Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Octopuses

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why octopuses are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Octopuses. Known for being wiggly. Famous for being eight wiggles specifically. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why octopuses are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of octopuses? I love them. I love them. One of my favorite animals. Take your time to think about it. I know it's difficult to figure out how you feel. I love them. I love octopuses so much. They are, yes, I really think they are one of my favorite animals. They're just so weird, so different from us, and yet so cute and cuddly, except for some of them, which you shouldn't touch because you'll die. But other than that, very cute and cuddly. don't set off my phobia of sea creatures, oddly. Oh, good. Even though they're pretty wiggly,

like especially the biggest ones, like the giant Pacific octopus. It just seems like a megafauna in a way where that doesn't bug me. Basically all the huge sea creatures, except maybe giant squids. I know that sounds similar, but basically all the huge sea creatures don't really bug me very much. Ah, you don't, you don't like a giant squid. It's their huge eyeballs, isn't it? Yeah, that and I feel like two of the tentacles are just too long. You know what I mean? Like there's smaller ones and then there's two that are just way out there twice as long, like NBA player arms or something, but in a bad way. Yeah, those are ship grabbing arms. Yeah, it feels like I'm going to lose my crew. Yeah, exactly. I do like octopuses more than I like squid. I like squids as well. But octopuses, they hold a special place in my heart. They're cute. They're smart. They are just kind of sploody, which I like. I like a good sploody animal.

Technically, a sploot is sort of what a squirrel or animal does when they like flatten out on the pavement to kind of cool off. So it's a kind of pancaking motion, a sploot. So an animal to me that is somewhat gelatinous in either behavior or actual physiology and just sort of sploots out when you plop it on something. when you plop it on something. To me, that's a splooty animal. Something like a cat is a splooty animal, but so is an octopus because it just kind of, it flattens out, it pancakes out. A long time ago, I talked to Professor David Scheel,

who's a professor of marine biology at Alaska Pacific University, and he kept an octopus in his living room for, I think pretty much the octopus's entire lifespan, like about a year and just interacted with it daily, made friends with it and observed it. And it was really interesting because it would do things like play around. It seemed to do things like dream because it would change color while it

was sleeping into sort of these patterns that are typically associated with hunting. So yeah, I would love to befriend an octopus, but their lifespans are a little bit short, so it'd be kind of heartbreaking. It'd be like getting a dog and having it only last a year. Just heart-rending. Yeah. I think that oddly leads us into the numbers for this topic. Numbers! And by the way, thank you to Ginnick Gname on the Discord. Also to Jason Stash and other folks, too, for selecting this topic.

As you know, supporters of this show. Sorry, that's like an action figure name like jason stash yeah he's gonna be in fast and furious 2000 see that's why if you join the discord you get to give yourself a lance armstrong style name even though that's a real guy i just always think he has a superhero name uh oddly but yeah okay the thing with lance armstrong is shouldn't it be Lance Legstrong? Thank you. I'm here all week. All right. Numbers, Alex.

Let's get into them. Stop distracting us. So every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called I like to be statistically on an octopus fact podcast with you. Nice. Yeah, that was submitted by Cleo Mancer teed it up for this. Thank you, Cleo Mancer. If you have a name for this every week, please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through that discord where Jason Stash hangs out or to sifpod at gmail.com.

The first number here is about five years. Because about five years is the usual total lifespan of the giant Pacific species of octopus. And that's one of the longest octopus lifespans in the world. As Katie was saying, these animals don't live a super long time, even though they're very intelligent, very advanced as a, as an animal and often very large. It's so sad. I just, you know, like there, there was that other documentary called my octopus teacher and it's, I definitely recommend it. It's documentary, lovely film about a man and an octopus, but yeah, it is, it is one of those things where it's very sad to us humans, I think, because we put a lot of stock in a long lifespan because the idea of not having a future

or only living five years is very sad. I wonder, though, if that is too much of a human perspective, like an octopus maybe doesn't have any concept of longevity of tomorrow so it's just kind of vibing in the moment and enjoying itself and uh yeah so i don't know i mean are we going to get into one of the interesting reasons why their lifespans are so short yeah i have one here also as always i'm so glad you're here, Katie, but especially for animal episodes. You know so much. It's great. Octopuses! It seems like with many octopus species, they just sort of opt to pass away after reproducing. Mm-hmm.

One source this week is the book The Soul of an Octopus by naturalist and writer Sai Montgomery. And she describes how in many species, the female octopus just sort of dedicates the rest of their life to tending and hatching eggs. Because these are mollusks that lay eggs. But the male also will sort of just consider its life complete after mating. The female will consider its life pretty complete after the eggs hatch. They'll both enter what's usually called senescence, which is a life stage where they stop feeding and maintaining themselves. And their reproductive hormone can also deactivate their body's digestion. Another number this week is more than 300 species. There's a lot of

different kinds of octopus, but a lot of them just sort of stop living after they have completed their evolutionary reproductive task. They say, OK, I'm all set. Yeah, they're simulparous, which means when you reproduce once and you die. And a lot of species of animals do this. What's interesting about the female octopus is, yes, for so many species, she devotes so much of her energy into caretaking for her offspring, which while she's alive, they're generally speaking like egg sacks full of like little embryonic octopuses. And she'll do things like she gives up on eating and she just guards them and maintains a constant water flow over

them because a flow of water is important to oxygenate the eggs. And she will pretty much just start to die at that point because, like you said, she's not eating. Her hormones are kind of causing the senescence. Researchers were able to increase the female's lifespan by doing a surgery where they went into the brain. And the brain is kind of interesting in the octopus because it's we might talk about this more later but it's not as central as a human brain is where it's like kind of the tentacles even contain a lot of sort of neural matter in it but they essentially turned off a gland that produces this reproductive hormone. And so when the female then would, because like even if females don't breed necessarily, they still have this like short lifespan.

But when they surgically turned off that hormone, even after the female laid eggs, it ignored the eggs completely and kept eating and kept living. So I don't know if they've ever done a study to see how long the female can live in that circumstance, but they've at least established that it will continue eating and it can increase its sort of lifespan after that. What's interesting is that in theory, the male could continue living, right? But for whatever reason, perhaps just due to the way in which octopuses develop, the male has a similarly short lifespan as the female. And it ends up working out in terms of the species

maintaining a healthy population size. That's just astounding. I feel like if you could talk to an octopus as that scientist who turned off that gland, you would be like, I've essentially discovered immortality for you. Like your body will wear out eventually. But what you thought was the end of your lifespan, no, you could live kind of forever by your standards. But would they want it? Like, that's the thing is, you know, is it would it be more fulfilling for an octopus to live out its short life doing all the things an octopus does and caring for its young and reproducing?

Or would it prefer a long life? But in terms of that long life, it has no interest in taking care of its offspring. So it's an interesting thing. We can't ask an octopus what it wants, though, until we learn octopus sign language, which requires more arms than we have. You just have to sign really fast. Use your legs. Our greatest soccer players will be recruited for the octopus language project. will be recruited for the octopus language project.

I just think of that Squidward episode where he's doing interpretive dancing and all his tentacles are wiggling. I know you have recently started getting into SpongeBob. So it's big news, folks. I am now two episodes into SpongeBob SquarePants, and it turns out it might be the best show ever made. Very exciting. It's pretty good. It all started when I was like, Alex, have you heard of this square yellow man?

He's very funny. I don't know. He better live in a pineapple under the sea. Otherwise, I'm not interested. Also, it just turns out, canonically, Squidward is an octopus, not a squid. Is he? From interviews with Steven Hillenburg, apparently it's more fun to draw like an octopus bulbous head. Yeah. But if you look at like the show Bible or whatever of

SpongeBob, Squidward is an octopus. But he's kind of the cross between an octopus and a squid because he's got a couple of squid tentacles, you know, sort of the long tentacles with the diamond shaped ends is something that you'll see in a squid, but not an octopus. Whereas the rest of its tentacles, I guess, are somewhat octopus like. So he's the unholy mix between an octopus and a squid. That's why he's so mad. Both societies have rejected him. These octopuses, the whole show could just be how they think and how we try to understand how they think.

It's honestly, this happened with a few topics on the show before. Is this topic too interesting on its face? Right? Like, octopuses are very popular, very cool. And this is such an enormous and vast topic. Just the thinking could be the whole show. We'll talk about that and a bunch of other stuff. Yeah.

I mean, they are amazing creatures. I think especially when you consider that they have evolved a brain and cognition and eyes and all these things pretty much independently, like parallel to our own development of a brain and eyes. Because when our last common ancestor between like mammals, and octopuses, and other fish, was I think this little flatworm, sort of a nematode-like flatworm that was just very simple. It maybe had an eye spot, like a couple of photosensitive cells, and a few nerves, not really a brain. So all of these things like eyes and brain involved completely parallel to our own development. And so it's really fascinating that they exist in such complexity at all.

Absolutely. There's another number for that, which is 500 million years ago, because that's the minimum amount of time ago when we diverged from octopuses evolutionarily, octopuses and humans. And it was that thingy. And I know all millions of years evolution numbers just seem giant and hard to follow at all. But for context, the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs was about 65 million years ago. 500 million years ago is shortly after what's called the Cambrian explosion, where life on Earth rapidly diversified. an explosion, where life on Earth rapidly diversified. So we're about as far away from octopuses as we can be in terms of life evolution. And they also partly think they found this number by finding a similarity between human serotonin receptors and octopus serotonin receptors. And one study that helped find this was scientists taking two octopuses

and dosing them with MDMA, which is a drug nicknamed ecstasy by the cool kids. Can you imagine an octopus at a rave just nts, nts, nts, nts, tentacles going everywhere, flopping around? We kind of don't have to imagine it. This study, it was Johns Hopkins University and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. So two very distinguished organizations, but they took two octopuses and gave them each a Star Wars action figure. And then octopuses are also not very social with each other in a way we'll talk about more later.

Like they don't really live in groups very much or want to see each other. Right. So they had these two octopuses, each with their own action figure. They mostly played with their action figure. And then when dosed with MDMA, the octopuses got, quote, cozy with its pal. Wow. And like kind of cuddled a bit and stuff. Oh, that's interesting.

Because like I've heard this about MDMA and other sort of psychedelics in humans where someone who's maybe a bigot or maybe sort of more buttoned up will take it and be like, well, I just want to love my fellow man, man. Not saying that's exactly the same thing that's happening with these octopuses, but that there's some kind of neural expansion happening for the octopus that is making it behaviorally act in a way that is not typical. Like in nature, they will occasionally interact with each other, but they just, it's not, they're not a social species. Yeah.

And another one of these huge differences, the next number is nine, because that's the number of clusters of neurons in the bodies of some octopuses. Like Katie, as you were saying, they have a distributed brain, more or less. Yes. And that's takeaway number one. distributed brain, more or less. Yes. And that's takeaway number one. In some octopus species, consciousness might be spread across the equivalent of nine brains, which is one central brain and then a brain in each arm, each of the eight arms. Yeah. And the arms almost move and act like individual organisms, which is really weird. I mean,

it'd be like having sort of brains in your arms and your fingers just kind of doing stuff, and then reporting their behaviors back to your brain. To some extent, right, we have a centralized nervous system, and we have a brain. But we do actually have some distribution of brain activity throughout the body. We have, you know, the spinal cord. We have actually a lot of feedback between our gut and our brain. That's one of the reasons that like you can get a tummy ache when you're anxious, or if you're getting a stomach ache, you can get anxious. So that's kind of this like feedback loop, like you eat something a little off, you can feel a little more anxious. Or if you're anxious, that can actually cause a stomach ache. You have kind of a gut brain, which is weird. And you have a lot of like sensory information that's coming from the rest of your body,

obviously. It's just not to the extent that octopuses probably experience because octopuses have so much activity in their tentacles compared to, say, like the distribution of neural activity in, say, a human body. Yeah, there's occasionally internet headlines that claim octopuses are quote-unquote aliens, and it usually just means this very different evolution, including having clusters of neurons that are brain-like or fully brains in each of their arms. That's just not what we do as a different species, humans. And those giant Pacific octopuses, the biggest kind, have about 500 million neurons, but it's spread across their body.

There are various studies of how this works. One found that octopuses can do what they call arm-up decision-making, where the arm senses something before the central brain and initiates a motor response without consulting with the central brain. Right. And arm-up is the opposite of what we call brain down with humans and many of our other buddies up here on land and in the sea, where there's just one brain and related functions that are still at least somewhat tied to one brain

is kind of our structure and plan. There's also a 2022 study from the University of Chicago. They looked at another octopus species and found that its arm neurons link to each other through intramuscular nerve cords, which also suggests that the arm neurons could connect to each other somewhat without necessarily going through the central brain. Like there might even be some ability to bypass it as needed. And this might just be sort of more of an interconnected web than the top down thing we're used to. Which is amazing, because when we think about our brain, like we do a lot of things with our bodies that feel like we're not thinking about, right? But that's just because we're not consciously aware of thinking about it. Like when we're walking, moving something, you're not really thinking like, now I move this leg and now I move that leg. But that's just sort of your conscious experience. Like you're, you know, you have this feedback between your brain

and your leg muscles and your nerves. There's even sort of this proprioception, like these cells that communicate position in space to your brain. Even if you're not consciously aware of it, your brain is still doing the work. In octopuses, it sounds like a lot of this stuff doesn't actually need to go to their central brain. It is just being processed in these sort of dispersed brains throughout its body, which is really interesting. Yeah, that could be the whole 100 podcasts. That could be the whole thing.

Like, how do they think? How do they feel? Do they feel like they have nine identities? Yet another number here is three, because it turns out octopuses have three hearts. New Scientist magazine says that there are two peripheral hearts that pump the octopus's blood past their gills to pick up oxygen from water through the gills, and then there's a third central heart to circulate that oxygenated blood. So not only do they not have brains structured the way we do, they also don't have hearts structured the way we do. So either the literal or figurative

version of thinking and having a self, octopuses just do it differently. It's a whole different setup. It's why that internet headline framing you see sometimes of aliens is like a little bit fair because that's different, man. That's not from the earth we're used to up here on the land. No, I mean, I feel like that is an apt thing. I think I've even said that on my podcast, that if you want to know, like, the closest intelligent life form we have on earth that is kind of like an alien, I think would be an octopus, because it's very distant from us evolutionarily, and it's smart. So, like, there are plenty of things that are extremely far from us in terms of evolution,

but are maybe a bacteria. So they're not necessarily intelligent. But an octopus is intelligent. It's complex, and it developed these things almost entirely independent evolutionary path, which is really, really interesting. And it's one of the pieces of evidence that I use sort of to argue that if there are planets that could support life and you have the necessary ingredients for life, I think the chance that some form of intelligent life,

like an octopus developing, is pretty, pretty good. That makes sense. Yeah. I guess that and crabs, right? There's the earth evolution thing where stuff gets crab shaped over time. Crabs, crabs, crabs, crabs, crabs. Yes. Nature loves the shape of a crab and things keep independently or in parallel evolution evolving to be crab shaped from spiders to various crustacean species, various arthropods. Someday humans, maybe we're going to go crab. This is also why Spongebob is such a rich text, because the Krusty Krabs owner and first

employee are the two most effective shapes of being, right? Like, that's pretty cool. That's a good business choice. Yes. Yes. God, I can hear the scuttle of Mr. Krabs right now, just in a loop in my little legs going and they have that like scuttling soundtrack. Um, I thought I'd never have to remember that again, but thank you, Alex. Now it's now it's stuck in my head. These next couple of numbers are about terminology stuff. Because it turns out there's two interesting things here with that and with how humans speaking English talk about them.

One is that we'll probably use tentacles and arms pretty interchangeably about octopuses. But I think arms is the less famous name for these eight limbs that octopuses have yeah apparently tentacles are usually a longer thinner limb with suckers only near the ends and arms are the term for what octopus limbs are which are shorter and stronger and suckers on most of the length of it so a lot of like scientists and others will call them arms, turns out. Yeah, because like squid have both arms and tentacles, right? Yeah. And the ones I don't like are the tentacles, I think. Yeah. This is why Squidward is the cross between an octopus and a squid, because he's got a pair of tentacles as well as arms. Yeah. And it's usually depicted with six limbs.

So, you know, there's a lot going on there. Yeah. Whereas octopuses, as their name implies, have eight arms. And that brings us to the other terminology thing, because the number for that is four. And four is the number of different ways that modern English speakers say the plural form of the word octopus. And as folks have heard, I've pretty much stuck to octopuses. That's me. What I say, too. Good. You know, you and me are great.

And then there are some people on the Internet who... We're objectively the best at saying octopuses. saying octopuses. It turns out, like as I was looking into this topic, learning about it, some people on the internet are militant about how to say the plural form of the word octopus. And I want to emphasize how much we should all be nice to each other with a miniature takeaway number two. Do not let anybody be weird at you about your plural form of the word octopus, because everybody's drawing on some kind of Latin or Greek and putting it into English the best they can. There are four common ways people say it, and they're all at least a little bit valid. Like, they're all kind of drawing on a language thing.

But the four ways you hear are octopuses, which we've been using, also octopi, and then two pronunciations of a word, either octopodes or octopodes, depending on how they get to it. Octopodes is one I have not heard. I've heard octopodes, but octopodes is, that sounds like a Greek hero who like has eight arms and punches Zeus with all of them. Yeah, we should go write that later. It's awesome. But the reason there are so many ways English speakers say this plural is a weird mechanism with how the ancient Greek language also got adapted into Latin, and then how both of those got adapted into English. But all of it comes from an ancient compound word for eight foot. I know we're calling them

arms and tentacles, but the ancient word called them feet. Like, oh, there's an animal with eight feet. That's where we get the word octopus. It's also where we get the word millipedes, right? Because that's a thousand feet. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's these very similar connections between these two wiggly animals in our language. Wiggly and squiggly. I used to not like millipedes because we had a lot of them in our backyard when I was growing up. And like I'd feel a tickle on my leg and I'd look down and the marching of many little feets going up, going up my leg. And I wasn't a huge fan of that. That upset me. I'm glad I didn't live in a millipede region, I guess.

I'd never had that experience and it would probably leave me with some stuff. Yeah. I like them. I don't know if I want them on me. I like them. I don't know if I want them on me. Link in a bunch of sources, Merriam-Webster's dictionary, dictionary.com, the Ocean Conservancy, and some more about just how this word works, octopus. Octopus is a Latinized form of the Greek words for eight and for foot put together in a compound word. And so then what people speaking English have done is either used the usual way we translate Latin words, or the usual way we translate Greek words, or the usual way we translate Latinized Greek words.

Yeah. And so that's why there's many plurals hanging out. And in most cases, Latinized forms of Greek words get pluralized with an ES ending, which would be octopuses. And that's why I have opted for that one out of all the options. But an I ending is often used for Latin words. Also, apparently octopi is the earliest printed version in English. Merriam-Webster says that there's early 1800s examples of octopi in writing. And then either octopodes or octopodes, which are spelled the same, that is probably coming from English speakers trying to be overly correct about

adapting Greek and kind of skipping the Latin part. So, you know, all of these are broadly fine, especially because everybody knows what you're talking about, whichever one you use. And so, you know, I celebrate anyone who has a huge passion for one of these specifically, but you can let it go when other people use the other ones. It's fine. They're all just... Not me. I'm team octopuses, and I'm going to die on that hill.

What if I'm saying all this be cool stuff as a trick so we can spring a surprise attack on the octopi people? Like they let their guard down, you know? We strike at dawn and then everyone waves eight weapons, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's much like an octopus's arms just kind of coming in from the side like a pincer movement. Ah, we're back to crabs. Oh, no. Everything is crabs.

That's the gist of this, especially Internet thing about plurals. This is also oddly one of my favorite stories about English being a living language, right? The language we are speaking to in this podcast, a language you probably understand. English is a living language. If people use a word a lot, it pretty much just becomes part of English. There's no quote unquote right or wrong when it comes to the language. One of my favorite linguists is Gretchen McCullough, who hosts the podcast Lingthusiasm and has written extensively about modern and internet English. She says, quote, I think that it can come as a tremendous relief to realize that you don't have to be angry about language. You don't have to be annoyed about people doing something different from you. End quote.

Yes. And also, it turns out the ancient world is just amazingly connected to octopuses. You know, the ancient world gave us these words, but I'm also going to link a digital resource from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, because they obtained a large jar made by the Mycenaean civilization on the modern island of Crete. It's a jar, next number, nearly 3,500 years old. 3,500 year old jar with amazing octopus art on it. And yeah, it speaks to how long humans have been connected to these animals that are usually deep under the ocean and being weird. We've still met them and been fascinated by them. I'm looking at this jar and it's a typical jar, but the octopus art is adorable. jar and it's a typical jar, but the octopus art is adorable. I mean, there are some very, very cute species of octopuses. One of the cutest, the blue ring octopus is something you absolutely don't want to touch because it'll kill you dead.

Yeah, they're weirdly incredibly deadly, those guys. There's even a number here more than 1,000 times because the blue-ringed octopus has saliva that is more than 1,000 times more toxic than a similar quantity of cyanide. Yeah. So look out. Don't let them bite you. Look out. The thing that makes my butt pucker the most seeing on the internet is someone taking a photo of them holding a blue ring octopus because they think it looks cool. And they do look very cool. They're bright yellow with these blue rings. They're very, very pretty. And they're little, so they seem harmless, right? Like they fit in the palm of your hand. But yeah, if it bites you, I don't know, man. I think that's it. I think it's very hard to get you to the hospital on time. Basically, the treatment for it, as far as I know, is just like replace your fluids,

try to keep you alive. There's not really an antitoxin that I'm aware of. That's right. And it turns out people often get good care, but it seems like also there are probably unrecorded deaths from this. Because according to Newsweek, another number here is three. Allegedly, there are three confirmed human deaths due to the blue-ringed octopus's toxin. But there's no anti-venom or anti-toxin. There's just keeping an eye on you, supplying you with oxygen and making sure you keep

breathing while you pass this through. The toxin is called tetrodotoxin. Very toxic, but also this animal is so small. Apparently most adults will receive an amount where if there's medical intervention right away, they'll be okay. It's just a horrible experience and you have to get that intervention. And also these live in the waters near Australia, the blue-ringed octopus. So that's the specific region to watch out for them. Again, there's hundreds of these octopus species and the blue-ringed octopus is very small. The adults are about 22 centimeters long or less than nine inches. And apparently other species that are not so toxic

can be as small as less than one inch across. In the case of a small adult in the star sucker pygmy octopus species. It's so cute, little and tiny. Yeah, there's internet pictures of it on a fingertip, a human fingertip, you know. So it's pretty good. It's really cool. Yeah. There's internet pictures of it on a fingertip, a human fingertip, you know, so it's pretty good. It's really cool. Yeah. Uh, thing about like, I don't, I don't want people to be super afraid of the blue ringed octopus though. Cause like they are not going to like seek you out

and bite you for no reason. Uh, they generally don't want to spend their toxin, uh, if they don't have to, cause it's, you know, it is a resource that they want to conserve. So if you don't handle them, you're going to be fine. Yeah, that's right. And it's a rare thing. Enjoy yourself in the ocean and everything. It's good. Yeah. Yeah.

Just leave them alone and they will most likely leave you alone. Yeah. And another number here is two, because that is the number of parts of an octopus beak. Yes. parrot, which is also very strange. And it also led me to a very adorable Google result where people ask if octopuses are related to birds. And the result just kindly walked people through. Absolutely not. Just octopuses and parrots both came up with this beak. They are otherwise mega different. They're not related at all. I mean, another amazing instance of independent evolution of the beak in the parrot or other bird species and then in octopuses. I mean, it's, you know, it's definitely different in its structure and sort of the mechanism of action in terms of the muscles, but very similar, weirdly similar.

That's right. And also it's strong enough to crunch apart prey like crabs and clams. And octopuses also will often use paralyzing saliva to catch prey. And so that's why the blue-ringed octopus has this toxic saliva. It's not out to get you. It's just living in the ocean hunting stuff. And it's one of many octopus species that toxify an animal in order to then eat it with its beak. Yeah. Especially something little like the blue-ringed octopus that is beneficial to be able to incapacitate prey that might otherwise be a little too strong for it to do so. No, I'm just rooting for octopuses. This feels great.

Yeah. Go, little guy, rooting for octopuses. This feels great. Yeah. Go, little guy, go. Use that neurotoxin. Yeah. And folks, that's a heck of a lot of numbers and a few takeaways. So we're going to take a short break and come back with some more about this eight-armed, nine-brained animal. folks very quick plug here because you might enjoy it sifpod.store is a website and sifpod.store is the merch store for this podcast we have t-shirts for the show and posters for the show sifpod.store leads you to the website of Topotico,

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And one more time, that funny website name is SifPod.store, because a website can end in.store. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, One you have no choice but to embrace

because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And folks, we are back with a mystery. Ooh, mystery fun.

Because the next number here is 106. That's a specific number? Yeah. What happened is, a few years ago, there was a research team that sent an underwater camera 14,000 feet into the ocean's depths, and it reached the bottom of the Fram Strait, which is an Arctic sea passage between Greenland and Svalbard. And their camera observed 106 matching octagon shapes drawn into the floor of the ocean. Aliens. Underwater aliens.

Aliens. Underwater aliens. That's right, internet headline. Underwater aliens, aka octopuses. It turns out they said, hey, what's going on with this? And then a German university research team, new study in June 2023, they shared observations and camera footage of an octopus species making these octagon shapes. So that's very on the nose for them. Are they just kind of like sitting and then like sweeping each of their legs into the sand or something? It seems too good to be true for an octagon to be made by an octopus. Exactly. Like octopuses and people who make stop signs are the famous octagon things in the world. And it was one of them. Yeah.

This is from an amazing piece by Sabrina Imbler at Defector.com. They say that there is a serrated species of octopus called Ceratuthis mulleri. It's one of the only ones that lives in Arctic waters. And octopuses are usually in warmer waters, but there are octopus species in every ocean. And this Arctic waters octopus, Ceratuthis mulleri, it is gelatinous, it is inkless. And so the way they hunt for food is they sort of descend all the way to the bottom of the ocean, plant their eight arms, which have webbing between them, like plant their eight arms on the floor of the ocean, and then just sort of suck up anything that's on the ground right there. And then this leaves behind an octagon print on the floor of the ocean. this leaves behind an octagon print on the floor of the ocean.

So it's like the Roomba technique, but it's kind of a stationary Roomba. Yeah. It's like, it couldn't be just that, like, a little octagon-shaped thing suckered itself to the bottom of the ocean. And yes, that is what it is. That's it. Yeah. That's it. That's so cute.

Just this little guy just going, and then sucking things up from the bottom of the ocean yeah just like the funniest most straightforward uh behavior you could yeah yeah yeah yeah it just it seems like something from a cartoon octopus's are one of the wackier animals aren't they it's the it's the arms that wiggle around. They're the inflatable, wacky arms of the ocean, just with even more arms to be wacky. But yeah, it's interesting because some octopuses have very distinct arms that are all separate, but this one seems like it's almost like a membranous skirt connects all the arms. That's right.

It turns out there's a set of octopus species where it's a set of webbed arms and sort of a gelatinous body and no ink sac. And I guess a little bit like jellyfish, but also like they have a dress on. You know, it's a very specific and willowy, wafty kind of octopus. I want to see them twirl like Maria in The Sound of Music with their little membrane skirt. It's very, very cute. Wow, that's really the vibe. I was thinking of Maria in a West Side Story as well. A lot of Marias out here are a very... Maria, I guess is the name for a real squirrel twirling lady. That's right. Did I say squirrel twirling lady? I meant to say skirt twirling lady, but I can't say words. Look, we're trying to do biology and musical theater. We're spinning a lot

of plates. We're doing great. Maybe they also twirl squirrels. I don't know. That's what I'd do if I had a squirrel. She's like, the hills are alive. And the squirrels just like, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep. And more octopuses being fun underwater. The next number here is 347 BC. Because in 347 BC, the Greek thinker Aristotle recorded an observation of the male octopus's sexual organ. And, you know, often Aristotle is just guessing at stuff, but this was more or less correct. He observed a specialized arm that we now call a hectocotylus. Because it turns out in most male octopuses of their species, one of their arms has the organs for sperm production, and they reproduce by reaching that into a part of the female octopus to fertilize thousands of eggs all at once.

That's kind of interesting. It's like a handshake, but a lot more than a handshake. I guess for octopuses, it really is true that if you hold hands, you can get pregnant. Wow. And then I guess the one way it's more intense than that 1950s concept is that in one set of octopus species called the argonaut, the male can detach that arm and sort of leave it behind. And throws it like towards the female because he's afraid of getting eaten. It's really funny. It's like, ah, here's my sperm.

Bye. Yeah. Some octopus species are also cannibalistic, which is part of the not being so social element of octopus life. You might get eaten by another octopus. Look, I mean, it is a type of going out to dinner, just one that only one person goes home for. I would be so mad if I was a waiter and I seated a couple and then one of them started eating the other. I'd be like, well, I'm not going to get any. Like the check's going to be a dollar for iced tea.

I'm not going to get any tip. Man, they're going to be full. Don't fill up on bread and don't fill up on your date. Yeah. Yeah. Like I work for tips, man. Come on. Just chomp, chomp, chomp.

Here's a tip and then you throw your reproductive organ at them. And then related to all that, there's another number here, July 3rd, 2023. So a couple weeks ago, July 3rd, 2023, that's when researchers announced the third ever discovery of an undersea octopus nursery. Because another takeaway here, takeaway number three. Octopuses are pretty antisocial, but we've discovered a few undersea octopus breeding colonies. And this is probably not an example of octopuses being more social than we expected, but they are tolerating each other at specific advantageous locations for laying eggs

and breeding. Yeah, it's really interesting because it's almost like you could see this as maybe a step in evolution towards being more social, but they're not there yet. They're still very introverted. They're still all just like busy playing Diablo 4 on their little octopus computers, not paying attention to each other. But they don't, you know, they kind of, they might have these sort of brief interactions

and then they get really shy and like move away. That's the next time I lose at Diablo 4, I'm going to claim my opponent had eight arms. Or seven if they reproduced recently. They're male. But yeah. Yeah, there's some headlines that have called these locations Octopolis or Octlantis. You know, fun stuff about an octopus city under the sea. It's like we say this is

octopuses finding a space where they all want to be and this new discovery the key source is npr they're also covering research from a non-profit called the schmidt ocean institute hey folks the former ceo of google eric schmidt and his, Wendy, are funding a bunch of research, and I'm going to feel like it's from me. The Schmidt Ocean Institute is going on now. So Schmidt with a wife named Wendy, and you're a Schmidt with a wife named Brenda. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's all coming. It's, hmm. Are you, are you, did you try to, like, ditch your old identity as a Google, what, co-founder?

He, he was like the CEO who worked with the two co-founders. Yeah. He's like the third guy who made all the money. You're really good at speaking in the third person there. I didn't say this on the recent Name Alex episode, but consistently, if people mishear my name, Alex, they think I said Eric. And I kind of get it, but it's surprising, you know, that that's not the name I would think they would hear. I would think that they would hear Lex Luthor or something like that.

And run screaming, yeah. When the Schmidt team, they announced the discovery in July 2023 of a giant breeding group of a deep sea octopus species called moose octopus. And they breed near a warm hydrothermal vents on the Dorado outcrop near Costa Rica. That's a big discovery because the previous two octopus groups were in a different place and a different species. In 2009 and again in 2017, researchers found the gloomy octopus species. Yet another fun name. The gloomy octopus congregating and breeding in a location in Jervis Bay near Sydney, Australia. The first find was on a piece of discarded metal, and they just thought

that was a fluke thing. But then they found a whole nother group of octopuses elsewhere in Jervis Bay. And the group was 10 to 15 octopuses at a time, so not an Atlantis or something. But they were finding that these octopuses only live about three years, and each successive generation would leave behind burrows or piles of shells, and then the next generation would use those to build their own homes and burrows. And it's vaguely social, vaguely urban, in a way we didn't think octopuses did. I mean, it's interesting, because when you look at social species of terrestrial animals, a lot of time it is limited resources that draws them together. So even there is a theory for eusocial animals,

which are animals like ants or prairie dogs, where it's like you have this hierarchy and you have sort of the soldiers or the sisters kind of working together for the good of the colony, and you have like a breeding pair. The idea behind that is that if you have conditions where resources are scarce, it's actually more advantageous to like pool resources. And even if you're not the one breeding, a lot of these genes that you actually have end up getting passed down. And so it'll result in someone like you who is more you social being in the next generation. So it's-

Cool. Octopuses have been around a really long time. It doesn't mean, just because we see some of these proto-social behaviors in octopuses where it's like, especially like at the bottom of the ocean, when you're near hydrothermal vents, you have limited area that is either not too cold and desolate and not too hot. So you have kind of

these like Goldilocks areas around these hydrothermal vents. And so it would make sense that they would kind of congregate in an area that is because basically real estate is limited down there where you can live. But, you know, it doesn't mean they would necessarily ever evolve into the next stage of being social. But, you know, give them another few million years and maybe. I like that because so many of them are highly intelligent as much as we can rate animal intelligence. Like they have the mental horsepower to hang out, but they just really aren't choosing to and sometimes eat each other.

But if they're gathering in these same advantageous spots, maybe they get there. The key is you would need some evolutionary pressure on them to be social. So you'd need some kind of advantage for their offspring for them to be more pro-social. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting to see such an intelligent animal that seems to do behaviors that you see in more social animals like playing, you know, potentially dreaming, have been

curious, like they seem very curious about like humans and stuff. And so you'd think it has all the markings of an animal that you would think would be more social, but it's, it just doesn't have the necessity to be social. It doesn't have the motivation to be evolutionary motivation that is to be social. And so it generally isn't unless it's on MDMA, right? Unless it is high out of its nine minds. Unless it is high out of its nine minds. It is strange that one team is like, we can make octopuses love, and another team is like, we can make octopuses want to live forever. There's a lot of scientists out there who are... And if you combine them, you create a new god. Right.

Like, we are so close to making these our co-super animals of Earth, you know, like we're so close if we want to do it. I would love an all-knowing, all-loving, super being octopus. I would probably become religious if that were the case. There's one last takeaway for the band show, and it is fun in the context of that idea because takeaway number four octopuses punch fish and possibly for no reason yeah for funsies yeah now i've heard about uh octopuses punching fish uh i think actually from one of our sister podcasts, Just the Zoo of Us, we talked about octopuses punching fish. Shout out to them.

Yeah, Alan and Christian are so great. And also, I love that people are studying this, observing this. I feel like it's mostly a product of good video cameras that we are now understanding that just through some recent observations we've seen octopuses following fish around which we knew they did but then also using one of their arms to suddenly punch them yes it's another human-like behavior but also weird that's octopus stuff it's sometimes human-like and also really weird. Yeah, there's one theory that when they're with these fish, that sometimes they do kind of like co-hunting behaviors with fish. So there will be like a reef, right?

And you have little fish trying to escape in the reef. And then if you have one fish hunting that is like blocking one entrance, and then the octopus who's like squeezing its tentacles into all the nooks and crannies the fish and the octopus can kind of it's a friendship of convenience like in badgers and coyotes where like you have a burrow you have some prairie dogs or groundhogs in these burrows and then if you have a coyote on one end of the burrow and then a badger digging up the other entrance or exit to the burrow, then at least one of them is going to get a tasty snack. Theory with octopus and the fish is that if the octopus is annoyed that the fish is maybe like eating more than it should, maybe it gives it a punch. maybe like eating more than it should. Maybe it gives it a punch, but it's unclear if that's actually what's going on because sometimes it just seems to punch it randomly. So we're not really sure why it does that. If it's just doing it for fun, if it just gets annoyed with the fish,

if it's like trying to put the fish in its place, like remember, I could punch you at any time. So don't get too cocky here. It's hard to know exactly what is going through the octopus's mind. I would definitely buy it if the octopus just thinks it's funny because octopus is also like there's octopuses in like tanks and aquariums will sometimes play. So like they take like an empty pill bottle that's buoyant and then they toss it into like this stream. an empty pill bottle that's buoyant, and then they toss it into like this stream, like the water filter has kind of a jet stream, and they'll like basically play fetch with themselves where they toss it over and over. So they seem to enjoy stimulation like that. So yeah, maybe they just think it's fun, or maybe they're punishing the fish. Who knows? Yeah, that's all exactly it. And I want to quote a researcher here, Eduardo Sampaio of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, who observed all those possible reasons for it and also says there are different octopus punching styles.

Some punches are almost like a small boop. And the other ones that even the whole arm curls up and uncurls afterwards, you know, like the motion of a boxer doing a punch, end quote. And yeah, he says like exactly what he said. It could be to guide fish hunting. It could be to punish a fish and get the food first. But in some cases, the octopus punches the fish, quote, with no discernible incentive. So they could just be playing whack-a-mole at an arcade. You know, they could just be bullying.

It could be just goofing around. Just doesn't like the way the fish is looking at it. It's like, what are you looking at? And then they punch. And who can blame them? Basically, every fish face is freaky. You know, I'm not into it. Yeah. Unblinking. It's walleye to literally forget it. Yeah.

The lesson we've learned on today's show is that Alex is pro punching fish. Again, bring us back to the rich text of SpongeBob. The anchovies are very funny, but also that's a flat face. There's not a lot going on there. And if I was an octopus, I'd just be like, get out of here. Please stop. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, in some octopus species, consciousness might be spread across the equivalent of nine brains.

Takeaway number two, do not let anybody be weird at you about your plural form of the word octopus. Takeaway number three, octopuses are pretty antisocial and sometimes cannibals, but we're also discovering some undersea octopus breeding colonies. Takeaway number four, octopuses punch fish, and possibly for no reason. Plus a ton of numbers about octopus hearts, beaks, toxins, mysteries, and, you know, enough stuff to get us up to what's eight takeaways, basically, right? Perfectly. On theme for Octopus. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now, if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members get a bonus show every week where we

explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is a slew of amazing octopus lore, either from mythology or from modern security cameras. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 13 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's special audio. It is just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include digital resources from Professor Gretchen Rolwag and Bolins of Washington State University,

further resources from NPR, London's Natural History Museum, the South Carolina Aquarium, the Ashmolean Museum, also the book The Soul of an Octopus by naturalist and writer Cy Montgomery, and hey, the podcast Creature Feature by the great Katie Golden. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode.

And hey, join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There's a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 21.

That is about the topic of musk oxen. It's me and Katie Golden and Elliot Kalin, our buddy from the Flophouse, to discover that, fun fact, some scientists studying musk oxen do it wearing full-body polar bear costumes. So I recommend that episode. I, of course, recommend Creature Feature, Katie Golden's weekly podcast about animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members,

and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then maximum fun a worker-owned network of artists own shows supported directly by you