Wow -- great video. Interesting how you can tell the narrator is involved in the project and really cares versus some paid voice actor reading a script.
>Brood times for nesting females there seemed to be about 1.8 years, while previous observations of a deep-sea octopus in cold water showed that it took 4.5 years for its eggs to hatch, a length of time longer than any other animal.
This is just mind boggling. And during that time the females aren't feeding?!
The mothers die after the eggs hatch to provide food for the babies. It's similar to bears overeating before hibernation, except they do it to prepare for sexual maturity.
I learned recently that the pluralization of "octopus" is a linguistics rabbit hole. While most people would reach for "octopuses" or "octopi", the strictly correctest pluralization would be "octopodes" (last syllable rhyming with "these"), since the word is from ancient greek. [1]
I first heard this on a linguistics podcast called "Talk the Talk"[2] (now superseded by "Because Language"[3]). The hosts go on to clarify that language evolves over time and is most importantly defined by what people actually use, so there's nothing wrong with modern English deviating from the ancient greek pluralization.
It is my understanding that 'octopuses' is the strictly correct option because it matches a greek root word with an English suffix and we are speaking English after all. Dictionaries seem to agree.
Octopodes is acceptable in some contexts because it matches a greek root word with a greek suffix. Octopi is just wrong because it applies a latin suffix to a greek root.
This came up notably a few years ago as the winning answer to a high-stakes HQ Trivia game. [1]
If we were speaking Latin, would “Octopi” still be wrong? Given the logic used to claim that Octopuses is the correct pluralization, I don’t see how it could be.
Thus, I’m left to conclude that Octopodes is the only correct form since it lacks this spoken language dependency.
See my sibling comment - where does the insistence that octopus is third declension come from? The reality is that while most Greek loanwords are third declension, many are not, and Latin authors tended to not be consistent.
Yeah, I think that battle was lost a long time ago, and in the scheme of things it wasn't not a big loss. Octopuses is more consistent with how English speakers pluralize, plus it's waaaay more fun to say.
I think you are correct on the first point, but judging by the other comments here (and any time this subject crops up), you are apparently wrong on the second. :P
Excuse me if this may sounds harsh or uncharitable, but my experience with American elementary school teachers has led me to believe that many, if not most, elementary school teachers are generally rigid in their way of teaching (my way is the right way, there is no other way), and refuse to address nuance, perhaps from their own ignorance, their patronization of children, or both. While we absolutely need and should support high quality elementary school teachers, the assumption I've developed is that most elementary school teachers are highly juvenile themselves, and are there partially due to their own lack of executive functioning, considering that elementary school is more similar to a day care than an actual educational facility.
I recall talking to an elementary school teacher who insisted that the only way to comprehend whether a number was even was to determine if the least significant digit was 0 or 2 and I was met with hostility when I mentioned that while that may be easier for the child to understand within a base-10 world, if even the educator can't understand why an even number is more accurately described as a number which when divided by 2 has a remainder of 0 then I should be very concerned about the state of education.
I haven't heard about much besides perhaps even stronger rigidity from other places so we might not be especially bad and I've only heard of softening in the US lately.
But spending too much time on nuance may be especially counterproductive with younger children. I'm not sure about that but it's a reasonable hypothesis.
It’s possible. I suspect it may partly be that stories about elementary teachers being stubbornly wrong are more interesting than stories of them being stubbornly right or being open minded.
No. You seem very confident, but octopi is (grammatically) perfectly acceptable. The English word octopus is taken from the Latin (coined by Linnaeus) word octopus, which is of Greek origin. Greek loanwords in Latin were used very inconsistently, but many people on the internet seem to believe that it MUST be a third declension noun. However, Pliny treats the structurally identical polypus as second declension and uses the plural polypi (see https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Nat.+9&f...).
It has been a closely held belief of mine that we waste our time wondering about more intelligent life in the far reaches of space than right here on earth.
Treating animals as anything more than "pets" or "food" here on Earth would inevitably raise questions about animal rights, ethics of our handling of planet's resources, etc.
We would rather eat live octopuses and pretend that finding life on other planets is more important than saving life on this one.
Should this be covered so publicly by media outlets with no protections in place for the animals? At least don’t give out the approximate location that easily. I’m pretty sure someone going to show up to the spot with a net.
The part of them being "almost two miles below the surface" might be one of the reasons they mention it so brazenly, totally in agreement with you, but someone at two miles depth with a net is probably unlikely here.
> the largest congregation of deep-sea octopuses ever discovered on Earth, where over 6,000 octopuses huddle around an extinct underwater volcano in the black, cold ocean depths, almost two miles below the surface.
I'm 99% sure the number 6000 is an estimation, and in that case, how would you start to estimate such number? Divide the area into a grid of N cells, count all of them in one cell and then apply to the entire area? Seems they would be many clusters so the number would be very unreliable.
I'm leaning in agreement with you. Squid also reproduce a lot faster than octopus (market squid lifespan is 9 months and they die after reproduction) so I recommend folks save their cephalopod recipes for squid.
Can people with mental disabilities be eaten ethically?
Follow up question since I can guess your answer: what about mentally disabled chimpanzees? What about mentally disabled octopuswhiches[0]? I'm talking to the point where they would not survive outside of human intervention. Or maybe not. Where is the line?
[0] as defined as the plural of octopus elsewhere in the comments
There are many lines. Some lines are drawn by the law, other lines are drawn by the society we live in and/or our individual ethical norms.
If we have collectively decided that intelligence is a factor when deciding whether an animal can be eaten by humans, then it's a perfectly logical conclusion for many people that eating octopuses is disgraceful.
These are of course some of the hardest questions we have to answer for ourselves and they don't have clear cut answers. I don't know where exactly the line should be, but IMO octopi are over that line. That's a large part of the reason why I don't east any meat at home. Even worse, I also am very open to arguments for panpsychism which is a almost paralyzing thought.
Yes, how dare a culture eat an animal, making delicious cuisine. What villainy. Who would ever think to stoop to cooking and eating something that lives in the ocean?!
It has nothing to do with the fact that they live in the ocean. We are omnivores, not herbivores. If there were no other animals around to eat, then yes, I’m certain various populations of people would resort to cannibalism and have in the past.
They are not “savages,” just different.
We’ve eaten meat, of land, sea, and air, for far longer than anyone has tried to convince anyone else they should be vegan. That’s all I’m saying.
We've also as a collective re-evaluated our values over time, reducing our overall cruelty and savagery as we realized its extent. There's nothing wrong with that either, and your original comment did not adequately recognize that this is where the sentiment comes from.
Please check yourself here; who is “we”? Clearly the Portuguese and Spanish still love their pulpo, so we as a “collective” of humans have apparently not collectively re-evaluated our values over time, deciding that eating meat is cruel and savage.
You have, and that’s completely okay.
But to unilaterally call a culture’s cuisine “absolutely reprehensible,” is, in my opinion, the actually reprehensible act.
In particular, calling someone’s cuisine (or really almost anything else) “absolutely reprehensible” is a great, surefire way to not convince anyone your point has merit.
To be ultra clear: I have no issues with vegetarians, vegans, or anyone else. My issue is with people who have issue with those who have different beliefs or ways of life, labeling those people as “absolutely reprehensible.”
That, in essence, is my issue with the original comment.
> Clearly the Portuguese and Spanish still love their pulpo, so we as a “collective” of humans have apparently not collectively re-evaluated our values over time, deciding that eating meat is cruel and savage.
I'm saying we evolve our collective moral views in general. For example, slavery even just 300 years ago was way more prevalent than today, and more people find it morally reprehensible. It still exists today, but it's a clear example of an area we've collectively re-evaluated our values over time. The acceptance of homosexuality and interracial relationships are even more recent. Do you disagree that we've evolved as a collective on those issues?
Sure, today it's not a majority view that eating octopus is "absolutely reprehensible" but imo that's a valid point of view and there's no telling whether that will become the majority opinion. If Christians get to walk around saying "we believe everyone else goes to hell" then I'm not going to complain about someone from expressing their opinion that octopus consumption is barbaric. You can say both groups are equally intolerant (Christians and octopus-lovers) but I'd encourage you to consider how they're different too, because they are.
I think the key point in your reaction is interpreting this sentiment as cultural slander. Reminder that cultural practices don't automatically become things we all have to respect. Like, do you have any reservations about cultural repression of women (e.g. certain Islamic countries as an extreme example)? I sure do, and I think that's okay. Would you have considered anti-slavery folks intolerant 300 years ago just because their viewpoint cut against the (global!) cultural grain?
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.15646