Trident loves octopuses. Really. And not just as calamari. Which incidentally, is squid not octopuses. Nonetheless, if one were so inclined, people do eat octopuses, including live baby ones. Which seems beyond absurdly cruel to us, but hey – we eat red meat so let’s not judge too harshly.
Anyhow, we said it – Trident is an octopus fan. And in our Surf Science columns, as surfers we should love not only surfing itself but also the oceans and their myriad of creatures. In other words, there’s more to our sport than just straight-up shredding. True surfers appreciate the beautiful environment and the animals which inhabit it. Indeed, check out some of our previous articles in the same sorta vein here, here and here. There are more, so use our brilliant search function for anything your heart’s desire wishes to read.
Octopuses are just frikkin’ cool man.
Our tentacled buddies have like, 3 hearts, which is 3 more than the average politician. Octopuses also have blue blood which sorta makes them royalty. They range in size from the Pacific Giant octopus (the name is kinda a dead giveaway at up to – holy crap over 4 metres in arm length) to the (um… am I reading this right?!) star sucker pygmy octopus. Um yes. Well. It still has pygmy in its name, so yup – that’s a sure thing it’s small.
Octupuses are rumoured to be amongst the most intelligent invertebrates. This is partly due to its relatively large brain, but also ‘coz each of its eight arms contain neurons. That’s brain cells to you and I. It’s sorta like have an extendable brain. It certainly would have made cheating in maths test a helluva lot easier back in the day.
My Octopus Teacher was a South African documentary that won an Oscar. Although Trident has never seen it, we’ve heard good things about how heartfelt and inspirational it is. Considering its title it’s presumably about an octopus that teaches, say, seventh grade. Maybe to like, unruly learners, who in classic film tradition learn from the occy while said occy learns from them. All the while donnering up to eight misbehaving students at once with rulers in each of its eight arms.
Speaking of films, there was a James Bond flick called Octopussy. Well, it may have been a porn film, but it has octopus in the title. But yes, the star sucker octopus may have surreptitiously been involved. Er, let’s move along.
Camouflage is cool no matter how many limbs you have.
Famed surfer Marc Occilupo was nicknamed Occy, but this was based simply on the Australian tendency to shorten unwieldy surnames rather than the fact said surfer was adorned with eight tentacles and the ability to change colour. Speaking of, the octopus’s ability to camouflage itself must be its most well known characteristic over and above its eight arms.
Apparently, this is considered weird as despite having one of the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom, science reckons octopuses are colour blind. But come on… as we all know, mainstream science knows pretty much bugger all. Anyhow, the octopus can change colour ‘coz it has chromatophores in its skin, literally colour changing cells.
Imagine if we had those there camouflage, son. We could camouflage ourselves easily to avoid angry locals, tax collectors, the po-po, lawyers – the list goes on. Although, despite how awesome the octopus’s camouflage ability is, Trident doubts it could use it to avoid getting spam phone calls.
