Fractal Octopodes

February 2, 2019 7:08 PM

These creatures are rare, but every so often an octopus with extra tentacles is discovered. These octopi [sic] typically have the usual eight tentacles branching off their trunk. But then the tentacles branch out themselves, and continue to branch out, until you have something like the last specimen: an 84-limbed beast. You end up with a fractal octopus. Delightfully weird octopoda pictures from 2008.
posted by jjray (32 comments total)

Yo dawg, I heard you like tentacles...
posted by otherchaz at 7:18 PM on February 2, 2019 [11 favorites]

💪🐙👍
posted by duffell at 7:30 PM on February 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Enough with this arm shaming.
posted by davebush at 7:38 PM on February 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Fractalpus
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:43 PM on February 2, 2019 [5 favorites]

Cthulhucthulhucthulhucthulhu
posted by Going To Maine at 7:44 PM on February 2, 2019 [8 favorites]

So, an ogthontatesserapus?
posted by glonous keming at 8:15 PM on February 2, 2019 [8 favorites]

Holy shit.
posted by latkes at 8:17 PM on February 2, 2019 [5 favorites]

The [sic] of course is there to note that as we know, it's not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and so the correct plural is "octopodices".
posted by sfenders at 8:22 PM on February 2, 2019 [15 favorites]

The better to hug you with, my dear.
posted by Iris Gambol at 8:42 PM on February 2, 2019 [5 favorites]

so the correct plural is "octopodices".

So close! The correct Latin or Latinate plural would be "octopodes".

This being English, of course, one can simply say "octopuses".
posted by kenko at 8:48 PM on February 2, 2019 [15 favorites]

I though it was [sic] because they have way more than 8 legs... so technically an individual as such isn't even an octopus.
posted by zengargoyle at 9:31 PM on February 2, 2019 [5 favorites]

oc·TAHP·uh·DEE
posted by glonous keming at 9:49 PM on February 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

I though it was [sic] because they have way more than 8 legs

Yes. sfenders was making a joke.
posted by kenko at 9:50 PM on February 2, 2019

So: Haekel wasn't just taking acid then?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:50 PM on February 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

I though it was [sic] because they have way more than 8 legs... so technically an individual as such isn't even an octopus.

What would the prefix be for 84? I've never needed to say that before. Wikipedia is helping me with number of sides prefixes and roots. maybe Octacontaquadripus? Or is it an Octacontatetrapus?
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:53 PM on February 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Margalo, I used this page as basis for my guess of "ogthontatesserapus" above, but it should be obvious that I don't actually know what I'm talking about. 😄
posted by glonous keming at 10:20 PM on February 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Octopi don't have tentacles, they have arms.
posted by dobbs at 10:55 PM on February 2, 2019 [8 favorites]

Iä! Iä!
posted by The Tensor at 11:38 PM on February 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

If it weren't for the existence of what great calamari it'd make, I'd say you just gave me some nightmare fuel right there.

Yummy, yummy nightmare fuel.
posted by not_on_display at 12:26 AM on February 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm not a vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination but two animal groups I do not eat are octopus and cuttlefish. They are our peers, in a way, on completely different branches of the evolutionary tree. Aside from an abstract--and not fully examined--sense of compassion, maybe I just want to give them a better shot at things after we blow it.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:00 AM on February 3, 2019 [12 favorites]

Like sjswitzer I have stopped eating octopus and calamari, partly because I learned how beautiful and intelligent (differently intelligent) they are and partly because I don't want to be on the wrong side when the great cephalopod uprising takes place.

Or at least to be one of the first cultists to be devoured...
posted by Fuchsoid at 1:43 AM on February 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

I do not eat are octopus and cuttlefish. They are our peers, in a way, on completely different branches of the evolutionary tree.

Thirded.
posted by mikelieman at 2:04 AM on February 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Octoplus!
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:10 AM on February 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

Fourthed.
posted by signal at 4:58 AM on February 3, 2019

FRACTAL OCTOPUS just shot to the top of my fake band names list.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:30 AM on February 3, 2019 [5 favorites]

I was trying to do some lit searching on this to see if anyone knows what the developmental causes of this are, but googling "octopus Sonic hedgehog" has the results you'd expect.

Notch/Delta and Sonic hedgehog (shh) signaling are important in the formation of vertebrate phalanges. Look at your goddamn hands, you are a fractal. Branching of proliferating tissue is easily accomplished by telling stripes of cells to die, so human embryos have little paddle hands until various interacting protein signals cause stripes of self sustaining gene expression that says "fingers go here." Mess with the signals, and you can get extra, or fewer, phalanges.

Some lovely Sox9 staining showing the results on a mouse embryo:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/338/6113/1476/F1.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1

If I can find some publications on this kinda thing in octopuses, I'll pop back in with them. ... But like, I bet it wouldn't be hard to manipulate octopus embryos to give them "fingers" like this. Controlling it nicely so that they are all even and regular, that would be hard.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 7:00 AM on February 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

Octopus brains are distributed through the arms, right? So an octopus with more arms must be even smarter. Think about it: the smartest octopus has 84 arms; the standard PC keyboard has 84 keys - that octopus could hack the information superhighway SO FAST.
posted by moonmilk at 7:27 AM on February 3, 2019 [5 favorites]

Look at your goddamn hands, you are a fractal

Whoa!
*looks at hands, wiggles fingers*
posted by BlueHorse at 8:56 AM on February 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

Those pictures were way more disturbing than I had expected.

I always feel kind of sorry for octopuses, with their amazing mental capacities and their woefully short lifespans. What would they be able to accomplish if they lived for more than, like, four years? (In a smarts competition between octopuses and under-4 humans, I kind of suspect the octopuses would win.)
posted by heatherlogan at 10:30 AM on February 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

The branching arms reminds me of the Stephen King novella "The Mist", and a scene in which a many-tentacled monster outside the loading dock (we never see the body, just the tentacles, way more than eight) grabs a stock clerk and drags him outside.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:54 AM on February 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Octopus brains are distributed through the arms, right? So an octopus with more arms must be even smarter.

I was surprised how strong my visceral NOOOOOOO reaction to these photos was even before this comment, and now... welp
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:18 AM on February 3, 2019

That's a very good question whether fractally armed octopodes also have functional fractal peripheral nervous system, and whether that makes them "smaarter" or not.

It would have to depend a lot on the underlying genetic (either hard coded, or the regulation of those genes and/ or gene products [enzymes, signalling molecules]) cause of the extra bifurcations.

If I was to speculate (pull something from my ass), I'd suspect that most of those cases will not have fully developed nervous systems. The nerves might be present and not fully functional, or that the messed up connectivity might not get processed correctly, upstream.

More doesn't always mean better, and brains are very very strange.
posted by porpoise at 7:05 PM on February 4, 2019