The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 103 - Octopus Wrestling

Episode Date: August 6, 2015

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the North America Octopus and the sport of octopus wrestling. SOURCESTOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCH

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Dollop. This is an American History podcast. Each week I read a story to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is about. He's my girl. What? Do you want to look who to do? I'll do one buck. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Stay okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come a tickly podcast. Okay. You are queen fakie of hate uptown. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle. And do what? That's right. Oh my God. No. Has he done my friend? No. No. Aristotle. No, no. Like how you're trying to make it work. Aristotle. I think you

should shout it more. Like if I were you I'd be like Aristotle. Aristotle. Did not think much of the octopus. Greatest opening line ever. Okay. That we've ever done. Oh he didn't huh? Quote the octopus is a stupid creature for it will approach a man's hand if it be lowered in the water. I'm honestly so far on the octopus's side. Right? Yeah. I think Aristotle was a fucking idiot. What's up his ass about an octopus? Well apparently if an animal comes over to you and is like hey what's going on then he thinks that animal. What an asshole. Idiot. Get away. He thinks it's a fucking moron. He hated dogs. Aristotle hated dogs. Get the fuck out of here you dumb ass.

And what is his theory about the hand? If you put your hand in the water the octopus will come over to it. Oh okay. Like a good water dog. Sure. Yeah. When you like scratch them in the right place like four legs start moving. Yeah. But octopi octopuses are now considered to be very intelligent creatures. Okay. Yeah. Scientific journals now publish research papers on octopi octopuses learning on their personality and on their memory. Octopuses can learn they can process complex information and they behave in complex ways. You're getting a little bit of biology right now. Yeah. Actually not a lot of people know octopuses hated

Aristotle. Yeah. That cognitive. Oh yeah. There was almost a huge war. Yeah. Yeah. They always were like what sort of dumb ass puts his hand near an octopus. Fucking idiot. Idiot. In the 1950s biologists demonstrated for the first time that octopuses have massive brains. Yeah. That whole thing is full of brains. It makes sense. Why does it make sense? Because it's got a huge. I mean where you think its brain is is abnormally enormous. Okay. The head. The head. A difficult mollusk has 20,000 neurons in the brain while the octopus has half a billion neurons. Now it's just showboating. Yeah. Well now. Yeah. Compared to cephalopod. Yeah. Talking about serious

business. Yeah. The neurons in its head are masked into complex lobes the same way human brains are. And octopuses have the biggest brains of all invertebrates. Okay. Uh-huh. In the late 1950s Oxford biologist NS Sutherland decided to see just how smart octopuses were. Oh boy. Now we can. You don't know. You don't know yet. No but it feels like we're dipping. I don't know. We're dipping now. He showed them. You just put your hand in the water and I'm approaching. He showed them. He showed them two shapes and rewarded them for touching one but not the other. They learned to tell a rectangle in a horizontal position from the same rectangle

rotated 90 degrees. It's a fucking smart invertebrate. Yeah. I think I'd have trouble. Take that shit Aristotle. Yeah. Once they had figured it out the octopuses knew to select any horizontal rectangle they saw no matter how big or small it was. They were learning what to learn. I'm starting to now worry that they're going to be like the terminators. This is a little bit like artificial. We're teaching them a little too much. Maybe. Maybe don't teach some of how long until an octopus is torturing me for trying for deciding which rectangles right. This is where it's going. Oh no. Over the years octopuses

have shown themselves to have great memories. Canadian biologist Jennifer Mather threw toys into octopuses tanks and watched as the octopuses blew them around with jets of water. So they were playing which is a sign of intelligence. Okay. Makes sense. Mather also argued that octopuses have consciousness. All right. Not like ours but a simpler form called primary consciousness. Basically they can combine their perceptions with their memories to have a coherent feel for what's happening to them at any moment. Wow. All right. So calamari just got a lot less tastier didn't it everybody. Not

so cute now is it. You're eating Einstein fish. Every ring you bite into is like biting into a memory. Yeah. Well not to mention that in a lot of the restaurants in the states they're using anuses. So if calamari wasn't ruined for you prior to that here's a cherry. Is that true. Yeah. There was an article a couple years ago about how places. It's anus. It's octopus anus. No. Not even octopus anus. What. Yeah. Like kind of anus. Dude just like rando. Like pig anus. That was just not a dollop that you're doing. Actually this is the. This is called. Pig anus doesn't taste like calamari. How the fuck do you know what pig anus tastes like

doctor. Trust me bro. Listen sometimes they wouldn't want to eat on the farm. I grew up on a farm and I can tell you what a raw pig anus. Dave no I said milk the cows. Milk the cows Dave. I'm getting getting this business done first. I'm going to make all the pigs come. Do your chores then play the game. For example in an experiment Mather found that when octopuses look out out of their dens some prefer to sit with their left eye facing out while others with their right. It's just how comfy they are. They're like I'm gonna go and do this. This is the eye. Okay. That's not a great one. Yeah that that doesn't that to me

doesn't say super smart. That just most animals can just be like I'm comfy like this. Yeah the eyeball one's not great. Yeah. All right. So poke the hole in that one. Orion magazine wrote about another observation. Oreo magazine. Orion. Orion. Oreo. A great magazine. Well it's a magazine about cookies. Yeah. Sometimes they cover invertebrates. Yeah. This month double stuff. Too much. This month's the sea sponge and double stuff. One octopus Mather was watching had just returned home and was cleaning the front of the den with its arms. Okay. Then suddenly it left the den, crawled a meter away, picked up one particular rock

and placed the rock in front of the den. Two minutes later the octopus ventured forth to select a second rock. Then it chose a third. Attaching suckers to all the rocks the octopus carried the load home, slid through the den opening and then carefully arranged the three rocks in front. Then it went to sleep. What? Yeah. What's it? Made a little rock wall. Decorating. Decorating. Yeah. Well it's like dudes might come in here. So I'm gonna put some rocks in front. Those rocks far away were like it's target. It's the same way some people might put on an eye thing. Eye mask or like an ear. Oh that was your right. Sure. That's his white noise. Yeah that's his white noise. Okay. Then

the octopus went to sleep. What she says what the octopus was thinking seemed obvious. These rocks are enough. Good night. That's what she interpreted as. I feel like that's not a scientific interpretation. Totally not. She's maybe maybe a little too close to him at this point. How long until she's jerking one off? Let's ask that question. I mean coming. She deduced that the octopus quote must have some concept of what it wanted to make itself feel safe to go to sleep and the octopus knew how to get what it wanted by employing foresight planning and even tool use. Fair. Fair. And another experiment has been shown that

octopuses learned geography. When they were put in tanks with different landmarks like plastic jugs plates of pebbles and clumps of algae they were able to find the quickest route to the hidden exit in the bottom of a tank using the landmarks. And when the landmarks were moved around they quickly learned a new way. When the landmarks were put back in the original places the octopuses remembered the way showing they could know more than one maze at once. A lot of the underlying a lot of... they were just really fucking with these octopuses. Yes. A lot. The octopuses are like can I just go to the hole? The algae

was there. Why do I have to escape so fast? What the fuck's going on? Where are the rocks? Poor shit. But three-fifths of an octopus neurons are not in the brain. They're in its arms which leads to some pretty weird shit. Oh boy. Researchers who cut off an octopus's arm found that not only does the arm crawl away but if the arm meets a food item it grabs it and tries to pass it to where the mouth would be if the arm were still attached to its body. Holy shit. That's crazy. That's the most fucked up experiment of all. It's still handing the food to the mouth that's not attached to it. Even though it's just an arm. That's so scary. You're cutting off arms and they're still thinking? The arms are

thinking. The arms thinking. Yes. The arms are not the arms out on its own. It's got to get a job. I'm going to have to get a smaller place. It puts one rock in front of its place. It crashes. I know what its arm was thinking. All of this means that people some time ago treated the octopus as something to fuck with for fun. That's not surprising. I am of course talking about octopus wrestling. God you're such a motherfucker. You really are. Why? Because, because like if you're me you're sitting here just like going like you know if I just sit here and I'm just learning about the octopus for a little while that's fine. Yeah that was a nice little lesson. And then when I'm to my heart starting to get a little warm

you just rip it out again. Yeah. It's like Mike the Chicken. Do you remember Mike the Chicken? Yeah I remember Mike the Chicken. Yeah we heard the history of chickens and then I learned about a fucking headless chicken who still had a head. The idea of octopus wrestling first to cold in the late 40s. Jesus Christ. Due to an essay in April 1949 issue. So you're just telling me about this beautiful creature how intelligent it is and now let's hear how the nightmare it was in in recent history. In the April 1949 issue of Modern Mechanics called quote octopus wrestling is my hobby by Willman Menard. Who put that in Mechanics Monthly? Menard. What? Look it's clearly some sort of great adventure magazine. Yeah uh-huh. Menard went to Tahiti to take part in what he called quote an ocean

wide hunt of octopus. He described the intelligent creatures as treacherous. Quote according to legend sickness overwhelmed the population and slimy monsters crawled from the deep lagoons to devour entire villages. Interesting. Okay so first of all if you're an American dude going over to Tahiti in the 40s you know that's bullshit. Yeah yeah. You're not walking around going alright let's kill the octopi because they came here and fucking murdered all your friends. Yeah. But for me wrestling and killing the treacherous octopus was simply a hobby and I had crossed the Pacific to engage in this fascinating pastime. It's not a pastime just going out and fucking killing a thing is not a hobby. Just for the fuck of it. After locating the best octopus hunter on the island named

Rue they went into the ocean armed with 12 foot long barb spears made of iron. Jesus. Well I mean you know unfair. Jading. At this point you have to question the definition of wrestling. Wait this is what the wrestling is. That's what he's calling it. He's calling that wrestling. He called it. What is he called wrestling. Octopus wrestling. And shakes. Octopus wrestling is my hobby. This is what he's calling wrestling. He's crazy. Rue had his own system for drawing the creature out retreating a short distance from the lair. He would take up his flute name of Vivo and play weird tunes upon it the way Hindu Fakir charms a cobra. His piping would soon attract the octopus from its cavern. First the globular homed head then the long tentacles with their double row of cup like suckers.

Out of curiosity the octopus would approach within striking distance. So they go in and they play some music and the octopus is like hey man that's cool what are you guys doing. And then he'd be like we're wrestling and put a spear through his head. In a split second our spears would speed into the revolting mass. The revolting mass is the is the intelligent creature. Yeah the head yeah yeah. Wait that is not wrestling. I don't even know what it is. It's not wrestling. Well it's their version of wrestling. It's more of a concert than it is wrestling. It's like wood stock. Yeah yeah. Then there would start to push. Then there would be a human like moan and the water would be clouded with sepia.

The long tentacles would flay the surface of the lagoon in savage fury as the monster tried to rid itself of our spears which were firmly embedded in its head. I think he doesn't know who the monster is. No he has no idea. The monster is the guy who's calling things the monster. Oh yeah yeah. This is much like Hitler and the Jews. Yeah okay. If necessary another spear would be dispatched into the writhing hulk. It took a long time to tire the octopus and we had to both hold firmly to the ropes attached to the end of the spears to prevent it from sinking to the bottom of the lagoon where it would be lost to us. You know I love documentaries on the ocean and the planet. I know. That's one of the reasons we did this one.

All you do is watch documentaries about animals. And now we're hearing about I mean this in like even when this has just been a downward spiral. Yeah. I thought at one point the wrestling was going to be like two of them in like some sort of aquatic cage match fighting each other in some weird fashion. And now we've got a guy who's an underwater tentacle charmer who's just fucking stabbing them. Menard went on to describe killing other octopuses in brutal fashion. Then he ended with this. Like to wrestle an octopus? I realize it all sounds like a loathsome sport but it's really more fun than hunting some poor harmless creature. When you wrestle and kill an octopus you're ridding the marine world of a treacherous enemy. Oh there we go. And you better watch your

step too for there's no such thing as a reckless octopus hunter either you're careful or you're dead. Oh my god. Because once you're down there it's man or octopus. Oh always. Everybody knows that. Oh yeah. How many friends do you know who have been killed by octopus? I mean I could count them on one octopus. I could count them on the one armor researcher cut off. That is now trying to feed the head that's miles away. I mean you just got to think of that arm's life. Hello. Oh yeah. Hello. Arms don't have any good life. Body. Also describing an octopus as something that's going to kill you is fucking insane. Yeah. Basically an animal's mining its own business. You play a tune it comes out and goes that's a cool tune and then you kill it and you're like yeah. But this is

also around the time like where there was like movies were almost like anti octopus propaganda in a way too. There were movies and stories as a guy wrote a true story about an octopus almost taking a shit down. Like it was like a violent animal like it was portrayed that way in society. It just looked weird that's why. Well people also used to have owls on their fucking hats. A few years later stories of octopus wrestling on the west coast of the US began to appear in newspapers around the country. On November 24th 1957 the Toledo Blade published an article about a world championship octopus wrestling match that drew a crowd of 200 into coma Washington. Unreal. A world championship. Quote octopus wrestling has developed an enthusiastic following in these parts.

The participants are skin divers and the rules are simple. Competitors are divided into three man teams. Three heats are held with one man from a team entering in each heat. When the wrestlers turn comes he dives into the puget sound unarmed and tries to find an octopus to drag to the surface. Jesus. I mean like at least they're not killing it. They're just dragging it up to the surface. Yeah. Where. Yeah. Where. What. Is that. But then. Then do they kill them. I don't know. Let's find out. No. They're going to kill them and I will. They're obviously going to kill them. I don't understand this time and this day and age and imagine what these octopus are intelligent. So they have to be communicating a little bit to each other.

Like. Listen. Hide in the rock. More rocks. Get more rocks. Decorate more. Over decorate your dens. The 1957 match was won by a tag team from Portland. The winners winners were determined by the total weight of the octopuses. Quote skin divers who use aqua lungs get one and a half points for every pound of live octopus they can put on the scales. Those who use just snorkels get three points per pound. Someone from the Portland team had dragged up an 80 pound octopus who was probably thinking what in the fuck is happening. I was sleeping in my hole. Hey I got a new friend. They just saw right through my three rocks. Yeah. Yeah. Octopuses are generally timid and only attack it provoked. The wrestling mostly just consisted of prying the octopus loose from

its den as it held on for dear life with its suction cups. Jesus wrestling. Jesus Christ. Why. Naturally a sport that has absolutely no merit and involves killing an interesting creature for no reason other than to get a medal caught on in popularity. Of course. Why not. Hey here's something really really dumb. Let's all do it. America every decade. By 1963 there was a world championship of octopus wrestling. No there wasn't. There was an asshole who pretended there was and dummies believed him. It was also held in Tacoma Washington and drew a crowd of 5,000 5,000 and it was televised. Where on what on what on channel shit. I mean you literally literally you could put me in that room over there for 10 minutes and I'll come in here with a hundred better shows than

that. It was also held. I did that. I mean shows I'll invent in those 10 minutes. But also remember they can't nobody can see what's happening under the water. The television cameras can't get on there. So what are they. So they're just watching. They're watching out of the water with an octopus. Right. Well that's first of all it's also not easy to cover. Like you can't cover that easily if you're a camera guy. No you can't you gotta wait in 1957. You gotta wait and watch for the there's no like all right he's moving up now. And the announcers would just be like and we're waiting to see if anybody comes out. Nobody's coming up with any on. Nobody is coming. Nobody is coming. Actually one of the divers is up and he doesn't have anything and he's going back down and now

there are no divers are up at the surface at all. They're all waiting. There's water. That is water. That is a wave. Never mind. I thought that was a man. I wasn't sure. You know the world octopus championships are brought to you by dumb shit. Dumb shit. The network that brought you the octopus championships. 111 divers took place in the waters off tilt low beach in the championship. The July 1963 edition of skin diving magazine called it a whale of a success. Oh man. And you get your own parking spot for that headline editor quote. They have good suction but if you get their arms and pull the suction cups go pop pop pop pop. They don't have a lot of holding strength said Gary Keeler. Now 75. Gary is one of the organizers of the event. You roll around

staging that you're fighting them. He said they're not very aggressive. I mean it's it's like basically like taking a paralyzed person from a hospital bed and being like I pinned him. And he had no idea was coming. Right. Yeah. But before you do that you play a little something on the recorder. I like music. At tilt low beach there were many octopuses because of the the fast water provided a lot of shellfish for them to eat. But just to make sure the event wasn't a bust they caught six six octopuses at other locations and planted them around the beach. So now it's like Hunger Games where they're just dropping things in just very confused octopuses that day about 20 octopuses were caught in the championship and the championship. The good news is most of

the octopuses were released were released back into the ocean. Well Dave I know one thing where there's the good news is no no no no no no no no no no. Show me the bad news that's masturbating around the corner. Well the bad news is that they didn't have therapists to help them talk them through this fucking insane experience they had because they have memories and they now are fucking scarred for life and they can't they can never be comfortable in their den again with three rocks in front of it because some fucking asshole is going to come in and pull them up bring them on to a beach in front of cameras and 5 000 ching people and throw it in a fucking aquarium. Yeah it just this whole thing just makes you realize how easy the octopuses on

the Flintstones did have it. The dishwasher seems stressful but that's so much easier than this. The octopuses were kept in aquariums until the match went over and then released. Some were given to the Seattle Aquarium. Kiefer said if they were transported quickly enough they wouldn't they would be harmed. So if they went if the truck there's traffic yeah that's dead. Just a quick rape. Oh and a couple of the octopus were eaten. Oh cool. Kiefer says his and his team won every octopus wrestling contest that was held so the guy who organized it won every contest. It's a fucking bullshit. And again winning what do you mean winning. Well he had the most pounds of octopus. Yeah in a competition that isn't is pointless. Seems pretty real to me. Yeah.

By the late 60s people became bored of watching guys carry octopuses out of the water having not been able to see the tragic grabbing that occurred below. The organizers and fans lost interest and moved on to other things. In 1976 Washington state made a law that made it illegal to quote molest or harass an octopus. Molest. What. Well it's their way of saying leave them alone. No one's fingering an octopus. Yeah. I mean though octopus wrestling still goes on in other places like on a Japanese game show currently. Not no surprise there. That is the country that recently had a game show where you had to sing karaoke while getting jerked off. Right. Right. So basically what we're saying is America a place where even the octopuses aren't safe.

But I will say also that like it's terrible but that is a lot of you know a lot of the way that animals are treated in this country especially but other countries is that they they're able to experience fear. Uh huh. I know that I'm fucking. I'm about to experience fear. Why. I don't know. I'm just like the right thing to say. All right. I'm just trying to draw a little bit of a parallel. You know. Well don't. That's my job. No. No. I can draw a parallel motherfucker. My job. You can find all the sources for this at the dollop sources the dash dollop dash sources dot squarespace dot com.