for octopus and squid. Since we're urban people, we have no idea why; my guess is he was watching a nature documentary and imprinted. My only fear is he'll take this octopus thing too far. I want him to grow up into the sort of scientist who terraforms Mars and then names a city there after Me.

Thank you so much for sharing!

Posted by: llewelly | December 3, 2009 3:03 AM

HE'S ADORABLE. I want one. The purple spots are the best thing ever! What a cutie.

Posted by: mark chapman | December 3, 2009 5:11 AM

you may like them PZ, but those blue ringed are little killers and are feared in Queensland Australia, 1 bite and you get a powerful Anticholinergic that kills in an hour unless you got an iron lung/respirator heart machine.... did love the fact their going for a shag in carlton draught bottle (BTW when you hit Australia Carlton is the standard beer on tap, but go for the more boutique beers, we have LOTS)

Posted by: Jo | December 3, 2009 5:28 AM

Oh PZ, you MUST watch BBC's 'Life' from last week, it was all about deep sea creatures and featured lots and lots of cephalopods! In the UK it's still available on iPlayer but for everyone else you can watch it here: http://www.ninjavideo.net/video/49697 It really was absolutely fantastic, as if you'd expect anything else from David Attenborough!

Posted by: The Science Pundit | December 3, 2009 7:50 AM

I had to smile when the octopus happened upon an actual flounder.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | December 3, 2009 8:24 AM

For those folks wanting knitting/crocheting cephalopod patterns, there have been several threads with them, or links to them. Put cephalopod+knitting+pattern (the + signs are important) into the search box on the upper right of this page above PZ's picture. You will get about three pages of threads.

Posted by: Anisa | December 3, 2009 8:30 AM

@Josh,

If you're on ravelry, you should join this group:
http://www.ravelry.com/groups/cephalopod-along

Posted by: fastpathguru | December 3, 2009 9:21 AM

Best part for me was the probing of multiple crevices with the tentacles...

And I'm not even talking about the scenes of mating.

Posted by: Akiko | December 3, 2009 10:13 AM

Floating love.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | December 3, 2009 10:47 AM

I never thought I'd have to be the one to say it, but Joel @12: you might want to reconsider the use of 'gypped' to mean 'ripped off'. It derives from Gypsy and is equivalent to saying 'jewed' or 'welshed'.

WUNDERPUS PHOTOGENICUS

My GF has one of those...my, my, they are all so beautiful!

It might just be me, but I can't help but read something prurient into that.

Posted by: chimaera84 | December 3, 2009 11:15 AM

please note that the footage of the blue-ringed octopus crawling into a beer bottle is a testament to our enormous sized beer bottles, rather than an exposition of our diminutive (yet deadly) octopuses.

P.S. I'm lying.

Posted by: MakeTheMostOfLife | December 3, 2009 11:37 AM

Glad that most people here seem to be enjoying my video. Thanks for watching :) The comments here are hilarious & have had me laughing all day!

Rebelest:

WUNDERPUS PHOTOGENICUS
My GF has one of those...my, my, they are all so beautiful!

Bbgunn:
I really was waiting for some 'Barry White' in that soundtrack.

ROFL

James

Posted by: DeanFromBC | December 3, 2009 1:15 PM

Wow, amazing creatures.

I love the way the White V at the end settled down into the muck, becoming almost completely invisible.

I had no idea the blue-ringed octopii were so small until they shagged their way into a beer bottle. Cool.

Posted by: Vadjong | December 3, 2009 4:05 PM

I really wonder what's so special about our kind of ape that these creatures, with their über-complex nervous systems, didn't develop civilization long before us.
Can you imagine what technology, art and language they would create? Or their science or religion?
Blows my mind.

Posted by: Copernicus | December 3, 2009 8:37 PM

hmmm, seems there are different species here... the mating pair appear to be Greater Blue-ringed Octopus, Hapalochlaena lunulata, and certainly the majority of the footage on the single individual from about 1:30 onwards was the Southern Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa).

It would seem that mating is even more traumatic for the octopus than that of spiders- the male octopus dies a couple of after mating and then the female dies after her some eggs hatch as she was unable to feed while she was guarding them for 50 days.

Posted by: MakeTheMostOfLife | December 3, 2009 11:31 PM

Copernicus:

"certainly the majority of the footage on the single individual from about 1:30 onwards was the Southern Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa)."

At the 1:30 mark is when the pair goes into the bottle? After that there is no more blue ring octopus footage & all the following octopus have been named. The solo blue ring footage is all from the one that gets "jumped" right before it happened. All of our group had just finished getting our shots and were about to move on when one of the guides clocked the second one, right under another diver!

"Hapalochlaena maculosa, can be found only in the temperate waters of southern Australia" This is all filmed in Indonesia.

Thx for the link about the eggs... V Interesting :)

James

Posted by: Copernicus | December 4, 2009 8:16 AM

Thanks, James (my experiences in Sulawesi were confined to the rainforest and not the reefs!)

What I also find interesting is the nature of the toxin (now comfirmed as tetrodotoxin, not maculotoxin)... for a while many wondered why the same toxin was in several other groups of animals including California newts (genus Taricha), central American harlequin frogs (genus Atelopus), as well as other invertebrates - why did such a diversity of unrelated organisms all evolve the same toxin?

Now of course, we know that the toxin is produced by symbiotic bacteria that are found in the octopus' salivary glands.

Posted by: Arsen Azizyan | December 5, 2009 7:50 PM

Lovely vid, though the song did nothing for me.

Best part was the threesome with the beer bottle. I'll never look at callous marine garbage disposal the same way again, knowing that our trash creates a safe haven for humping cephalopods.