Taxonomy Tournament: Cephalopod Finale!

Octopoda. This order is made up of octopuses, predatory marine creatures with eight limbs. Their soft body allows them to squeeze trhough small spaces. They are capable of camouflage and are among the most intelligent animals.

Nautilida. This order is made up of nautilis, which have a unique planispiral shell, and move via jet propulsion. They're morphologically veyr similar to their ancient relatives, and are often called living fossils.

John Singer Sargent, Two Octopi, 1885

Octopus tea cups

Just me or does knowing that snails are in the same animal group as octopuses kinda weird me out. Mollusca am I right.

Peachie, Bobbie and Candie Octopus (retired 2020)

Ko-fi / Instagram

a group of squids is a squad.

What should a group of octopi be called?

An Octopath Traveler Party.

You know something that's plural that we don't talk about nearly enough? The octopus! 😁

www.discovery.com/science/Octopus-arms

Florida Wildlife, January-February, 1981. Illustration by Kimberly Kerin.

Internet Archive

Motherly Sacrifices and Aquatic Angst Top This Year’s Ocean Art Photography Contest

Maya, Odell, Odyssey, and Storm Octopuses made by Jellycat !!

Taxonomy Tournament: Cephalopods

Octopoda. This order is made up of octopuses, predatory marine creatures with eight limbs. Their soft body allows them to squeeze trhough small spaces. They are capable of camouflage and are among the most intelligent animals.

Oegopsida. This order is made up of squid that have no tentacle pockets in their heads, and may have hooks on their tentacles. Members include the glass squid and the giant squid.

requested by anon

“Octopuses in at least two aquariums have learned to turn off the lights by squirting jets of water at the bulbs when no one is watching, and short-circuiting the power supply. At the University of Otago in New Zealand, this became so expensive that the octopuses had to be released back into the wild.”

Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds

Gretchen: I think the best-known example of do you do the source language versus the target language in terms of plural in English is a certain little creature with eight legs. Lauren: The octopus. Gretchen: The octopus. Lauren: Which I just avoid talking about in the plural at all to save myself a grammatical crisis. Gretchen: I admit that I have also done this. If you were gonna pluralise “octopus” as if it’s English, it would just be “octopuses.” It’s very easy. But there’s a fairly long-standing tradition in English of when a word is borrowed from Latin to make the plural the actual Latin thing. Because, historically, many English speakers did learn Latin, and so you want to show off your education by using the Latin form even though it’s in English. So, if you’re going to pretend that “octopus” is Latin, then you wanna say, “octopi.” However, there is yet a third complication, which is that “octopus,” in fact, is actually Greek – “octo” meaning “eight” and “pus” meaning “feet. So, Greek does not make these plural by adding I to it. In that case, there has recently become popular a yet even more obscure and yet even more pretentious, to be honest, plural. Lauren: Is there where you say, “octopodes”? Gretchen: Well, this is where I used to say, “octopodes.” But I have recently learned that, apparently, it is, for maximum pretentiousness, /aktaˈpodiz/. Lauren: You’ve out-pretentioused my out-pretentiousness.

Excerpt from Lingthusiasm episode ‘Many ways to talk about many things - Plurals, duals and more’

Listen to the episode, read the full transcript, or check out more links about morphology, syntax, and words. 

And suddenly the octopus is my spirit animal