The OctoPost: Brains, Cowboys, and OCTOPUNCH!
Cephalopod News
The final winner of Squidtember’s #BestSquid bracket was the big-finned, elbow-armed, beauty-slash-horror of the deep: Magnapinna. As if to celebrate, this bizarre beauty graced us with glorious new footage.
I made a size comparison chart for all the contestants, to be turned into a t-shirt as soon as I have the bandwitch. (I’ll…leave that typo.)
Now, on to OCTOber! World Octopus Day was on the 8th, but it’s never too l8 to celebr8. Here are some gr8 new facts to share with friends:
Have you heard that an octopus has nine brains—one in its head and eight in its arms? The “arm brains” are more properly known as “axial nerve cords,” and new research shows they’re even more complex than we knew. The pattern of nerve cells changes from the base of the arm to the tip, and again from the top of the arm to the be-suckered bottom. Speaking of suckers, each sucker has its own private bundle of nerve cells, which may be able to coordinate directly with each other, leaving both central brain and axial nerve cords out of the loop.
Did you know that argonaut octopuses are the cowboys of the high seas? Thanks to the work of recreational diver-photographers, scientists analyzed hundreds of photos of argonauts and described their propensity for riding mounts as varied as jellyfish, snails, leaves, and plastic trash. (I wrote about this behavior from the point of view of the unwilling steeds at OctoNation.)
Figure 1. Villanueva et al. 2024 Octopus skin has its own microbiome that differs from species to species, and from the surrounding environmental microbes. Cool? Yes. Shocking? No. At this point I’d be far more surprised if scientists looked for microbes in a new place and and didn’t find a whole new fauna.
My News
October 26, 6:30pm: I’ll be part of the Happy Endings show at LitCrawl in San Francisco, CA. Come say hi if you can!
I have a couple new author interviews coming up, as well as a new book project I’m positively wiggly to announce. SOON.
Funny Pages
Behold, the three-page, twelve-panel epic OCTOPUNCH! Inspired by wonderful new research on octopuses punching their piscine hunting partners.
