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Articles & News Tagged “Octopus”

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Resources Celebrating World Octopus Day 2020 Photo

Resources Celebrating World Octopus Day 2020

It was World Octopus Day on 8 October, but there is perhaps no need for a specific day to celebrate these amazing creatures. Intelligent, charismatic and highly-evolved, octopus are amazing and sought-after subjects for underwater image makers. Their apparently infinitely variable appearance, and engaging behaviors allow for a huge variety of unique still and video images. Perhaps typically, Wetpixel presents a fashionably late guide to resources for finding out more about them.

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Expedition captures images of octopus at 7000 meters Photo

Expedition captures images of octopus at 7000 meters

The BBC reports that the Five Deeps expedition has published stills of a Dumbo octopus (Grimpoteuthis sp) from a depth of 6.957m (22,825ft). They were captured using a “lander” or instrument frame with an attached camera and (in this instance) a bait that is lowered to the seabed. The previously deepest recorded cephalopod was a Cirroteuthidae sp pictured at 5145m (16,880ft) off Barbados in 1971.

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The Big 4 by Mike Bartick Photo

The Big 4 by Mike Bartick

Award-winning photographer Mike Bartick has written an extensive article about octopuses for Wetpixel, illustrated with his stunning images. He refers to the wunderpuss (Wunderpus photogenicus), the mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus), coconut octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) and of course, the blue ringed octopus (Hapalochlaena sp.) as being the “Big 4” of octopus species and describes both their natural history and techniques for capturing images of them.

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Exploring the idea of consciousness in octopus Photo

Exploring the idea of consciousness in octopus

Peter Godfrey-Smith has published a book titled, “The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness”. It explores one of the most curious creatures of the underwater world and the idea of their consciousness. Carl Safina, ocean conservationist, reviews the book for the New York Times and in doing so composes a wonderful story that is in and of itself worth reading.

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Octopus research video wins Emmy Photo

Octopus research video wins Emmy

A video about the work of Dr. Cliff Ragsdale, professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago, has won an Emmy. The team sequenced the entire genome of the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides), the first cephalopod ever to be sequenced. One of the biggest divergences from other invertebrates that the team discovered was much greater nervous system development, very similar to what is found in vertebrates.

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New species of deep sea octopus Photo

New species of deep sea octopus

Stephanie Bush of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) has been slated with the task of describing and naming a new species of deep water octopus. The previously unknown species is a member of the Opisthoteuthis genus, which may be familiar as the Dumbo octopus is a member as well as the Flapjack octopus, upon which the Finding Nemo character Pearl is based.

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Paper studies inter octopus asphyxiation Photo

Paper studies inter octopus asphyxiation

A new paper by Christine Huffard and Mike Bartick has been published in the journal Molluscan Research. Entitled “Wild Wunderpus photogenicus and Octopus cyanea employ asphyxiating ‘constricting’ in interactions with other octopuses, it catalogs several instances in which “aggressive constriction” has been seen in an instance of apparent sexual cannibalism and in an attempt to eliminate a competitor for a food source.

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