Today I learned something about octopuses. I never really though much about octopuses before; I knew they had 8 arms with suckers and could squirt ink, but that was about it. “Nothing to see here—move along”… Not so.
There are so many amazing little details about the world that strike me as interesting, intriguing even. Insignificant? Yes, but they add a bit of flavor to life. Take, for example, the Giant Pacific Octopus. I get random emails from Ocean Conservancy, and today I got one with the title of “Giant Pacific Octopus: Strong-Arm Charm.” It was an article about octopuses, and three things really stuck out at me.
1. The octopus has turquoise blood; This is the fact that I’m sure I’ll remember. Something about turquoise blood seems so alien and unearthly. Simple explanation: human blood is iron-based while octopus blood is copper-based, but blood is just one of those things I unquestioningly took for red. If nature were a writer, it would indubitably be a science-fiction writer.
2. If you think the turquoise blood was inspired, how about a donut-shaped brain? Yet another thing I took for granted, but what sounds like it could be a joke on the Simpson’s turns out to be fact. And apparently the donut shape serves the octopus well as it’s among the more intelligent of the fishes.
3. The octopus is colorblind, and is fittingly gray when at rest, yet it can shift the color of its entire body to shades of red and brown in a fraction of a second–the fastest color changer on the planet.
OK, I lied; there are more than 3 things I’m going to list because I don’t want to shortchange the octopus.
4. Octopuses have “personalities”–or at least they make it easy for humans to project a personality onto them. Never really thought of octopuses as much more than an unusual fish*.
5. They have over 2,000 suckers, the octopus tastes with its suckers, and over half of the octopus’s neurons are found in its arms.
6. Over half of what an octopus eats is turned into body mass.
7. The Giant Pacific Octopus can get quite large. Although the word “giant” was what got me to read about the thing, it ended up being the least interesting fact, no doubt partly because it didn’t come as a surprise. The largest recorded Giant Pacific Octopus had an arm-span of 30 feet and weighed about 600 pounds. This is rare, and most are just about 6 feet and 40-50lbs.
So if you’d like to read more about the Giant Pacific Octopus here’s what I read:
http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/News2?abbr=bpm_&page=NewsArticle&id=10870
*Note: I repeatedly refer to the octopus as a fish. It is not, and never has been, a fish. It is actually a mollusk in the phylum mollusca, so it is more of a clam or a snail than a fish.
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