What’s so funny about this? You might or might not laugh at this whether or not you know the idiom it contains. That idiom is to “make no bones” about something. This is a joke about an octopus, one of nature’s weirdest creatures. You can see this from the accompanying photograph. Most likely you’ve seen photos of octopuses or octopi if you prefer the original Latin plural, or seen them in the movies and on TV. Sometimes they are shown to be monsters, which they are not. Most types of octopus are rather small though there are a few larger varieties, but never as large as their cousin the giant squid. Now there’s a monstrous looking creature. It’s possible that you have even eaten octopus or pulpo as it’s called in Spanish. It’s quite tasty. My wife even likes the ink, the black stuff an octopus will secrete or squirt out to confuse an enemy and/or to mask the octopus’s escape from danger. Octopi and squids have no bones, no skeletons. That’s why they are so squishy. In the oceans where they live, they don’t need bones and get along well without them. Another thing that makes them creepy is they have two eyes which are almost human looking. Why does the guy in the joke say that he makes no bones about octopuses being creepy?. Well for one, he’s just stating a fact that an octopus has no bones, but why does he use the word “make”? The idiom is quite old, going back to the 15th century in England. At that time if a person was dissatisfied with something they ‘d say they “found bones in it.” Finding bones in soup was not considered a good thing. If you found no bones it meant the soup or the situation was OK. Eventually the phrase changed to “making no bones” about something. This meant it was OK and that you were satisfied. So in the joke, when the guy says he makes no bones about thinking that octopuses are creepy. He means that he’s not hiding the fact that he dislikes octopi. And I guess THAT’s what’s so funny!
