D'AWWWWCTOPUS: post yr images of adorable octopuses here (no squid allowed)

whoops...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv7DfebpL7E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qw8bAdIS_E

<3 baby cthulhu

Oh, I hope octopuses replace us after the nuclear conflagration...

What a thread:

Good one, @TheEconomist, very original and not propagandistic at all.

Depicted:
1. 'The Economist,' 2018
2. 'St. Louis Globe-Democrat,' 1980
3. 'Catholic Library Service,' 1938
4. Fred W. Rose, 1877 pic.twitter.com/VvH429MytP

— Nima Shirazi (@WideAsleepNima) February 24, 2018

media that didn't get the "adorable" memo imo

Great thread.

I especially like the Alice the goon like Prussian octopus

"The Prussian Octopus," 1915.

This British map shows an aggressive Prussian octopus, the heart of the expanding German Empire, along with a rather sad-looking Austria Hungarian octopus. pic.twitter.com/kgLLxouOyU

— Nima Shirazi (@WideAsleepNima) February 24, 2018

And the Chicago vice octopus

In honor of World Octopus Day, here's a 1910 illustration showing Chicago's Levee in the grip of VICE's tentacles. https://t.co/SzFaYpAt5F pic.twitter.com/jNWF4Cvo5U

— Robert Loerzel (@robertloerzel) October 8, 2017

nima shirazi good, demonising our octopals bad

Prussian bonobo octopals pretty adorable IMO.

Was effusing about Soul of an Octopus earlier. Made me blub a bit.

Does ILX support gifv?
https://i.imgur.com/17kwhW2.gifv

Okay video here

<3

sy montgomery describing the skin of an octopus head as ‘soft as custard’ has really stuck with me, that li’l guy looks totally strokable

I've photographed a number of them, but they're universally shy. Nearly all scuba divers will avoid harassing octopuses in their natural environment, but this little fella seems a bit odd. Don't inadvertantly stick a finger around their beak under the mantle, they can take the tip off in a single bite.

i was just gonna ask "don't they bite with that beak?" they look terrifyingly sharp.

Their tongues are also covered in teeth (but that goes against the AWWW directive of this thread).

Where's he goin'?

https://i.imgur.com/hO56wvK.gifv

A very curious octopus. pic.twitter.com/EgSyRKT8SW

— Apolonis Aphrodisia (@A_aphrodisia) March 2, 2018

(this is the one sanpaku posted)

https://68.media.tumblr.com/5905a833d3f670aec8ded4a97d34b040/tumblr_onwfaeAEtM1vbghcjo1_1280.jpg

Mark (and sanpaku) I love that video thanks

https://78.media.tumblr.com/537aa493c0fd7e862b34393e9336f36c/tumblr_p524o1LIy31vlks32o1_500.jpg

That is genuinely amazing.

It's....something.

https://78.media.tumblr.com/4c66838a0c35fd3b4a3a9091d80a8532/tumblr_p4tmhqnHT51qm9k25o1_r3_500.gif

v delicate li'l guy, would stroke

https://twitter.com/i/moments/970432629320355840

oops i mean

pic.twitter.com/LFWkcdQo6Y

— MꙬse Allain (@MooseAllain) March 4, 2018

https://68.media.tumblr.com/e8a831d66fac1cb6009133264d34e2c1/tumblr_p5fn3cKFZo1vlks32o1_1280.jpg

https://78.media.tumblr.com/3ca68d9a9d7108dcefd73b505d352ecf/tumblr_p0j2vnaYXi1rraqsio1_1280.jpg

wow what a beauty

more like awe-ctopus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=Kl5A7gHsoRc

https://68.media.tumblr.com/e8ffbb6837265accf28fc4f696097440/tumblr_om3xtpwjUq1s1vn29o1_1280.jpg

kind of lol but mostlyaaaiiyeeeTF?!

1) flabby bits
2) intelligent
3) mostly relax
4) wrinkles

octopus is basically a damp kind of elephant

https://montereybayaquarium.tumblr.com/post/172330204589/anoceanloverworld-cuttlefish-can-change-color-to

he look like a hippo

ha he does

oh my god the algae octopus
https://i.imgur.com/M0scGnO.jpg

angular! i love him!

He looks like a golden wizard!

If the world lasted long enough, would the world’s animals evolve to a most-charismatic-to-humans state?

That's a very good point - I worked with a conservation agency one time and they referred to "charismatic megafauna" - as in, people are only motivated to save large, appealing animals.

Or, in this thread's case, animals that show surprising intelligence and occasionally psychic abilities regarding football matches.

To try to answer Hunt3r's questions seriously, charisma is one way to go, another would be to taste good to humans, or to be hardy enough to survive in radically different (read: warmer) environments.

"large" as in "bigger than nematodes" - octopuses are both charismatic and megafauna

Now reading the Peter Godfrey-Smith OTHER MINDS book about octopus intelligence and it is soooooo goooood

I find the actual anatomy of octopus brains rather fascinating. Essentially, it seems most of it is in two lobes behind each eye processing visual information, with relatively little mass devoted to integrating everything into unified neural correlates of the world outside. Their esophagus passes through their brain.

http://tolweb.org/tree/ToLimages/vampbrainvent3.400a.jpg

Also worth noting, octopuses do not recognize themselves in the mirror test. Really no fault to them, we can't all be magpies, bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, or some primates.

They're similar to dogs in this respect, though of course dogs can recognize other individuals and do appear to have some second order theory of mind, if lacking a first order one.

I see cephalopods as brilliant examples of "the other way to do it" - we centralise our nervous systems so that sensory inputs can be compared, limbs can be cross-coordinated, etc. whereas they are kind of like "intelligent tissue" in that much of their sophistication is achieved in a decentralised, democratic way, an independent control ganglion for each tentacle, communicating with the distributed brain shown above. Or maybe we can equate the tentacle ganglia with our spinal cord, which is the vertebrate centre for embodied intelligence and coordination (and gets very little respect for its sophistication, because it does its work literally without calling attention to its activity). Cephalopod skin is one of their most interesting attributes - its reconfigurable texture and colour is a whole other interaction and communication system, and induces reactions in other cephalopods the same way that we use language, but it seems like a more direct coupling of influence rather than something encoded and decoded.

Or to stretch a metaphor, maybe the human CNS is like the old mainframe systems with multiple terminals running from a common resource, whereas an octopus resembles the Internet of Things with small agents processing independently and messaging to coordinate.