September 21, 2010 • 36 mins
Whatever you call them, octopuses are amazing creatures. In this episode, octopus enthusiasts Josh and Chuck take a closer look at the unusual anatomy, unique abilities and fascinating habits of octopi.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck Brian is
seated across from me, and that would make this stuff
(00:23):
you should know? Yes, Yes, how you doing. I'm feeling
a little rough, my friend, are you? Yeah? All right?
You look good? Ted White? You know Timmy my hazardous
waste stuff. But he turned forty yesterday, so we went
out at a nice dinner and then you know, went
out afterwards. Italian. Yeah, Italian. Can you create a little
(00:46):
hazardous waste of our own? It's gross, it is I'm sorry. Um, well,
I'm glad you made it in. I'm here, man, I'm
Ready're sitting up right, as I said, and seated across
from me. Yeah. So I'm gonna tell you a story, Chuck,
please try not to fall asleep. Okay, there's an octopus
that you probably have never heard of because he got
almost no press coverage whatsoever. But his name is Paul.
(01:10):
You have, yeah, the World Cup octopus. Okay, Well, I
forget you do lots of research most people haven't heard
of this octopus. Right. His name is Paul, and he
lives in the Sea Life Center in Germany, a German
town that I am not familiar with. And um, he
had a tendency, believe it or not, to pick the
winner of the eight final World Cup matches in two thousand. Yeah,
(01:34):
I didn't heed like pick up whatever flag he picked
up or something. No, it was they would present him
with two boxes with the muscle in each box and
you know one box that would have like you know
who's playing who? And he ate the muscle out of
the right box every single time. In my mind's eye,
he waved a little I just totally created that or
he sucked it up in his beak because octopi have beaks,
(01:57):
and I'm going to say octopi. I think probably most
of this pod has, but I'm gonna go with octopuses.
Octopuses is a way to go. You could also say octopods. Um,
there are at least three plural forms of octopus, so
you could say cactuses. I guess cactipods maybe. Yeah. I
don't think the pods would transfer over because octopi are cephalopods, right,
(02:21):
which means head foot. It means head foot, literally means
head footed, and that means when you look at an
octopus and all you see is a head and arms.
And that's why. That's whether whether you get that name
all right? And um it turns out that the area
of its eyes are not its head. Chuck. Oh, really,
as far as I understand, what's that? That the the
(02:43):
big part that you would think is its head, it's
its mantle. Okay, we're getting ahead of ourselves. So you
want to classify this thing a little better. Yes, we're
going to classify it um as the phylum mollusca um
with snails and slugs and clams and things like that,
and um in the ass of Cephalopoda, which along with
their buddies the squid, and like nautilus and things like that.
(03:06):
But they don't have um like an outer shell like
a lot of moloks too, No, or an inner shell,
which apparently squid have as well. And we'll we'll get
to that though, and why. But what they lack in
you know, what they lack in um shellness, they make
up for in spunk and pluckiness. Because they are probably
(03:28):
the most interesting mollusks of all. Dude, octopuses are extremely fascinating.
Then that's why I picked him. We don't do like
And this one is on cats. I mean, I love cats,
but they're not fascinating. Cat lowers are gonna hate you, um,
but octopuses are definitely fascinating endlessly to me at least.
And uh, since you mentioned the mail, I guess we
(03:50):
should talk about that. Well. Yeah, if you look at
an octopus, you see the eyes, and there right behind
the eyes, it looks like its head. Now, the eyes
are actually attached to the head. And what's behind is
called the mantle. Yeah, and the mantle is where all
of its internal organs are stuffed in. Everything is in
that bulbous sack, the anus, the gonad. Uh, the posterior
salivary glandges giggled when you said anus and go next.
(04:13):
Good lord. Sometimes I lets walk past her in the
hall and just be like anus, go nad until start
to doing so. Everything's up in there, right, yeah, digestive
gland right, the anus, the gonad. Right, she's still laughing.
And the mantle is like an extremely strong muscle. And
part of the reason for that is as to protect
all those organs, obviously, and it also helps with um respiration.
(04:37):
And there's also a funnel. This is awesome too that um,
we will get to you later. Yeah, it's gonna come
up here there for funnel. If this for Peewee's Playhouse,
that would be the secret word of the day. Yeah,
well let's just make it that, okay. And also they
call that a siphon. And then, like you said, we'll
explain what that does, but we should talk about we
(04:59):
should just go and lead off, I think with the
most fascinating part of an octopus to me is the
camouflaging abilities. Yeah. I was gonna say it's blood was blue. Well,
you know what, go ahead and say that. That's good.
That's pretty cool. Blue blood. Alright, Well, your blood is
red as his mind, as is all of our listeners,
because we're American, that's right. Um, And we're not wealthy,
(05:20):
but um octopi apparently are because they have blue blood.
And the reason our blood is red is because we
have an iron um iron containing protein called hemoglobin that
binds oxygen together in a bloodstream for more efficient delivery. Right,
Octopi have blue blood because they have a protein in
their blood called um hemocyanin, and cyan is another name
(05:43):
for blue, and their blood is blue because hemocyanin is
uh copper based, right, it's a copper based protein, and
I guess that makes the diff It makes all the dif.
But that's really interesting because you pointed out something that
has to do with one of their most saying features.
It because they have low oxygen levels. They have three hearts, yes, yeah,
(06:06):
two pumping pump blood to the gills, right, and then
one handles the rest of the body. That's so awesome.
It is nature finds a way always like, you know,
another heart. Six hundred million years, we're gonna be three hearts. Uh.
So that is awesome. But back to what we were saying,
which I think is the most awesome, the color changing
Well it's not mine. The color changing camouflaging ability of
(06:29):
the octopus. If you've never seen it, go to YouTube
and type in octopus color change. Dude, it's unbelievable. There's
there's there's there's one. It's like fifteen seconds long where
the beginning of the shot you literally are going like,
all right, where's the octopus and then it's you know,
part of this reef. It shoots off, changes color and
(06:49):
like under a second, which it can do and then
attaches to another reef and boom, it's that color and
looks exactly like that. Read it's mind blowing. Yeah, and
we have no idea how it knows what color to
change two right now, we don't know how it knows,
but we know how it does, right exactly there. Uh,
(07:09):
it's through chromatophores, right, yeah, that's the secret. Okay. So
chromatophors are little cells that have like three pigments sacks
in each. It's a very tiny pigment sacks that depending
on the muscles surrounding the cell um, whatever color needs
to be featured is expanded or contracted, so the other
two will be hidden while one is is expanded. And
(07:32):
that's a cell as I said, just means it's very
very tiny, and the octopus's skin is covered tens of
thousands of them, right, and each one is controlled by
a different nerve, right. Yeah. And the way they put
in the article to understand how that works is pretty good.
I think Jennifer Horton did a great job. It's like
if you put a few color section of rubber band
(07:52):
and then you stretch it out in an instant, it's
gonna look completely different. Color wise, and that contracts and
it's gonna be very deep color and that's what it's doing.
Bread it's over a larger surface area too. Yeah. But
since each crematophores is controlled by its own nerve um,
it's own nervous system, right, No, the nervous system controls
each one independently. So it's like the nervous system is going, Okay,
(08:15):
you're gonna end in this crematophori right in tens of
thousands of them, so you have all these mind boggling
different combinations. So the color change can be very It's
not just like Okay, I'm going to be blue now,
it's it's like I'm going to be speckled like this
coral reef that you were just talking. I'm gonna look
exactly like whatever I'm next to, or a sandy bottom.
And it also doesn't hurt that they have um, what
(08:38):
are they called the little mirror like reflective ritophores. Yes, yeah,
they mirror the surrounding environment, so that helps. And then
for the texture, they have projections called pope on their
skin and they can actually change textures to blend in
as well, which is these videos on YouTube. It's insane.
(08:59):
It doesn't look like nature should be able to do
what these things do in a second and really awesome.
At least one researcher UM said that chameleons camouflages hum
Drum by comparison. Have you seen, though, that one chameleon
on YouTube with the different colored sunglasses. I think it is.
I got the impression that that was a photoshop something.
(09:23):
I didn't know that they could change that quickly. But
they still got nothing on these octopuses. Okay, so even
if it were photoshops, they still learn as good as
an octopus, not by a long check those out, um,
so chuck. One of the well, the main reason why
they can change colors not so they can be on YouTube. Um,
it's so they can evade predators, right yeah, and hunt
(09:45):
better and hide for prey and stuff like that. Um.
But one of the one of the I guess, one
of the characteristics they're most famous for, um is for
evading predators is their ink, right yeah. Octopus can blow
a bunch of ink in your face. Yeah. And you
mentioned the siphon funnel earlier. They use that in conjunction
with the ink sact, so they'll spit out some ink.
(10:07):
Which itself would be just like a very concentrated ink
blob or yeah, it could be like little globules. Yeah,
they'll do that sometimes. Um they I think, what do
they do that too? Yeah? Decoy, But if they want
to like evade something, if they're in a major threat mode,
they'll squirt out some of the ink and then shoot
out a big puff of water from their funnel that
they're holding, and all of a sudden that creates the
(10:27):
big like James Bond oil slick probably actually would be
more like a cloud that you can't deep horizon oilson
it was all octopus that wasn't. The ink though, also
contains a trio synaise and that impairs taste and smell
so that you not only if you're a predator like
(10:48):
your shark, let's say, not only can you not see
your you remember the things in the nose of the shark. Yeah,
that'll affect that and they'll just get all wacky and
they won't know what to do. It starts swimming around
in circles and smoking cigarett It's frantically exactly get a
little upset with that. So um, especially with the kind
of nervous system that octopuses have to have to um
(11:12):
for each chromatophore to be controlled by its own nerve
ending um to be able to release in that kind
of stuff that this process is that an octopus goes through.
It shows that they do have a big central nervous system,
but they also have like a pretty decent sized brain
as well. Right, Yeah, and you know, um, before we
(11:32):
move on from the disguising thing that the brown octopus,
we should point out kind also contorted shape to look
like other things. And they think that it chooses what
to look like depends depending on what's going on. Like
I think the example in the article was um, damsel fish. Yeah,
confronted by a damselfish, they'll all of a sudden be
like form of sea snake because the damselfish is afraid
(11:54):
of the sea snake, and the octopus will look like
a sea snake. It's like, it's crazy. You have seen
the se snake video? No, did you watch any white
snake videos today? I love white snake though. So, an
octopus's brain is um proportionately speaking, in some cases as
(12:14):
as big as the mammals um or a bird's. Birds
don't have the smallest brains well, and it's definitely the
most evolved of the cephalopods for sure. Yes, smartest of
a lot from what we can tell it is. And um,
again they the nerve endings that we were talking about, UM,
the central nervous system. I keep wanting to say, nerve endings.
(12:37):
The central nervous system. UM is separate from the brain. Right, Yeah,
that's what they They've learned through studies show that they
like what may happen is they operate independently. So the
brain will like send the order out to do something
and then just kind of take it off at the list,
and then each arm has its own nervous system and
(12:58):
it will decide how to accomplish that. Tabs right. Apparently
three fifths of the nerves in the octopus's body is
in its arms and its tentacles, and there's eight independent
nerves systems. Because Chuck tell them how how they figured
out that arms have their own system is mean. It
sounds very mean. What they did was they severed the
(13:20):
nerves and the arms from the other nerves in the
bodies and brain, and then they tickled it and then
they found out with some delight. I would imagine that Look,
they're still ticklish even though their brain doesn't know this
is going on. So that's how they proved it. And
these researchers were pretty, I guess a little intrepid because
the arms are very powerful. It's almost all muscle um,
(13:44):
and they can since they don't have any bone in them,
and there's tons of muscle and nerve endings, and they
can um do just about anything, including go semi rigid
and bend at a spot like we can bend our arms. Like, yeah,
it is very They were talking about in here wrestling sharks,
and if you want to also delight yourself, go to
YouTube and type in shark battles octopus And this octopus
(14:09):
is like camouflage and this shark swims by like a
decent size shark, and all of a sudden, this octopus
just like leaps and wraps this thing up and and
the shark cannot get free. Do you see this? Like
massive strong shark like wrestling, and the octopus will not
let it free. So you know, octopuses have a feature
that we're going to get to in a minute, um
that I find as unsettling as anything, which one the beak.
(14:34):
Oh yeah, but first let's talk about the eyes while
we're on like the basic physiology of it, right, Yeah,
they're kind of like our eyes, right, they're they're actually
better than our eyes. They have eight layers of um
of films makeup like their corny, I guess, or what
would be our corny and their couge too, because they
need to capture more light because it's dark down there.
(14:56):
But actually, camera manufacturers figured out that they could basically
replicate an octopus's eye, uh cornea for camera lenses, and
the actually led to a huge decrease in um the
cost of cameras. Yeah, because before you had to have
eight different lenses because lenses blurred, so you had to
(15:18):
have eight different lenses to to kind of work out
that blur. But that's all. That's pretty big, big camera.
And they figured out after replicating octopus eyes that they
could do it for a lot cheaper. So by bye
octo lens, No, hello octo lens. They still use eight
they well know what it's now as an octopus is
lens octo lens, So it's good bye octo lens, Hello
(15:42):
octo lens, right exactly. Oh. The other thing too, Josh
I found remarkable is you always see octopus. It's kind
of like you know, monkey in their way along the
bottom very slowly. They can jet like twenty if they
need to, which is forty kilometers. Bro, that's really fast,
it is. And and remember we were talking about the siphon.
That's how they do it. They suck in a bunch
(16:03):
of water into the mantel, seal it off, and then
blow it out the siphon and they can angle it
and steer themselves that way. Right, Yeah, that's crazy. At
the very least, they can shoot in the opposite direction.
Add up to twenty through water by the way, yeah,
which is this isn't through the air. No, they don't
shoot out of the water. Wouldn't that be a weird
(16:25):
world if you just looked out in the ocean there
octopis jumping out. I remember the first time I saw
the shark breach on the Discovery Channel. It was like
mind blowing for me when the shark leaps from the water,
completely out of the water, the great white I have
not seen that. Yeah, it was one of the It
was one of the like money shots for Planet Earth
that caught it on like the super slowm camera. It's
(16:47):
pretty remarkable. So should we talk about where they hang
out their their life, basically their little solitary octopus life. Yeah,
and I didn't realize that, although now that I learned it,
it makes sense. Octopuses live um on their own. They
pretty much only are around other living octopuses when they mate,
and even that's kind of a letdown. Um. But yeah,
(17:10):
and they live by themselves in uh den's. Wherever they
happen to be living right then is called their den.
And that can be anything from from uh, you know,
beneath some rocks to an old jar or something that
made it down to the bottom of the floor of
the ocean floor if it's a small one obviously, but
they can squeeze into some pretty right areas because again
they have no bones. Um. But they change location like
(17:34):
every couple of weeks, and no one's ever been able
to figure out why they do that. Yeah, that's for
some reason that struck me as sad. But I don't know.
I just picture like the lonely octopus getting lonely, paranoid
octopus getting sick of his den and like moving every
two weeks. But maybe just wants to change the scenery,
he knows, uh, And octopi generally walk right. Yeah, they
use their suckers. Everyone knows about the suckers on the
(17:56):
underside of the arm and they helped to propel it
a long on the bottom of the ocean. And those
little suckers are really, really sensitive. They have ten thousand
neurons apiece. So while they're swimming along and or walking
along the ocean, they're also like checking things out with
their suckers, like food and stuff like that, or threats.
(18:18):
And we should say at this point that we've been talking.
We probably should have said this at the beginning. But
if you are an octopus nerd um, we've been talking
the entire time about the nonfinned octopus insurrate, not the
much rarer and less discussed and less studied serrate or
finned octopus. I didn't look up a picture of those
you know what they look like either. I feel bad
(18:40):
for those guys because they don't No one ever talks
about them. Well, they keep to themselves. Yeah, like I'll octopie,
So chuck. We've gotten to the point now where the
the most unsettling part of any octopus for me emerges,
and that is the beak. It's awesome. Octopus is squishy, boneless, uh, muscular,
little weird things have a beak very similar to a parrot's,
(19:07):
from the center of the underside of their head where
all their legs come together. Yeah, it's in the up
inside the mouth, and they don't have standard teeth per se,
but they have the beak and they have something called
a radula, which is a barbed tongue. And so basically
they'll use the beak to crack a clam open and
(19:28):
then they'll use the radula to like scrape out the
meat like a little finger to scoop it out. And
then the last thing I want you to say, because
that's that's really awesome the cell very pepia. Yeah. Yeah,
that's like this, um it's a bone. It's it's like
a tooth covered organ that they can shoot out from
between the beak, which by the way, is surrounded by lips. Yeah,
(19:51):
they can shoot it out and drill into a shell.
Like a shell they can't open. They'll just drill into
it and suck out. Have you seen Starship? Ah, yeah,
you remember the brain worm or the brain but yeah,
it's based on the brains. Out to remind you of that.
I think it's pretty cool. That they have those just
(20:12):
those little it's like a little Swiss army knife. They're
depending on what they want to use or what they
need to use, they can just like use whatever tool
that's inside their little mouth. And when they come upon pray,
most likely what they'll do is they'll wrap their legs.
They'll catch it like in a net, and then pull
it close to them and and just envelop it completely
and just go to town with it on with the
(20:35):
beak right or one of the other tools. The other
cool thing too about the salivarry papilla is that or
papilla is it peppi or papilla papilla, tortilla tropella. Uh,
they secrete that that thing secretes something that erodes the shell.
So if it's like a really tough clan to get into,
while they're drilling in, it secretes this thing that like
(20:56):
erodes the shell as it's digging in to make it easier.
It's just another amazing like evolutionary feet to me, How
did you know octopuses were so interesting to select this article?
I didn't. I think always thought they were cool looking.
And I just happened upon the article and read the
first page and it's like, yeah, this is the male
pillow octopus. Gotcha, Yeah, we should talk about that. We
(21:17):
definitely will. We will talk about that guy with reproduction,
how about that. So first we're gonna talk about being born,
and that feeding goes directly into that appropriately enough, because
octopuses are masters at metabolizing food. Actually, an octopus, by
the time it dies, it will weigh one third of
(21:39):
all the food it's ever eaten. It puts food to
the use. That well, yeah, and apparently, um, a young
octopus grows body weight, increases its body weight five percent daily.
That's crazy. And they don't know a lot about the
the little baby octopus, but some of them, they do know,
will like kind of float near the ser po says, tiny,
(22:01):
tiny little specs and as they grow, they start to fall.
And then some of them though, are born uh slightly
larger like on the sea floor. But they're like they're
on their own once they're born. That's yeah, once the well,
let's let's talk of us back it up, reproduction, Chuck,
how is that little thing born? So tell tell everybody
(22:21):
about the male pillow octopus. Well, the male pillow octopus
is uh, one of the cool things about it is
that it's tiny, tiny, tiny, Um. How big is this thing?
About a cent a couple of centimeters, a couple of
centimeters long, weighs less than a graham the trick and
you think, all right, and that's cool. There are small
things in the world. I think I've eaten one of those.
(22:41):
The trick is by accident. Okay, never again. Uh. The
trick is though they the females of the same species
are more than six ft long and way a hundred pounds.
There's forty times the size of the male. Yeah. And
Jennifer Horton put in a perspective of here, that would
be like, um, one of us asking out the um, well,
(23:06):
asking out right? We put that in air quotes a
woman five times four times, four times as as large
as the Statue of Liberty. Proportionally, it's a lot of women. Yeah.
But so you might think, well, how in the world
would these things mate if this octopus is so much bigger?
What happens in the case of the male pillow octopuses?
(23:27):
He will um, he has an arm. All octopuses, and well,
all octopus have the arm that contain the sperm. Is
that right? Yeah, it's called the heck toe Cautus hectocotalus,
and instead of doing what some octopuses do, which is
to put that with the woman, they will actually break
(23:48):
it off and just say here, just take this and
use it whenever you need it. Please don't hurt me.
And then then then they swim away and die. Well,
the males actually um die within a couple of months
after um reproducing once, so they pull off their hectic.
(24:09):
It's like a naturalization class in here. Hector catillus hectic catillus,
thank you um, and and giving it to the to
the female, which she just stores in her mantle. Yeah,
she keeps it until she's ready to have babies basically,
so then she lays the eggs, takes out the sperm
arm the little magic wand the hector catillus right um,
(24:30):
and then basically just spreads it over the eggs to
fertilize them. Or there are some species of octopi that
um where the hectic catillus is inserted into the females overduct,
so there is some sort of sexual act. The traditional
thing that you think about happened sometimes in before we
move on from the little guy though, the little pillow
(24:52):
case guy, I'm sorry the little pillow guy, there's no case.
He also has been known to rip off the tentacles
of a man of war and use it as a
sword to protect himself because he's like build up a
resistance to the poison. I love this little guy. He's
like the fiercest little beast in the ocean. And what's
interesting is he's not supposed to be doing that because
(25:14):
that's tool use. Yeah, we there was, actually, um, I
think like a couple of months back, there's a big
sensation on the internet about an octopus being filmed using
coconut shell halves as portable, like story portable habitats. I guess,
so we just carried around then every wants while to
look around and like get under it. Um, it was
(25:36):
pretty cool. But animals aren't supposed to use tools right now,
they're not, but octopie do. Yeah. So, like you said,
they'll have the little egg hatch and the female will
die as well after hatching the egg, which is really sad.
And yes, but she protected the entire time. Yeah, she
like blows water over it and keeps it nice and clean,
and she might be she might be caring for these
(25:58):
eggs for between two to ten months. And she's not
eating at all. And then yeah, and then once they
start to hatch, she's out of there. She may not
she doesn't die quite then, but she's gone. So they're solitary.
She's aside from the moment when they're mating and the
moment these eggs hatch, they're on their own, like octopi
(26:19):
or solitary animals. Well, and not a very good chance
of survival either, right, don't want of them die? Yeah.
With the giant Pacific octopus, which can grow up to
I think six pounds. Um, yeah, they um, they have
a one percent survival rate for going from hatchling to
ten millimeters just a ten millimeters. Yeah, tragic. We need
(26:41):
Sally Struthers in here. What else we got, Oh the
personality stuff, that's pretty cool. Yeah, well we were talking
about them, you know, using tools. They're not supposed to
do that because they're cephalopods, so they're supposed to be stupid.
They're all, you know, mating and eating and evading. Maybe right,
but octopi kind of buck that trend um among even cephalopods. Yeah,
(27:06):
they found some that have some can open jars, have
learned to open jars pretty much outside of their tanks.
Well that too. They found some that have gotten outside
their tanks and like gotten into the food bends. And
then they found some that can open jars, some that
can work mazes, some that know like to pick a
red ball over a white ball, some that can call
(27:27):
the World Cup. Absolutely So. Octopi aren't supposed to have personalities, um,
but we have come to realize that they largely do
thanks to the work of a marine biologists named Jennifer Mather, right, Yeah,
she and Roland Anderson are two biologists that um kind
of got the feeling that they might, you know, from
(27:48):
seeing all these things in these aquariums, that they might
have a personality. And that's kind of a hard thing
to test, but they did. It was the other guy's name,
Roland what Roland Anderson Anderson, He was the one who
was tending or he worked at the Seattle Aquarium. And
he found out that the keeper's name three um species
of animals, I think it was otter seals and um
(28:11):
their giant pacific octopi. And normally like that, you don't
you reserve naming an animal based on his personality, And
since octopuses aren't supposed to have personality wanted to know
what's going on, so he went and found out, and
he found that um leisure suit Larry. Apparently this is
a very um, touchy feely octopus. When the handlers would
(28:32):
get in it's its tank, he'd just be all over
im like, hey baby, how's that going? Um? And then
Emily Dickinson was so shy that she eventually had to
be replaced because she just high but behind the artificial barrier,
like would never come out and look just like it too,
so people didn't even know. And then she wrote poetry
(28:53):
as well, sad poetry, but good stuff. And then there
was Lucretia mke Evil, right, and the one destroyed her tank,
the interior tank, so she was obviously pretty feisty she was,
and apparently they were afraid to get in there with
her because again, this giant Pacific octopus, they can grow
up six hundred pounds, So if you have a mick
(29:13):
evil one, it's trouble. Well. And once you see this
video that wrestling a shark, I would be like, I'm
not going anywhere near that thing, right, So they Anderson
and Mather decided to come up with some I guess
some stimuli I think they opened the cage. They put
a brush into the tank see what they would do,
(29:34):
and I can't remember. There was another one. UM. And
then they figured out that these these octopus showed nineteen
distinct behaviors and they put it into three buckets, right, activity, avoidance,
and reactivity. So what happened, well, what happened was they
figured out that these these octopus actually were showing personality,
(29:55):
like they had person like an octopus would you could
say this octopus right here, number eighty nine is going
to do this if we do that, but the octopus
in the next hank over, we'll do something different. That's
personality and octopus aren't supposed to have that. They also
the same group. UM. I kind of looked over the article.
(30:15):
It's in the February two thousand seven issue of Natural History. Right,
they found that, UM, a couple of octopuses played and
they gave him a prescription bottle filled with like half
filled with water. A couple of Yeah, they really played.
They got really lethar as We kept that. UM. They
would play with it like they were bouncing a ball
(30:36):
in their tank. Yeah, these little guys are awesome. The girls, Uh,
the other cool thing that they did, the octopuses did
in these tests was they wanted to see how they
did with problem solving, and so they like wired clam
shut so they couldn't because traditionally they'll break the clam
open and scoop it out. And they wanted to see
if the octopus would just be like, I'll just need
(30:58):
something else. I can't get into this one right. No. Now,
what these things did was they said, Okay, I'll get
up my drill and even though this is not how
we get into clams, I'm gonna drill into this clam.
And not only that, but after a few tries, they
figured out the best point at the clam to drill
in to get the best meat, like right there in
the center. They figured all this out. Unbelievable. They're very smart,
(31:20):
very smart. You could play cards with an octopus. There's
been octopus gangsters before. Oh yeah, so they're very smart. Sure.
I mean you have to have an organized brain, an
organized mind to participate in organized crime, I would think, so. Yeah.
I hope everyone found this as fascinating as I did.
I hope so too. All they have to do is
(31:41):
go and type in octopus, changed color and there's just
like scores and scores of videos, and you can also
read this very comprehensive article that was exciting how octopuses work. Remember,
you can say octopuses octopi. As a matter of fact,
I think everybody should walk around and call them octopuses
when they're corrected. You could like, no, jerk, you can
say octopi octopuses. Can't we all get along? And I
(32:04):
found out because these other two jerks told me, right
because they some jerk wrote an article, and they'll be like, well,
you're a jerk for listening to those two jerks, and
it'll just go downhill from there. I wonder what the
octopus's garden is. You know that Beatles song that Ringo sang. No,
of course you done. Uh, yeah, I'd like to be
under the sea in an octopus's garden, I guess. Oh,
is that the name of that song? Yeah? I thought
(32:26):
that was from the Little Mermaid soundtrack that's under the sea. Yeah,
it's a different song you just said. Oh. Well, if
you want to learn more about the octopuses, or the
Beatles or the Little Mermaid, I'm pretty sure you could
find something about all three of them on our site.
Just use the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And now it is time for listener mail. Yes, Josh
(32:50):
Andy and Houston says this, Hey guys, huge fan. After
listening to your customs podcast about bringing items from embargoed countries,
took me back to some stuff if I did in college.
During the Columbus day break in my freshman year at
Clarkson University, twenty miles from the U S Canadian border,
Buddy and myself decided to go to Montreal for the day.
Once we got there, we bummed around the city and
(33:12):
bought some Cuban cigars, which is I guess what you
do in Montreal. We decided that if we'd wait until
we got back to campus too, and we decided that
we'd wait to get back to campus to enjoy them.
We pulled off the bands and figured we'd be just fine.
We got to the border and the officers asked us
why we were in Canada for six hours, and we
just said tourism. We were then instructed to pull into
(33:33):
a garage so we could get searched. I guess two
college kids hanging out in Montreal. Returning relatively soon through
the red flag, we were told to exit the car
so the dogs could check it out. We were brought
inside and asked if we had any illegal substances, which
we quickly handed over the cigars and were terrified. They
said we could be charged with willingly smuggling illegal items.
(33:53):
Uh and since they pulled the bands off, that could
have charged them with altering illegally altering material with the
intent of bringing it into the USA, which is exactly
what they did. And uh, he said. In the end,
they let him off with a warning and his Buddies
cup holder is still broken to this day from the
car search. We were so angry at customs that we
decided to spite America by blasting Rush the whole way home.
(34:17):
It seemed funny at the time, so I guess they
blasted Spirit of Radio and said Bill smoke something. Yeah,
that's Andy and Houston think in Houston, Houston, Texas. That
is what he said. But he went to school twenty
miles from the Canadian border, a little shady. If you
asked me, I wonder he's thrown up red flags talk
about climate change. Oh well, if you want to shame
(34:41):
me for that terrible pun, or you have a story
you want to share with us. You've got anything. Let's
plug Atlanta first, Okay, yeah, go ahead. We are having
our Atlanta All Star Trivia event, which is hopefully going
to kick off a nationwide tour. And it is going
to be October that the Five Seasons Brewery West Side.
Sometime in the evening. We'll get a time stamp soon.
(35:04):
Just show up some time after six po Yeah, I
would say it probably right in there. And should we
announce our special guests? I think we can now sure? Yeah, dude,
we got some three. We got three people verified. We're
very excited about. So go ahead. We've got John Hodgeman.
John Hodgman is coming to Atlanta just to play. He's
not just going down the block like New York. He's
(35:24):
coming down to Atlanta to play with us. Also from Brooklyn, uh,
the esteem Joe Randazzo, who is the editor of the
Fine Fine Onion newspaper, Yes, America's finest news source. Joe
and John are both coming down. And then as of yesterday,
we landed local legend Dave Willis, who is the co
creator of Aquitine, Hunger Force and Squidbillies on the Cartoon
(35:47):
Network's Adult Swim Absolutely and we are super super psyched
that Dave is joining us and we're working on a
couple of other people. But if no one else shows
up to me, that's like, that's a stud team right now,
that is a stud team. We'll see if we can
beat everybody. I don't even care about that. I'm just
excited to get those people together. I'm gonna keep my
mouth shut about Ohio Virginia presidents. Okay, okay, we missed
(36:08):
that one. So if you want to come play trivia
with us and Hodgeman and Ran Dazon Willis, Um, we're
gonna be hanging out Five Seasons Brewery on Wednesday, Oct It,
and just send us an email about whatever you want.
How about that? Use your creativity. We have no thesis
for you today. Um, just wrap it up, spank it
(36:29):
on the bottom, and send it to stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com For more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
(36:51):
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck Brian is
seated across from me, and that would make this stuff
(00:23):
you should know? Yes, Yes, how you doing. I'm feeling
a little rough, my friend, are you? Yeah? All right?
You look good? Ted White? You know Timmy my hazardous
waste stuff. But he turned forty yesterday, so we went
out at a nice dinner and then you know, went
out afterwards. Italian. Yeah, Italian. Can you create a little
(00:46):
hazardous waste of our own? It's gross, it is I'm sorry. Um, well,
I'm glad you made it in. I'm here, man, I'm
Ready're sitting up right, as I said, and seated across
from me. Yeah. So I'm gonna tell you a story, Chuck,
please try not to fall asleep. Okay, there's an octopus
that you probably have never heard of because he got
almost no press coverage whatsoever. But his name is Paul.
(01:10):
You have, yeah, the World Cup octopus. Okay, Well, I
forget you do lots of research most people haven't heard
of this octopus. Right. His name is Paul, and he
lives in the Sea Life Center in Germany, a German
town that I am not familiar with. And um, he
had a tendency, believe it or not, to pick the
winner of the eight final World Cup matches in two thousand. Yeah,
(01:34):
I didn't heed like pick up whatever flag he picked
up or something. No, it was they would present him
with two boxes with the muscle in each box and
you know one box that would have like you know
who's playing who? And he ate the muscle out of
the right box every single time. In my mind's eye,
he waved a little I just totally created that or
he sucked it up in his beak because octopi have beaks,
(01:57):
and I'm going to say octopi. I think probably most
of this pod has, but I'm gonna go with octopuses.
Octopuses is a way to go. You could also say octopods. Um,
there are at least three plural forms of octopus, so
you could say cactuses. I guess cactipods maybe. Yeah. I
don't think the pods would transfer over because octopi are cephalopods, right,
(02:21):
which means head foot. It means head foot, literally means
head footed, and that means when you look at an
octopus and all you see is a head and arms.
And that's why. That's whether whether you get that name
all right? And um it turns out that the area
of its eyes are not its head. Chuck. Oh, really,
as far as I understand, what's that? That the the
(02:43):
big part that you would think is its head, it's
its mantle. Okay, we're getting ahead of ourselves. So you
want to classify this thing a little better. Yes, we're
going to classify it um as the phylum mollusca um
with snails and slugs and clams and things like that,
and um in the ass of Cephalopoda, which along with
their buddies the squid, and like nautilus and things like that.
(03:06):
But they don't have um like an outer shell like
a lot of moloks too, No, or an inner shell,
which apparently squid have as well. And we'll we'll get
to that though, and why. But what they lack in
you know, what they lack in um shellness, they make
up for in spunk and pluckiness. Because they are probably
(03:28):
the most interesting mollusks of all. Dude, octopuses are extremely fascinating.
Then that's why I picked him. We don't do like
And this one is on cats. I mean, I love cats,
but they're not fascinating. Cat lowers are gonna hate you, um,
but octopuses are definitely fascinating endlessly to me at least.
And uh, since you mentioned the mail, I guess we
(03:50):
should talk about that. Well. Yeah, if you look at
an octopus, you see the eyes, and there right behind
the eyes, it looks like its head. Now, the eyes
are actually attached to the head. And what's behind is
called the mantle. Yeah, and the mantle is where all
of its internal organs are stuffed in. Everything is in
that bulbous sack, the anus, the gonad. Uh, the posterior
salivary glandges giggled when you said anus and go next.
(04:13):
Good lord. Sometimes I lets walk past her in the
hall and just be like anus, go nad until start
to doing so. Everything's up in there, right, yeah, digestive
gland right, the anus, the gonad. Right, she's still laughing.
And the mantle is like an extremely strong muscle. And
part of the reason for that is as to protect
all those organs, obviously, and it also helps with um respiration.
(04:37):
And there's also a funnel. This is awesome too that um,
we will get to you later. Yeah, it's gonna come
up here there for funnel. If this for Peewee's Playhouse,
that would be the secret word of the day. Yeah,
well let's just make it that, okay. And also they
call that a siphon. And then, like you said, we'll
explain what that does, but we should talk about we
(04:59):
should just go and lead off, I think with the
most fascinating part of an octopus to me is the
camouflaging abilities. Yeah. I was gonna say it's blood was blue. Well,
you know what, go ahead and say that. That's good.
That's pretty cool. Blue blood. Alright, Well, your blood is
red as his mind, as is all of our listeners,
because we're American, that's right. Um, And we're not wealthy,
(05:20):
but um octopi apparently are because they have blue blood.
And the reason our blood is red is because we
have an iron um iron containing protein called hemoglobin that
binds oxygen together in a bloodstream for more efficient delivery. Right,
Octopi have blue blood because they have a protein in
their blood called um hemocyanin, and cyan is another name
(05:43):
for blue, and their blood is blue because hemocyanin is
uh copper based, right, it's a copper based protein, and
I guess that makes the diff It makes all the dif.
But that's really interesting because you pointed out something that
has to do with one of their most saying features.
It because they have low oxygen levels. They have three hearts, yes, yeah,
(06:06):
two pumping pump blood to the gills, right, and then
one handles the rest of the body. That's so awesome.
It is nature finds a way always like, you know,
another heart. Six hundred million years, we're gonna be three hearts. Uh.
So that is awesome. But back to what we were saying,
which I think is the most awesome, the color changing
Well it's not mine. The color changing camouflaging ability of
(06:29):
the octopus. If you've never seen it, go to YouTube
and type in octopus color change. Dude, it's unbelievable. There's
there's there's there's one. It's like fifteen seconds long where
the beginning of the shot you literally are going like,
all right, where's the octopus and then it's you know,
part of this reef. It shoots off, changes color and
(06:49):
like under a second, which it can do and then
attaches to another reef and boom, it's that color and
looks exactly like that. Read it's mind blowing. Yeah, and
we have no idea how it knows what color to
change two right now, we don't know how it knows,
but we know how it does, right exactly there. Uh,
(07:09):
it's through chromatophores, right, yeah, that's the secret. Okay. So
chromatophors are little cells that have like three pigments sacks
in each. It's a very tiny pigment sacks that depending
on the muscles surrounding the cell um, whatever color needs
to be featured is expanded or contracted, so the other
two will be hidden while one is is expanded. And
(07:32):
that's a cell as I said, just means it's very
very tiny, and the octopus's skin is covered tens of
thousands of them, right, and each one is controlled by
a different nerve, right. Yeah. And the way they put
in the article to understand how that works is pretty good.
I think Jennifer Horton did a great job. It's like
if you put a few color section of rubber band
(07:52):
and then you stretch it out in an instant, it's
gonna look completely different. Color wise, and that contracts and
it's gonna be very deep color and that's what it's doing.
Bread it's over a larger surface area too. Yeah. But
since each crematophores is controlled by its own nerve um,
it's own nervous system, right, No, the nervous system controls
each one independently. So it's like the nervous system is going, Okay,
(08:15):
you're gonna end in this crematophori right in tens of
thousands of them, so you have all these mind boggling
different combinations. So the color change can be very It's
not just like Okay, I'm going to be blue now,
it's it's like I'm going to be speckled like this
coral reef that you were just talking. I'm gonna look
exactly like whatever I'm next to, or a sandy bottom.
And it also doesn't hurt that they have um, what
(08:38):
are they called the little mirror like reflective ritophores. Yes, yeah,
they mirror the surrounding environment, so that helps. And then
for the texture, they have projections called pope on their
skin and they can actually change textures to blend in
as well, which is these videos on YouTube. It's insane.
(08:59):
It doesn't look like nature should be able to do
what these things do in a second and really awesome.
At least one researcher UM said that chameleons camouflages hum
Drum by comparison. Have you seen, though, that one chameleon
on YouTube with the different colored sunglasses. I think it is.
I got the impression that that was a photoshop something.
(09:23):
I didn't know that they could change that quickly. But
they still got nothing on these octopuses. Okay, so even
if it were photoshops, they still learn as good as
an octopus, not by a long check those out, um,
so chuck. One of the well, the main reason why
they can change colors not so they can be on YouTube. Um,
it's so they can evade predators, right yeah, and hunt
(09:45):
better and hide for prey and stuff like that. Um.
But one of the one of the I guess, one
of the characteristics they're most famous for, um is for
evading predators is their ink, right yeah. Octopus can blow
a bunch of ink in your face. Yeah. And you
mentioned the siphon funnel earlier. They use that in conjunction
with the ink sact, so they'll spit out some ink.
(10:07):
Which itself would be just like a very concentrated ink
blob or yeah, it could be like little globules. Yeah,
they'll do that sometimes. Um they I think, what do
they do that too? Yeah? Decoy, But if they want
to like evade something, if they're in a major threat mode,
they'll squirt out some of the ink and then shoot
out a big puff of water from their funnel that
they're holding, and all of a sudden that creates the
(10:27):
big like James Bond oil slick probably actually would be
more like a cloud that you can't deep horizon oilson
it was all octopus that wasn't. The ink though, also
contains a trio synaise and that impairs taste and smell
so that you not only if you're a predator like
(10:48):
your shark, let's say, not only can you not see
your you remember the things in the nose of the shark. Yeah,
that'll affect that and they'll just get all wacky and
they won't know what to do. It starts swimming around
in circles and smoking cigarett It's frantically exactly get a
little upset with that. So um, especially with the kind
of nervous system that octopuses have to have to um
(11:12):
for each chromatophore to be controlled by its own nerve
ending um to be able to release in that kind
of stuff that this process is that an octopus goes through.
It shows that they do have a big central nervous system,
but they also have like a pretty decent sized brain
as well. Right, Yeah, and you know, um, before we
(11:32):
move on from the disguising thing that the brown octopus,
we should point out kind also contorted shape to look
like other things. And they think that it chooses what
to look like depends depending on what's going on. Like
I think the example in the article was um, damsel fish. Yeah,
confronted by a damselfish, they'll all of a sudden be
like form of sea snake because the damselfish is afraid
(11:54):
of the sea snake, and the octopus will look like
a sea snake. It's like, it's crazy. You have seen
the se snake video? No, did you watch any white
snake videos today? I love white snake though. So, an
octopus's brain is um proportionately speaking, in some cases as
(12:14):
as big as the mammals um or a bird's. Birds
don't have the smallest brains well, and it's definitely the
most evolved of the cephalopods for sure. Yes, smartest of
a lot from what we can tell it is. And um,
again they the nerve endings that we were talking about, UM,
the central nervous system. I keep wanting to say, nerve endings.
(12:37):
The central nervous system. UM is separate from the brain. Right, Yeah,
that's what they They've learned through studies show that they
like what may happen is they operate independently. So the
brain will like send the order out to do something
and then just kind of take it off at the list,
and then each arm has its own nervous system and
(12:58):
it will decide how to accomplish that. Tabs right. Apparently
three fifths of the nerves in the octopus's body is
in its arms and its tentacles, and there's eight independent
nerves systems. Because Chuck tell them how how they figured
out that arms have their own system is mean. It
sounds very mean. What they did was they severed the
(13:20):
nerves and the arms from the other nerves in the
bodies and brain, and then they tickled it and then
they found out with some delight. I would imagine that Look,
they're still ticklish even though their brain doesn't know this
is going on. So that's how they proved it. And
these researchers were pretty, I guess a little intrepid because
the arms are very powerful. It's almost all muscle um,
(13:44):
and they can since they don't have any bone in them,
and there's tons of muscle and nerve endings, and they
can um do just about anything, including go semi rigid
and bend at a spot like we can bend our arms. Like, yeah,
it is very They were talking about in here wrestling sharks,
and if you want to also delight yourself, go to
YouTube and type in shark battles octopus And this octopus
(14:09):
is like camouflage and this shark swims by like a
decent size shark, and all of a sudden, this octopus
just like leaps and wraps this thing up and and
the shark cannot get free. Do you see this? Like
massive strong shark like wrestling, and the octopus will not
let it free. So you know, octopuses have a feature
that we're going to get to in a minute, um
that I find as unsettling as anything, which one the beak.
(14:34):
Oh yeah, but first let's talk about the eyes while
we're on like the basic physiology of it, right, Yeah,
they're kind of like our eyes, right, they're they're actually
better than our eyes. They have eight layers of um
of films makeup like their corny, I guess, or what
would be our corny and their couge too, because they
need to capture more light because it's dark down there.
(14:56):
But actually, camera manufacturers figured out that they could basically
replicate an octopus's eye, uh cornea for camera lenses, and
the actually led to a huge decrease in um the
cost of cameras. Yeah, because before you had to have
eight different lenses because lenses blurred, so you had to
(15:18):
have eight different lenses to to kind of work out
that blur. But that's all. That's pretty big, big camera.
And they figured out after replicating octopus eyes that they
could do it for a lot cheaper. So by bye
octo lens, No, hello octo lens. They still use eight
they well know what it's now as an octopus is
lens octo lens, So it's good bye octo lens, Hello
(15:42):
octo lens, right exactly. Oh. The other thing too, Josh
I found remarkable is you always see octopus. It's kind
of like you know, monkey in their way along the
bottom very slowly. They can jet like twenty if they
need to, which is forty kilometers. Bro, that's really fast,
it is. And and remember we were talking about the siphon.
That's how they do it. They suck in a bunch
(16:03):
of water into the mantel, seal it off, and then
blow it out the siphon and they can angle it
and steer themselves that way. Right, Yeah, that's crazy. At
the very least, they can shoot in the opposite direction.
Add up to twenty through water by the way, yeah,
which is this isn't through the air. No, they don't
shoot out of the water. Wouldn't that be a weird
(16:25):
world if you just looked out in the ocean there
octopis jumping out. I remember the first time I saw
the shark breach on the Discovery Channel. It was like
mind blowing for me when the shark leaps from the water,
completely out of the water, the great white I have
not seen that. Yeah, it was one of the It
was one of the like money shots for Planet Earth
that caught it on like the super slowm camera. It's
(16:47):
pretty remarkable. So should we talk about where they hang
out their their life, basically their little solitary octopus life. Yeah,
and I didn't realize that, although now that I learned it,
it makes sense. Octopuses live um on their own. They
pretty much only are around other living octopuses when they mate,
and even that's kind of a letdown. Um. But yeah,
(17:10):
and they live by themselves in uh den's. Wherever they
happen to be living right then is called their den.
And that can be anything from from uh, you know,
beneath some rocks to an old jar or something that
made it down to the bottom of the floor of
the ocean floor if it's a small one obviously, but
they can squeeze into some pretty right areas because again
they have no bones. Um. But they change location like
(17:34):
every couple of weeks, and no one's ever been able
to figure out why they do that. Yeah, that's for
some reason that struck me as sad. But I don't know.
I just picture like the lonely octopus getting lonely, paranoid
octopus getting sick of his den and like moving every
two weeks. But maybe just wants to change the scenery,
he knows, uh, And octopi generally walk right. Yeah, they
use their suckers. Everyone knows about the suckers on the
(17:56):
underside of the arm and they helped to propel it
a long on the bottom of the ocean. And those
little suckers are really, really sensitive. They have ten thousand
neurons apiece. So while they're swimming along and or walking
along the ocean, they're also like checking things out with
their suckers, like food and stuff like that, or threats.
(18:18):
And we should say at this point that we've been talking.
We probably should have said this at the beginning. But
if you are an octopus nerd um, we've been talking
the entire time about the nonfinned octopus insurrate, not the
much rarer and less discussed and less studied serrate or
finned octopus. I didn't look up a picture of those
you know what they look like either. I feel bad
(18:40):
for those guys because they don't No one ever talks
about them. Well, they keep to themselves. Yeah, like I'll octopie,
So chuck. We've gotten to the point now where the
the most unsettling part of any octopus for me emerges,
and that is the beak. It's awesome. Octopus is squishy, boneless, uh, muscular,
little weird things have a beak very similar to a parrot's,
(19:07):
from the center of the underside of their head where
all their legs come together. Yeah, it's in the up
inside the mouth, and they don't have standard teeth per se,
but they have the beak and they have something called
a radula, which is a barbed tongue. And so basically
they'll use the beak to crack a clam open and
(19:28):
then they'll use the radula to like scrape out the
meat like a little finger to scoop it out. And
then the last thing I want you to say, because
that's that's really awesome the cell very pepia. Yeah. Yeah,
that's like this, um it's a bone. It's it's like
a tooth covered organ that they can shoot out from
between the beak, which by the way, is surrounded by lips. Yeah,
(19:51):
they can shoot it out and drill into a shell.
Like a shell they can't open. They'll just drill into
it and suck out. Have you seen Starship? Ah, yeah,
you remember the brain worm or the brain but yeah,
it's based on the brains. Out to remind you of that.
I think it's pretty cool. That they have those just
(20:12):
those little it's like a little Swiss army knife. They're
depending on what they want to use or what they
need to use, they can just like use whatever tool
that's inside their little mouth. And when they come upon pray,
most likely what they'll do is they'll wrap their legs.
They'll catch it like in a net, and then pull
it close to them and and just envelop it completely
and just go to town with it on with the
(20:35):
beak right or one of the other tools. The other
cool thing too about the salivarry papilla is that or
papilla is it peppi or papilla papilla, tortilla tropella. Uh,
they secrete that that thing secretes something that erodes the shell.
So if it's like a really tough clan to get into,
while they're drilling in, it secretes this thing that like
(20:56):
erodes the shell as it's digging in to make it easier.
It's just another amazing like evolutionary feet to me, How
did you know octopuses were so interesting to select this article?
I didn't. I think always thought they were cool looking.
And I just happened upon the article and read the
first page and it's like, yeah, this is the male
pillow octopus. Gotcha, Yeah, we should talk about that. We
(21:17):
definitely will. We will talk about that guy with reproduction,
how about that. So first we're gonna talk about being born,
and that feeding goes directly into that appropriately enough, because
octopuses are masters at metabolizing food. Actually, an octopus, by
the time it dies, it will weigh one third of
(21:39):
all the food it's ever eaten. It puts food to
the use. That well, yeah, and apparently, um, a young
octopus grows body weight, increases its body weight five percent daily.
That's crazy. And they don't know a lot about the
the little baby octopus, but some of them, they do know,
will like kind of float near the ser po says, tiny,
(22:01):
tiny little specs and as they grow, they start to fall.
And then some of them though, are born uh slightly
larger like on the sea floor. But they're like they're
on their own once they're born. That's yeah, once the well,
let's let's talk of us back it up, reproduction, Chuck,
how is that little thing born? So tell tell everybody
(22:21):
about the male pillow octopus. Well, the male pillow octopus
is uh, one of the cool things about it is
that it's tiny, tiny, tiny, Um. How big is this thing?
About a cent a couple of centimeters, a couple of
centimeters long, weighs less than a graham the trick and
you think, all right, and that's cool. There are small
things in the world. I think I've eaten one of those.
(22:41):
The trick is by accident. Okay, never again. Uh. The
trick is though they the females of the same species
are more than six ft long and way a hundred pounds.
There's forty times the size of the male. Yeah. And
Jennifer Horton put in a perspective of here, that would
be like, um, one of us asking out the um, well,
(23:06):
asking out right? We put that in air quotes a
woman five times four times, four times as as large
as the Statue of Liberty. Proportionally, it's a lot of women. Yeah.
But so you might think, well, how in the world
would these things mate if this octopus is so much bigger?
What happens in the case of the male pillow octopuses?
(23:27):
He will um, he has an arm. All octopuses, and well,
all octopus have the arm that contain the sperm. Is
that right? Yeah, it's called the heck toe Cautus hectocotalus,
and instead of doing what some octopuses do, which is
to put that with the woman, they will actually break
(23:48):
it off and just say here, just take this and
use it whenever you need it. Please don't hurt me.
And then then then they swim away and die. Well,
the males actually um die within a couple of months
after um reproducing once, so they pull off their hectic.
(24:09):
It's like a naturalization class in here. Hector catillus hectic catillus,
thank you um, and and giving it to the to
the female, which she just stores in her mantle. Yeah,
she keeps it until she's ready to have babies basically,
so then she lays the eggs, takes out the sperm
arm the little magic wand the hector catillus right um,
(24:30):
and then basically just spreads it over the eggs to
fertilize them. Or there are some species of octopi that
um where the hectic catillus is inserted into the females overduct,
so there is some sort of sexual act. The traditional
thing that you think about happened sometimes in before we
move on from the little guy though, the little pillow
(24:52):
case guy, I'm sorry the little pillow guy, there's no case.
He also has been known to rip off the tentacles
of a man of war and use it as a
sword to protect himself because he's like build up a
resistance to the poison. I love this little guy. He's
like the fiercest little beast in the ocean. And what's
interesting is he's not supposed to be doing that because
(25:14):
that's tool use. Yeah, we there was, actually, um, I
think like a couple of months back, there's a big
sensation on the internet about an octopus being filmed using
coconut shell halves as portable, like story portable habitats. I guess,
so we just carried around then every wants while to
look around and like get under it. Um, it was
(25:36):
pretty cool. But animals aren't supposed to use tools right now,
they're not, but octopie do. Yeah. So, like you said,
they'll have the little egg hatch and the female will
die as well after hatching the egg, which is really sad.
And yes, but she protected the entire time. Yeah, she
like blows water over it and keeps it nice and clean,
and she might be she might be caring for these
(25:58):
eggs for between two to ten months. And she's not
eating at all. And then yeah, and then once they
start to hatch, she's out of there. She may not
she doesn't die quite then, but she's gone. So they're solitary.
She's aside from the moment when they're mating and the
moment these eggs hatch, they're on their own, like octopi
(26:19):
or solitary animals. Well, and not a very good chance
of survival either, right, don't want of them die? Yeah.
With the giant Pacific octopus, which can grow up to
I think six pounds. Um, yeah, they um, they have
a one percent survival rate for going from hatchling to
ten millimeters just a ten millimeters. Yeah, tragic. We need
(26:41):
Sally Struthers in here. What else we got, Oh the
personality stuff, that's pretty cool. Yeah, well we were talking
about them, you know, using tools. They're not supposed to
do that because they're cephalopods, so they're supposed to be stupid.
They're all, you know, mating and eating and evading. Maybe right,
but octopi kind of buck that trend um among even cephalopods. Yeah,
(27:06):
they found some that have some can open jars, have
learned to open jars pretty much outside of their tanks.
Well that too. They found some that have gotten outside
their tanks and like gotten into the food bends. And
then they found some that can open jars, some that
can work mazes, some that know like to pick a
red ball over a white ball, some that can call
(27:27):
the World Cup. Absolutely So. Octopi aren't supposed to have personalities, um,
but we have come to realize that they largely do
thanks to the work of a marine biologists named Jennifer Mather, right, Yeah,
she and Roland Anderson are two biologists that um kind
of got the feeling that they might, you know, from
(27:48):
seeing all these things in these aquariums, that they might
have a personality. And that's kind of a hard thing
to test, but they did. It was the other guy's name,
Roland what Roland Anderson Anderson, He was the one who
was tending or he worked at the Seattle Aquarium. And
he found out that the keeper's name three um species
of animals, I think it was otter seals and um
(28:11):
their giant pacific octopi. And normally like that, you don't
you reserve naming an animal based on his personality, And
since octopuses aren't supposed to have personality wanted to know
what's going on, so he went and found out, and
he found that um leisure suit Larry. Apparently this is
a very um, touchy feely octopus. When the handlers would
(28:32):
get in it's its tank, he'd just be all over
im like, hey baby, how's that going? Um? And then
Emily Dickinson was so shy that she eventually had to
be replaced because she just high but behind the artificial barrier,
like would never come out and look just like it too,
so people didn't even know. And then she wrote poetry
(28:53):
as well, sad poetry, but good stuff. And then there
was Lucretia mke Evil, right, and the one destroyed her tank,
the interior tank, so she was obviously pretty feisty she was,
and apparently they were afraid to get in there with
her because again, this giant Pacific octopus, they can grow
up six hundred pounds, So if you have a mick
(29:13):
evil one, it's trouble. Well. And once you see this
video that wrestling a shark, I would be like, I'm
not going anywhere near that thing, right, So they Anderson
and Mather decided to come up with some I guess
some stimuli I think they opened the cage. They put
a brush into the tank see what they would do,
(29:34):
and I can't remember. There was another one. UM. And
then they figured out that these these octopus showed nineteen
distinct behaviors and they put it into three buckets, right, activity, avoidance,
and reactivity. So what happened, well, what happened was they
figured out that these these octopus actually were showing personality,
(29:55):
like they had person like an octopus would you could
say this octopus right here, number eighty nine is going
to do this if we do that, but the octopus
in the next hank over, we'll do something different. That's
personality and octopus aren't supposed to have that. They also
the same group. UM. I kind of looked over the article.
(30:15):
It's in the February two thousand seven issue of Natural History. Right,
they found that, UM, a couple of octopuses played and
they gave him a prescription bottle filled with like half
filled with water. A couple of Yeah, they really played.
They got really lethar as We kept that. UM. They
would play with it like they were bouncing a ball
(30:36):
in their tank. Yeah, these little guys are awesome. The girls, Uh,
the other cool thing that they did, the octopuses did
in these tests was they wanted to see how they
did with problem solving, and so they like wired clam
shut so they couldn't because traditionally they'll break the clam
open and scoop it out. And they wanted to see
if the octopus would just be like, I'll just need
(30:58):
something else. I can't get into this one right. No. Now,
what these things did was they said, Okay, I'll get
up my drill and even though this is not how
we get into clams, I'm gonna drill into this clam.
And not only that, but after a few tries, they
figured out the best point at the clam to drill
in to get the best meat, like right there in
the center. They figured all this out. Unbelievable. They're very smart,
(31:20):
very smart. You could play cards with an octopus. There's
been octopus gangsters before. Oh yeah, so they're very smart. Sure.
I mean you have to have an organized brain, an
organized mind to participate in organized crime, I would think, so. Yeah.
I hope everyone found this as fascinating as I did.
I hope so too. All they have to do is
(31:41):
go and type in octopus, changed color and there's just
like scores and scores of videos, and you can also
read this very comprehensive article that was exciting how octopuses work. Remember,
you can say octopuses octopi. As a matter of fact,
I think everybody should walk around and call them octopuses
when they're corrected. You could like, no, jerk, you can
say octopi octopuses. Can't we all get along? And I
(32:04):
found out because these other two jerks told me, right
because they some jerk wrote an article, and they'll be like, well,
you're a jerk for listening to those two jerks, and
it'll just go downhill from there. I wonder what the
octopus's garden is. You know that Beatles song that Ringo sang. No,
of course you done. Uh, yeah, I'd like to be
under the sea in an octopus's garden, I guess. Oh,
is that the name of that song? Yeah? I thought
(32:26):
that was from the Little Mermaid soundtrack that's under the sea. Yeah,
it's a different song you just said. Oh. Well, if
you want to learn more about the octopuses, or the
Beatles or the Little Mermaid, I'm pretty sure you could
find something about all three of them on our site.
Just use the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And now it is time for listener mail. Yes, Josh
(32:50):
Andy and Houston says this, Hey guys, huge fan. After
listening to your customs podcast about bringing items from embargoed countries,
took me back to some stuff if I did in college.
During the Columbus day break in my freshman year at
Clarkson University, twenty miles from the U S Canadian border,
Buddy and myself decided to go to Montreal for the day.
Once we got there, we bummed around the city and
(33:12):
bought some Cuban cigars, which is I guess what you
do in Montreal. We decided that if we'd wait until
we got back to campus too, and we decided that
we'd wait to get back to campus to enjoy them.
We pulled off the bands and figured we'd be just fine.
We got to the border and the officers asked us
why we were in Canada for six hours, and we
just said tourism. We were then instructed to pull into
(33:33):
a garage so we could get searched. I guess two
college kids hanging out in Montreal. Returning relatively soon through
the red flag, we were told to exit the car
so the dogs could check it out. We were brought
inside and asked if we had any illegal substances, which
we quickly handed over the cigars and were terrified. They
said we could be charged with willingly smuggling illegal items.
(33:53):
Uh and since they pulled the bands off, that could
have charged them with altering illegally altering material with the
intent of bringing it into the USA, which is exactly
what they did. And uh, he said. In the end,
they let him off with a warning and his Buddies
cup holder is still broken to this day from the
car search. We were so angry at customs that we
decided to spite America by blasting Rush the whole way home.
(34:17):
It seemed funny at the time, so I guess they
blasted Spirit of Radio and said Bill smoke something. Yeah,
that's Andy and Houston think in Houston, Houston, Texas. That
is what he said. But he went to school twenty
miles from the Canadian border, a little shady. If you
asked me, I wonder he's thrown up red flags talk
about climate change. Oh well, if you want to shame
(34:41):
me for that terrible pun, or you have a story
you want to share with us. You've got anything. Let's
plug Atlanta first, Okay, yeah, go ahead. We are having
our Atlanta All Star Trivia event, which is hopefully going
to kick off a nationwide tour. And it is going
to be October that the Five Seasons Brewery West Side.
Sometime in the evening. We'll get a time stamp soon.
(35:04):
Just show up some time after six po Yeah, I
would say it probably right in there. And should we
announce our special guests? I think we can now sure? Yeah, dude,
we got some three. We got three people verified. We're
very excited about. So go ahead. We've got John Hodgeman.
John Hodgman is coming to Atlanta just to play. He's
not just going down the block like New York. He's
(35:24):
coming down to Atlanta to play with us. Also from Brooklyn, uh,
the esteem Joe Randazzo, who is the editor of the
Fine Fine Onion newspaper, Yes, America's finest news source. Joe
and John are both coming down. And then as of yesterday,
we landed local legend Dave Willis, who is the co
creator of Aquitine, Hunger Force and Squidbillies on the Cartoon
(35:47):
Network's Adult Swim Absolutely and we are super super psyched
that Dave is joining us and we're working on a
couple of other people. But if no one else shows
up to me, that's like, that's a stud team right now,
that is a stud team. We'll see if we can
beat everybody. I don't even care about that. I'm just
excited to get those people together. I'm gonna keep my
mouth shut about Ohio Virginia presidents. Okay, okay, we missed
(36:08):
that one. So if you want to come play trivia
with us and Hodgeman and Ran Dazon Willis, Um, we're
gonna be hanging out Five Seasons Brewery on Wednesday, Oct It,
and just send us an email about whatever you want.
How about that? Use your creativity. We have no thesis
for you today. Um, just wrap it up, spank it
(36:29):
on the bottom, and send it to stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com For more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
(36:51):
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
are you
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