your annual octopus

Because octopi are the coolest Send us your Octopus-y submissions! ilovetotumbl at gmail.

[strictlyfavorites]

[fuckyeahoctopi]

Hitchin' a ride

[bisexualcreature-deactivated202]

lvl 1: the plural of octopus is octopuses because the plural version of a word is the word with an s at the end

lvl 2: the plural version of octopus is octopi because if a word ends with "us" the plural version replaces the "us" with "i" e.g. cactus -> cacti and fungus -> fungi

lvl 3: actually, that rule is only for latin words. octopus is a greek word and the correct plural is octopuses or octopodes

lvl 4: actually, language is descriptive not prescriptive. since enough people over time have used octopi as the plural for octopus, it's a valid plural

lvl 5: the plural of octopus is octopeese, like geese

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Lvl 6: My Marine Biology professor told me it was technically “Octopods” to bring it in line with “Cephalopod,” but that if the class is falling asleep you can call them “Octopussies”

[tastefullyoffensive]

(photos by Bill Watterson and an octopus)

[transparasite-deactivated201806]

I think this is the best scientist photograph I have ever seen.

[shellysbees-blog]

But people didn’t believe him on reddit. So Watterson made the photo sequence into a gif.

[moonlit-hedge]

Here’s the gif for anyone curious.

[siren-kitten-his-deactivated202]

I had to go through the notes to find the gif. Not because I didn’t believe him but because I wanted to see it.

[illisidifan]

Fantastic

[mbari-blog]

Octopuses and pillow lava—two of our favorite things 🐙🌋⁠

Pillow lavas look like rounded blobs of solidified lava. They are formed as lava pours slowly out of the seafloor, and cold seawater cools the outer edge very quickly. Think about squeezing toothpaste out of a tube, but instead of it flowing freely, the outer skin of the toothpaste hardens as soon as it touches air. Pillow lavas come in various sizes and shapes, and each of these shapes can tell us a bit about the eruption that formed them.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A Day Octopus, scientifically known as Octopus cyanea. 

Kyla McLay

[in-the-meantime-my-darling]

[ruinedchildhood]

[skulki-d]

That crab elevator is so clever

[anyataylorjoys]

PLANET EARTH III 2023, Episode 02: Ocean - featuring the Pearl Octopus

[daily-cephalopod]

I've always loved octopi in particular for their intelligence! Could you perhaps share one (or another cephalopod) doing some clever problem solving :0?

Todays cephalopod is almost smart!!!

[cosmonautroger]

[fuckyeahoctopi]

Hitchin' a ride

[mutant-distraction]

[monamoni]

[pearlstonefortress]

[mila1016-deactivated20250525]

[angel-kiyoss]

Octopus filmed changing colours while sleeping.

[fierceawakening]

i wonder what they are dreaming about

[plum-soup]

Changing colors duh

[max1461]

What’s really cool about this is that cephalopod (octopus, squid, etc.) intelligence evolved completely separately from intelligence in tetrapods (which includes primates, dolphins, crows… basically any other intelligent animals you can think of). Cephalopods are very, very far away from us on the tree of life. For context, you and a starfish are more closely related than you and an octopus. The last common ancestor of humans and cephalopods was the so-called Urbilaterian, the hypothetical first animal with a left-right symmetric body. This animal almost certainly had, at most, an extremely simple nervous system, without anything resembling a brain.

All this is to say that the fact that this octopus appears to be dreaming means one of two things. Either

a) dreaming is a very, very old thing indeed, going directly back to the Urbilaterian. This would mean that almost every animal, from insects to starfish to sea slugs to newts, is likely to have the ability to dream in some capacity or another (unless they have specifically lost it by evolutionary simplification).

or

b) dreaming evolved entirely independently in cephalopods when they developed greater intelligence. This would suggest, at least, that there’s something very fundamental about dreaming related to intelligence itself, which causes it to emerge independently when sufficient intelligence arises.

Needless to say, either of these outcomes would be really very cool.

[vladimir-polishko]

[fuckyeahoctopi]

Gorgeous

[its-a-wicked-twisted-road]

[hatesaltrat]

Magical

[the-davest-of-uncles]

Got one of them Lothlorien cloaks.