Monterey Bay Aquarium
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Masters of disguise
The color-changing, jet-propelling giant Pacific octopus is a brainy beauty that can disappear in the blink of an eye. Its magic tricks are surprising, psychedelic—and perfectly practical.
All about the giant Pacific octopus
The giant Pacific octopus, the largest octopus species, is usually reddish-pink with a delicate, vein like pattern when you see it up close, fading to white on the underside of the arms. Its eight arms are covered with suction cups—2,240 of them in females, about 100 fewer in males—which give the octopus an iron grip as well as exquisite senses of taste and smell.
Habitat
The giant Pacific octopus can be found all around the Pacific, from Korea and Japan to the coastlines of Canada, the United States and Mexico. It lives in chilly Pacific waters 60 degrees Fahrenheit or colder — in both shallow water and depths to 4900 feet and more. If you're lucky and extremely sharp-eyed, you may find one in a tide pool. It is a solitary animal that spends most of its life alone.
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Lifespan
The giant Pacific octopus has a long lifespan for an octopus—about three to five years. Octopuses in general usually live no more than a year! A giant Pacific octopus will live a solitary life until the very end, at which point it will seek out a mate, reproduce, and die shortly thereafter.
Size, length and weight
This octopus is impressive in size. Stretched from tip to tip, a giant Pacific octopus’ arms measure 7 feet to 13 feet or more.
A full-grown giant Pacific octopus can weigh more than 50 pounds. The heaviest on record was a creature weighing 200 pounds and measuring nearly 20 feet across.
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Shells
The giant Pacific octopus, like all octopuses, is a mollusk—a boneless invertebrate related to clams. It has a soft body, and its shell has been reduced to two small plates where the head muscles anchor, plus a powerful, parrotlike beak. But this is no shell-bound, sedentary mussel! It’s agile, smart and sneaky—and studded with suction cups.
Diet, beak and mouth
An adult giant Pacific octopus is a stealthy hunter that eats a wide assortment of seafood —most commonly crustaceans such as crabs, clams and other mollusks. It catches prey by surprise, using camouflage, jet propulsion and the sure grip that comes with having eight arms. The octopus can then return to its rocky den to settle down for a leisurely meal.
Once in its den, an octopus uses three different techniques to break into its hard-shelled prey. It may pull the hard-shelled prey apart, bite it open with its beak, or “drill” through its shell. Prey that are difficult to pull apart or bite open are drilled.
Octopus steals crab—BBC Earth
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Secretions from the octopus’s saliva soften the shell. The octopus uses a hard, rough tongue called a radula to scrape away the softened material and create a tiny hole. Through this hole, the octopus secretes a toxin that paralyzes the prey and begins to dissolve the animal’s connective tissue. The prey can then be pulled apart and consumed.
After picking it clean, the octopus discards the shell into a rubbish pile, called a midden, just outside its den. Scientists study these piles to learn about octopus diets.
Monterey Bay Aquarium—Feeding
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Camouflage
Lacking a shell, the giant Pacific octopus protects itself with one of the most sophisticated camouflage systems in the animal world—a complex orchestration of pigment cells, muscle fibers and nerves.
Its millions of elastic cells under the skin, called chromatophores, contain special colored pigments. The octopus uses its sharp eyes to match the patterns and colors of its background nearly perfectly, then adjusts its skin color by stretching the chromatophores open or squeezing them shut from moment to moment. Experiments have shown that the octopus is color-blind, making these feats that much more mystifying.
Communication
Though the giant Pacific octopus is a bit of a loner, it has many behaviors that allow it to communicate. For example, changing color may be a way to communicate with a mate or scare off predators.
Monterey Bay Aquarium—Communication
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Individuality
Not all octopuses are the same, and scientists and aquarists have documented different individual preferences among giant Pacific octopuses and others. While one may prefer to stay hidden, another may head off to hunt more often. Others are extra touchy-feely. Whoever said invertebrates don’t have personalities?
Predators
The giant Pacific octopus lives in an everybody-eats-everybody world. Juveniles are eaten by a variety of marine life, including cod, seals, sea otters, wolf eels and halibut. But an adult giant Pacific octopus is more commonly the predator than the prey.
With eight powerful arms, it is not uncommon for the giant Pacific octopus to fight off would-be predators and create a temporary visual barrier with a cloud of ink, allowing the octopus to escape. The giant Pacific octopus avoids these encounters by staying in its protective den dwelling, hiding among the kelp forest and using its excellent camouflage capabilities.
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Jet propulsion
Like most cephalopods, the giant Pacific octopus swims head first, which sometimes makes it look like it’s swimming backward. The octopus fills its mantle with water. The muscles of the mantle then contract to force water through a narrower opening called a siphon, creating movement. This handy ability is why we say octopuses move using jet propulsion.
Life as a newborn giant Pacific octopus
Even though the giant Pacific octopus is the largest octopus in the world, it hatches from an egg the size of a rice grain. The tiny hatchling is just over a quarter-inch long and weighs 22 milligrams (less than one thousandth of an ounce). On day one, its eight little arms already have about 14 tiny suckers each.
It drifts in the surface waters eating plankton for up to three months, then settles to the seafloor weighing five grams. It takes another year for a young octopus to grow to about two pounds. By age two, it may weigh around 20 pounds and be ready to mate. Males can mate with several females, while females mate only once.
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
The octopus will keep growing—up to 50 pounds or more! Until it grows larger than about 10 pounds, life is very dangerous in an ocean filled with predators.
Population
The giant Pacific octopus is not endangered. Although it has a fairly short lifespan of about three to five years, it produces an average of 50,000 eggs—making its population naturally resilient. And even though it’s popular in Asian and Mediterranean cuisine, it’s not as heavily fished as other seafood. So, happily, the giant Pacific octopus population is in pretty good shape.
Fishing
People eat giant Pacific octopus, and fishermen use octopus as bait for species like Pacific halibut. It’s commercially fished in North America and Japan for both of these purposes. Records show up to 3,500 tons are fished annually in North America. Giant Pacific octopus are also frequently caught as bycatch in cod, crab, and prawn fishing. In Alaska, roughly 35,000 lbs. of giant Pacific octopus are caught as bycatch every year.
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
How intelligent is the giant Pacific octopus?
These animals are smart and solitary. An octopus is a very intelligent animal that can learn to open jars, solve puzzles and interact with caretakers. Scientists long thought that animals were unlikely to evolve intelligence unless they were social (like us). So the octopus's clever, lonely life in the wild is something of a mystery.
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
How does it mate?
An octopus typically lives alone, saving up energy for its one chance at mating near the end of its 3 to 5 year lifespan. Then a female chooses a male—typically one much larger than herself—and together they head for a den in deeper water (beyond 164 feet). The female returns to shallower depths to brood her eggs. A month or more after mating, she lays 18,000 to 74,000 eggs (occasionally up to 100,000), hanging them from the roof of her den in hundreds of strands of around 250 eggs each.
The octopus mother lays her eggs outside of her body. She is oviparous, in contrast to a viviparous human mother who grows the child inside her body. The mother octopus then lives in the cave for up to six months as the curtain of eggs develops, fanning the eggs with her arms or contracting her body to shoot streams of oxygen-and nutrient-rich water over them. She doesn't eat during this time, and usually dies shortly after the young hatch.
Monterey Bay Aquarium—Gardens
https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/animals-a-to-z/giant-pacific-octopus
Giant Pacific Octopus (from Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Is it dangerous for humans?
Despite its impressive size, the giant Pacific octopus poses little threat to humans; it typically avoids divers. However, a bite from a giant Pacific octopus contains toxic venom. It is known to cause harm to humans but is not fatal if treated in a timely fashion. As with most wild animals, it's best to maintain distance and never approach a wild octopus.
Does it eat sharks?
The giant Pacific octopus eats sharks opportunistically—sharks come in all sizes and activity levels, so it’s not uncommon. That said, a giant Pacific octopus would prefer to eat clams, cockles, crabs, abalone, scallops, fish, fish eggs and even other octopuses.
"Inky" escapes New Zealand aquarium
Sea cucumbers
Most sea cucumbers, as their name suggests, have a soft and cylindrical body, more or less lengthened, rounded off and occasionally fat in the extremities, and generally without solid appendages. Their shape ranges from almost spherical for "sea apples" to serpent-like or the classic sausage-shape, while others resemble caterpillars.
The mouth is surrounded by tentacles, which can be pulled back inside the animal. They measure generally between 10 and 30 centimeters long, . . .
Videos
NOAA
Octopus steals crab—BBC Earth
Discovery channel
Videos
Octopus intelligence experiment
Octopus Steals Crab from Fisherman | Super Smart Animals | BBC Earth
Giant Pacific Octopus—Discovery channel (good)
Anthropomorphism—excerpt
Attributing human intent to non-human animals, spirits, robots, or other entities, real or imagined, is one way that people make sense of behaviors and events they encounter. Humans are a social species with a brain that evolved to quickly process social information. The tendency to view non-humans in terms of human-like characteristics has been theorized to be a product of that evolution.
Psychology--Foundational research
Modern psychologists generally characterize anthropomorphism as a cognitive bias. That is, anthropomorphism is a cognitive process by which people use schemas about other humans to infer the properties of non-human entities and to make judgments about the environment, even if those inferences are not always accurate. Anthropomorphism can also be a strategy to cope with loneliness.
Cambridge Editors' Blog—excerpt
While animals can be used as shortcuts—and have much use as shortcuts—to tap into certain emotions or atmosphere, I believe they are not just prop characters, lazily written to the same reception as a more intensively developed human character. They are an idealization, a way to sidestep the whole mess of human society and still explore compelling narratives and struggles, a way for a reader to become submerged into a world which is totally unlike the one they live in.
Anthropomorphism—from The Guardian (1-15-2016)
“It’s fair to say many animals have richer social lives and a richer palette of strategic abilities than we give them credit for,” he said. “We should get better acquainted with the animals we share the world with. If only because they are so beautiful and so interesting.”
Summary
Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism (collection of essays) edited by Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman, Columbia University Press, 2006
"As this innovative new collection demonstrates, humans use animals to transcend the confines of self and species;
they also enlist them to symbolize, dramatize, and illuminate aspects of humans' experience and fantasy.
Humans merge with animals in stories, films, philosophical speculations, and scientific treatises. In their performance on many stages and in different ways, animals move us to think."
Perestroika in Paris, Jane Smiley
Anthropomorphized animals are common in fairy tales and in children's literature, and they have a long history in fables, mythology, and religion. But, as reviewers noted, a novel featuring anthropomorphized animals as protagonists in adult fiction is rather unusual, especially when the author is someone as experienced and renowned as Jane Smiley.
So, as readers, we have to ask "Why"?
Although they are animals, with appropriate characteristics for their species, they are so well realized that they become essentially human characters in this novel. They exemplify or mimic human attributes, such as fear, jealousy, anger, selfishness, pride, competitiveness, and a couple of others.
As the plot of the novel, they set out on a journey, not planned, (like life), but like the figures in the epic tradition. Along the way they experience adventures, trials that test their abilities, from which they learn valuable life lessons about others but particularly about themselves. And they emerge from the journey better creatures, proud of having saved Etienne, the 8-year-old boy who is really at the center of the novel.
Perestroika in Paris, Jane Smiley
And they learn to form relationships, and to exercise tolerance, among characters who are not like themselves. To a "man," so to speak, they join to travel the journey and come out victorious. And it is, ironically, their "humanity" and cooperation and community that allow them to do so. So, although they are animals, they teach us humans some valuable life lessons.
In one sense, they are metaphors for certain types of people; in other words, animals are "like" people.
Or, in the Franz Kafka novella, Metamorphosis, humans are like animals; in fact, the main character becomes one. It's zoomorphism rather than anthropomorphism. One morning, salesman Gregor Samsa wakes to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and struggles to adjust to this new condition. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.
Moby Dick as symbol, allegory
On the other hand, in Moby Dick, Herman Melville's classic novel, the animal--a great white whale--is a symbol and not anthropomorphized. He represents Ahab's anger and intense quest for revenge. To other crew members, he's simply a whale whose slaughter will provide resources they can exchange for money. He's a source of wealth. Only Ishmael sees him as a living creature, a part of nature. So the characters' reactions to Moby Dick tell us much more about them than about the whale, who actually appears in only 3 chapters of that very long book.
But the novel, and the whale, is also an allegory of human life as competition, as the struggle to survive, not so much with animal creatures specifically as it is with the natural world.
Man is battling the elements that comprise the world in which he lives in an attempt to subdue or conquer that natural world and bring it under his control and dominion. As the novel explains, he isn't always successful.
Remarkably Bright Creatures
So, is Marcellus an example of anthropomorphism?
This novel has a third person omniscient narrator; that is, the narrator knows what everyone is doing, saying, and thinking, including the octopus.
In fact, this novel is structured around 3 independent story lines:
Tova, with friends among the KnitWits, Ethan, the Scottish shop owner, Terry, her boss at the aquarium, and others
Cameron, with ex-girl friend Katie, then Jessica, with childhood friends Elizabeth and Brad, now married and expecting a baby, later with Ethan, then Terry, and so on
Marcellus, no friends of his own species, acquaintances maybe with people
Structurally, the novel moves, with alternating chapters, from one story line to another, back and forth. The first two story lines—Tova, Cameron—thread together as the novel progresses, with of course an interesting, and happy, resolution.
Remarkably Bright Creatures
But Marcellus, giant Pacific octopus that he is, remains largely alone, isolated, living his life by himself; "in prison" is his term for it. He's never really integrated into the other two story lines, except for his discoveries.
Marcellus is not only an octopus but actually a character in the novel, like Tova, and Cameron, and Aunt Jean, and Ethan, etc. But he is not the anthropomorphized creature that Paras, the race horse, is, or Jacques, the raven, or Frida, the dog.
Throughout he remains an octopus—intelligent, ingenious, insightful—characteristics typical of this species, but without human characteristics. In fact, scientists have only relatively recently discovered some of this breed's abilities.
So, he's not really anthropomorphic. He doesn't interact with any of the creatures in the aquarium, other than making a snack of them. And he doesn't converse with the humans, visitors or staff, let alone adopt any of their behaviors.
So, what is his function in this novel?
Remarkably Bright Creatures, and Greek chorus
Could he be a parallel plot, a kind of Greek chorus?
Merriman Webster
In a classical Greek play, a chorus typically formulates, expresses, and comments on the moral issue raised by the dramatic action or expresses an emotion appropriate to each stage of the dramatic conflict
A chorus is a group of people who persistently express similar views or feelings about a particular action or series of actions.
Another
The term “chorus” refers to a group of performers responsible for summarizing . . . the events of a play.
Britannica
The chorus in Classical Greek drama was a group of actors who described and commented upon the main action of a play with song, dance, and recitation.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, and Greek chorus
Choral performances continued to dominate the early plays until the time of Aeschylus (5th century BCE), who added a second actor and reduced the chorus from 50 to 12 performers.
Sophocles, who added a third actor, increased the chorus to 15 but reduced it to mainly commentary in most of his plays.
The distinction between the passivity of the chorus and the activity of the actors is central to the artistry of the Greek tragedies. While the tragic protagonists act out their defiance of the limits subscribed by the gods for man, the chorus expresses the fears, hopes, and judgment of the average citizens. Their judgment is the verdict of history.
During the Renaissance the role of the chorus was revised. In the drama of Elizabethan England, for instance, the name chorus designated a single person, often the speaker of the prologue and epilogue, as in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.
The use of the group chorus has been revived in a number of modern plays, such as Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) and T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (1935).
Remarkably Bright Creatures, and Greek chorus
Bookriot, Neha Patel.
Possibly one of the most iconic Greek choruses is the one with the muses in Disney’s Hercules. Although they were never directly involved in the story itself, they were watching and commenting on everything that happened with some amazingly catchy tunes. With their many hit songs, Disney was actually tapping into an ancient Greek theatre tradition of using a chorós to comment on the dramatic action.
Although I’ve seen many a chorus while watching plays throughout my life, it was only within the last five years that I’ve began reading choruses in literature.
A good Greek chorus in literature really does take the omniscient narrator to the next level. It’s fascinating as a reader to see the story through the eyes of a collective. It’s something that we as humans do all the time when we gossip about the lives of others or partake in social commentary. In these situations, it does sometimes feel like the individual voice has been taken into the arms of a collective.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, and Greek chorus
Bookriot, Neha Patel.
In literature, we’re almost always given the perspective through the lens of one narrator at a time, which means that pretty much every narrator has some factor of unreliability. But I have always wondered if Greek choruses, by nature of commenting as a collective are also unreliable. Do they have the benefit of multiple perspectives? Do they have the benefit of hindsight? Are they truly objective bystanders? Or are they operating under a herd mentality?
Either way, here are some great books that use Greek choruses to comment on the story.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, and Greek chorus
Novels:
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides
In this memorable coming-of-age story, the unnamed “neighborhood boys” of a quiet Detroit suburb observe from afar as the Lisbon sisters commit suicide one by one. Told with haunting sensitivity and dark humor, the boys’ narration evokes the emotions of youth and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.
We the Animals, by Justin Torres
Written in magical language with visceral images, WE THE ANIMALS uses the collective narrator to portray the chaotic heart of one family and the lives of three close brothers tearing their way through childhood.
The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka
In this spellbinding novel of identity and loyalty, a collective narrator traces the extraordinary lives of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides”—from their arduous journeys by boat to their tremulous first nights as wives.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, and Greek chorus
Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris
If you’re a fan of the TV hit “The Office,” you’re going to love this wickedly funny read. The Greek chorus in this novel about office life copes with a business downturn through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks.
Even the Dogs, by Jon McGregor
The ghostly victims of a bad batch of heroin pay homage to their friend whose body is found in an abandoned apartment. A chorus keeping vigil, they watch as his body is taken away, examined, investigated, and cremated.
Anthem, by Ayn Rand
Can you imagine a world where the use of the word “I” is punishable by death? In perhaps a more literal use of the “we” narrator, Ayn Rand imagines a world characterized by irrationality, collectivism, and socialistic thinking and economics. “Twilight Zone” fans, conspiracy theorists, and everyone in between: make this classic your next read.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, and Greek chorus
The Secrets We Kept, by Lara Prescott
The Greek Chorus: The secretaries
I always have loved a good spy novel, especially one with a classic work of literature at its center. The Secrets We Kept follows two secretaries hired by the CIA to carry out an important mission at the height of the Cold War: smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, publish it, and then sneak it back in. The two secretaries at the center of the story propel the narrative forward. The Greek chorus of secretaries intersperse their take on the story throughout the book. It’s a fascinating read on how women can have their individual, powerful voices while also being powerful in a group.
Next Week:
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Shelby Van Pelt
P. S.—who does the title refer to?