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Shifting Colors Of An Octopus May Hint At A Rich, Nasty Social Life

Some octopuses intimidate their neighbors by turning black, standing tall and looming over them threateningly, like an eight-armed Dracula.

That's according to a study published Thursday that helps show that octopuses aren't loners, contrary to what scientists long thought; some of the invertebrates have an exciting social life.

The study, in the journal Current Biology, focuses on one species, known asOctopus tetricus — the gloomy octopus — which gathers to munch on tasty scallops in the shallows of Jervis Bay, Australia.

"There can be over a dozen octopuses or more at this site," says David Scheelof Alaska Pacific University. "Generally, during the Australian summer there are more and we see a lot of activity then."

A local diver, Matthew Lawrence, first noticed there was a lot of octopus interaction going on there. His observations piqued the interest of Scheel, who is a marine biologist, and Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher who had been thinking about octopus consciousness.

The research team eventually recorded 52 hours of underwater video, showing 186 octopus interactions.

"I took a look fairly early on at one sequence in which one octopus approaches another in a fairly menacing way," recalls Scheel. "He gets all dark, stands up very tall, and the other octopus crouches down and turns very pale. And then, when the approaching octopus persists, the other one flees. And this is immediately followed by the first octopus approaching a third octopus that's nearby. And the third octopus turns dark and doesn't crouch down. He just stays where he is, holds his ground."

It looked like they were signaling to each other, says Scheel. That was surprising, because the changing color patterns on an octopus's body are generally just associated with camouflage from predators. As the researchers watched more video, they became convinced.

"The dark color and some of the behaviors that go with it are associated with aggression, or at least approach," Scheel says. "The paler colors signify that the octopus is not going to stand its ground — that it's going to retreat or withdraw."

An aggressive octopus would stretch out the web of its tentacles very wide, to look as big as possible. "And, of course, it's got these scalloped edges between each arm," says Scheel, adding that the octopus would also stand very tall and turn black.

"It looked to me, for all the world, like Dracula approaching his prey," he says. "In my early notes I was calling this the Nosferatu display."

Sometimes an octopus will even do this while standing on the highest available ground, he adds — a piece of junk that's sticking up out of the seafloor.

Until about 15 years ago, scientists believed that octopuses were pretty much asocial.

"When they interacted, they either mated or ate each other," says Crissy Huffard, a senior research technician at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. "That was the overriding idea."

But Huffard has done research on another octopus species that shows males display a black-and-white striped pattern when they're in the presence of another individual. "And that tends to send the signal, 'I'm male,' " she says. If the other octopus displays a similar body pattern, the male will be aggressive and fight. If not, then he'll try to mate.

She was interested in the threatening body posture that researchers observed in Australia.

"That's very cool to see," she says. "Octopuses are probably not as completely asocial as originally assumed. Their communication system reflects the fact that they're interacting on a fairly regular basis." npr

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a lot of great tattoo artists

gustav klimt style by candelariacarballo

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Octopus Chandelier by Daniel Hopper Design

about the squid

Tiny teeth cover the surface of the giant squid’s tongue-like organ, or radula

The giant squid’s enormous eyes help it find prey in the dark ocean depths

http://ocean.si.edu

octopus laugh

how octopus' stay untangled

Octopus arms keep from getting all tangled up in part because some kind of chemical in octopus skin prevents the tentacles' suckers from grabbing on.

That was the surprise discovery of scientists who were trying to understand how octopuses manage to move all their weird appendages without getting tied in knots.
Unlike humans, octopuses don't have a constant awareness of their arms' locations. It's kind of like the eight arms have minds of their own. And as an octopus arm travels through the water, its neighboring arms are constantly in reach.npr

i love the octopus vineyard line (as well as everything else) by thomas paul

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1700's cephalopod

herbert judy

Giant squid of the Newfoudland Banks. From a painting by Herbert B. Judy

Justin Gibbens’s Twisted Wildlife Paintings

by Nastia Voynovskaya

Based in Thorp, Washington, Justin Gibbens describes himself as a nature boy. The various creatures that abound in the Evergreen State as well as his imagination find their way into Gibbens’s paintings, which often combine media such as watercolor, gouache and tea. Gibbens has formal training in both Chinese painting techniques and scientific illustration — two influences that do not seem so disparate when combined in his sparse yet impactful artworks.

“It’s probably no surprise that much of my inspiration comes from all things that scamper and poke about in the thickets and undergrowth, inhabit the tide pools and ocean depths and fly through the ether,” said the artist in an email to Hi-Fructose. “Field guides, natural history museums and David Attenborough documentaries are also good.”…

(read more: Hi-Fructose)

Glass Squids

Squids in the family Cranchiidae are referred to as glass squid because of the transparent nature of most species. They are characterized by a swollen body and short arms. They are also sometimes referred to as cockatoo squid because several deep-sea species have been observed exhibiting a peculiar posture (cockatoo posture) with the arms and tentacles folded back over the head. 

Top: Galiteuthis phyllura; Middle: Taonius borealis; Bottom: Helicocranchia pfefferi

ammonite jaws to reconstruct ocean temps

Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and Stony Brook University have demonstrated a new way to calculate the temperature of the ocean 80 million years ago: through the jaws of ammonites.

The new approach provides an alternative technique for gathering information about the habitats of ammonites—an extinct type of shelled mollusk that’s closely related to modern-day nautiluses and squids. The study was recently publishedin PLOS ONE.

 “As geologists, one of our goals is reconstructing past climates of the planet in order to put our present climatic changes in context,” said Neil Landman, a curator in the Museum’s Division of Paleontology and an author on the paper. “This new approach allowed us for the first time to reconstruct sea temperatures over large stretches of ancient marine environments.”

About 80 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the Atlantic Ocean was much narrower than today, and what is now North America was divided in half by a broad sea that covered much of the continent. These waters, called the Western Interior Seaway, were home to a diverse set of marine life, including an abundant population of ammonites.

To reconstruct the temperature of ancient ocean environments like this one, scientists have traditionally turned to geochemical proxies, namely oxygen isotopes that are preserved in the shells of fossils. But in many fossil sites, the ammonite shells have dissolved. To find an alternative method, Landman, Museum postdoctoral fellow Isabelle Kruta, and Stony Brook professor J. Kirk Cochran focused on ammonite jaws, which tend to be well preserved even when their shells are not.

The group’s first test was on modern nautiluses collected off of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. After determining that the temperatures calculated from these shells match those calculated from the jaws, the group extended its experiment to ammonite fossils (Baculites sp.) that were collected from two locations: the Pierre Shale in South Dakota, which was part of the Western Interior Seaway; and the Mooreville Chalk in Alabama, along the proto-Gulf of Mexico.

The two sites have fossils from the same era—the Upper Cretaceous—but the quality of ammonite preservation is quite different. In the Pierre Shale, ammonite jaws are found inside the body chambers of well-preserved ammonites, while in the Mooreville Chalk, the jaws are fossilized but the ammonite shells are gone. However, the use of ammonite jaws to derive ancient temperatures permits a comparison of these two sites.

Calculations based on the oxygen isotopes of the ammonite shells and jaws from the Pierre Shale yielded temperatures of about 28 degrees Celsius (about 82 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature obtained using the ammonite jaws from the Mooreville Chalk were lower, about 22 degrees Celsius (about 71 degrees Fahrenheit). This discrepancy suggests that the Western Interior Seaway was warmer than the proto-Gulf of Mexico, probably because it was more restricted in its distribution.

 “The use of ammonite jaws for paleo-temperature determination opens up new avenues of research for paleoenvironmental reconstruction,” Landman said.  

 You can read the scientific paper here. amnh.org

octopie

Nipponites

This unusual ammonite came from the Late Cretaceous of Japan, between about 90-85 million years ago. Most specimens are approximately 5cm (2in) across.

Most ammonites had tightly coiled spiral shells, but somepossessed partially uncoiled or irregular shapes. Nipponiteswas perhaps one of the strangest, with a highly meandering pattern and “ox-bow” bends. It was so weird that the first specimen was thought to be a deformed or diseased member of another species, and it wasn’t until more were discovered that it became apparent Nipponites was something else altogether.

Although it doesn’t look very hydrodynamic, and it may not have been a particularly strong swimmer, the shape of the shell does appear to be very stable — self-righting in turbulent water currents.

glass invertebrates by guido mocafico

Glass Invertebrates by Guido Mocafico

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humboldt squid

Humboldt Squid (Dosidicus gigas)

Among the largest of all squid, the Humboldt Squid is found in the warm coastal waters from South America to California, with migrants occasionally straying as far north as Alaska. They can grow up to 7 ft (2.25 m) long, a third of which is their eight arms, which are lined with toothed suckers that they use to grasp prey.

The squid spend the day in deep water, up to 2,300 ft (700 m); at dusk they rise to depths of only 660 ft (200 m) or sometimes less in order to feed. They can be fierce predators of small fish and invertebrates at feeding time, but are typically more curious than aggressive outside of that period, and are though to rank among the most intelligent of invertebrates. They have been observed to sometimes hunt cooperatively for food.

Like other cephalopods, Humboldt Squid are capable of rapidly changing their skin pigmentation; it is believed that this is used as a form of communication between individuals, rather than for camouflage, as it is most often observed while they are hunting or feeding. Despite their deep-water habits, they will occasionally wash up on beaches when they die. These squid were caught by research teams off the coast of Monterey, California, fitted with satellite trackers, and released again for study, but the species is hunted commercially in parts of its range.

photo by Sheraz Sadiq/KQED (kqedquest) on Flickr

(via: Peterson Field Guides)