Cuttlefish are odd creatures, so news stories about them tend to be interesting.
However, a story about them that’s going a bit viral is downright amusing!
As you can see from the image in this video from the Guardian, some scientists wanted to find out whether or not cuttlefish have stereoscopic vision (like humans do), so they strapped some 3D glasses to their faces and showed them some movies.
I found this story refreshing because it was nice to see something about how cuttlefish see things rather than about how other creatures can, or cannot, see them.
Generally stories about cuttlefish and their cephalopod cousins, octopuses and squids, tend to focus on their talent for camouflage. Here’s a link to a video that covers some scientific investigations into their peculiar abilities.
Of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without a peek at what cuttlefish look like in the wild. Here’s a one minute 360° video that I found on YouTube that does the trick.
The news is full of stories about how a giant squid was filmed in U.S. waters for the first time. Here’s a link to an article by ABC7 that includes a great clip about it.
The accomplishment was applaudable, but I was a bit disappointed about the clip.
Where were the eyes?
The text in the video said that the giant squid can have eyeballs that measure up to ten inches in diameter — that’s almost a foot! Yet the eyes weren’t actually captured in the video.
Luckily there’s another place where you can see a giant squid’s eyes.
While this was the first time a giant squid was filmed in U.S. waters, it wasn’t the first time that one’s been filmed. That happened back in 2012 when researchers from Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science filmed one in the Ogasawara archipelago, and that time they did get a fleeting shot of the giant squid’s humongous eyes. Here’s a link to a clip that covers that sighting as well as some background like how giant squids have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom and how sightings of them probably led to the legends about kraken.
When you’re looking eye to eye with a squid or octopus, it’s easy to imagine that they would see you in the same way that you would see them, but that’s not so. Until a couple of years ago, researchers believed that since cephalopods only have a single type of photoreceptor, they would be colorblind. Then in 2016 some researchers suggested that the truth may be more intriguing than that — their eyes may work like a prism. Here’s a video about that and a link to the the research that it was based upon.
Of course, cephalopods aren’t the only creatures in the sea with great eyes. Plenty of marine mammals have wonderful eyes, too. Here’s a lovely video filmed and edited by Sally Bartel for Save The Whales that brings you eye to eye with whales, dolphins and an affectionate manatee who will even come up and give you a smootch!
They were all beautiful, but I must confess to being partial to whale’s eyes. In fact, one of my favorite 360° videos of all time is TheBlu because at one point a blue whale comes up and looks you right in the eye for a bit.
TheBlu is awesome, but it is just an animation. There’s another non-360° video that was posted by Cheesemans’ Ecology Safaris that’s even more impressive — it takes you eyeball to eyeball with a real humpback whale!
Again, since those huge creatures are also mammals, it’s easy to assume that their eyes would see you in much the same way as you would see them. While that’s more true than it is with the cephalopods, it’s still not really the case. Here is a story that will give you sense of how whales might really see you.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this 360° video from the American Museum of Natural History. It’s a bit slow in the middle but features some nice eye to eye shots near the beginning and end.
I’ve been updating the “nature” related pages on this site, so I’ve spent an abnormal amount of time perusing nature related sites for the last few weeks. Along the way I came across more than my fair share of odd nature stories. Many of them were viral, so you may have seen some of them before, but I bet you haven’t seen or heard about all of them. So, here’s a rundown of some of the most noteworthy, fun tidbits that I’ve come across.
First, today, there’s a story about birds going on benders.
Speaking of octopuses, did you hear about the scientists that got octopuses high on ecstasy? It was done in the name of research, and it turns out that the octopuses didn’t respond all that differently than humans.
On the invertebrates on drugs front, there was also a story about the owner of Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound in Maine getting lobsters high before cooking them.
Of course, after that story went viral, it resulted in this follow-up story a week later about how the Maine Health Inspection Program cracked down on the restaurant for selling “adulterated” lobsters. The owner then claimed that she hadn’t actually sold the lobsters to customers, but she and her father had experimented with eating some “adulterated” lobsters themselves.
Then there’s the story about a small town in Greece getting covered in spider webs. However, according to your news source, you may not have heard that it was due to frisky spiders.
Finally, no post like this would be complete without a fun cat video or a 360° video, so here’s a 360° video from Big Cat Rescue in Tampa that fits the bill nicely.
If you want to see some more fun “cat” videos there’s a Big Cat Rescue YouTube Channel that even has a 360 VR Playlist with some clips that are guaranteed to make you go Awwww … for a good cause!
I personally liked the one with the kittens, of course! 🙂
Did you hear the one about the octopuses from space?
It sounds like the title of a cheesy sci-fi movie, doesn’t it?
But it isn’t, this time, or at least, yet. Instead, it’s actually an oddball theory that’s been put forth in a recently published “scientific” article that’s getting quite a lot of buzz in the media lately.
First, let’s start with the particular article about octopuses that is causing all of the fuss.
It appeared in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, and it was published with a list of an 33 co-authors.
One can’t help but wonder if there was a share the blame scenario going on. It’s not even the theory that is suspect. The problem is in the scientific aspects of the work. Even the sensationalist article in Newsweek politely described most responses from the scientific community as “critical.”
Personally, I checked to see if the article was published on April 1st — that would’ve been a bit o’ fun, but it wasn’t. Perhaps they submitted it on April 1st, though?
Anyway, all joking aside, the core of the article is based on an old and relatively well established theory about how life began on Earth. The theory is known as panspermia, and it really has been discussed by serious scientists.
Panspermia is a hypothesis proposing that microscopic life forms that can survive the effects of space, such as extremophiles, become trapped in debris ejected into space after collisions between planets and small Solar System bodies that harbor life. Some organisms may travel dormant for an extended amount of time before colliding randomly with other planets or intermingling with proto-planetary disks. Under certain ideal impact circumstances (into a body of water, for example), and ideal conditions on a new planet’s surfaces, it is possible that the surviving organisms could become active and begin to colonize their new environment. — Wikipedia
Here is a link to a video segment that covers the scientific basis of the panspermia theory relative to Mars, and an article from Scientific American that goes into more depth about various discussions about it among well known scientists.
Of course, the usual biological suspects mentioned are those cute little water bears, but this is not the first time octopuses have been included in the list of suspects.
Given the recent understanding of the necessary conditions for life existing on large ocean moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the theory that octopuses are from elsewhere in our solar system isn’t quite as crazy as it might sound.
If you listen to the whole story, you will hear that some scientists tend to believe that it is actually Jupiter’s moon Europa that is the older, and thus the more likely candidate to harbor ocean life beyond Earth. This has been reinforced by a study just published in Nature this month that shows reanalysis of old data gathered by NASA’s Galileo probe back in the 1990s provided unexpected evidence of salt water plumes on Europa.
Unfortunately, the scientific basis of the particular article in the news about a life form on Earth being from space, while not as nutty as it might sound, has serious flaws. Here are two articles that are far more elaborate about the criticisms being waged against the article.
Still, you can kind of see why they would think that octopuses, in particular, are alien. They are indisputably the weirdest, intelligent life form on Earth. That much is pretty much hard to deny. Here’s a link to a lovely video that goes into just some of the reasons that is the case.
Okay, this could go on and on. I’ve got videos of these creatures escaping from a jar, going through holes the size of a quarter, stealing crabs from fisherman, using shells to hide from prey, walking on land to hunt and a ton of other absurd things that they can do that you don’t exactly expect from a lump of flesh with some eyes and suckers. You can see them all on the octopus page if you like.
However, one of the most bizarre things about them turns out to be their DNA. Here are some videos and links that show how Ragsdale Lab at the University of Chicago found out some extremely surprising truths about octopus DNA that explains their amazing powers of camouflage, dexterity and deception.
So octopuses are impressively weird, and they are wicked smart too. That doesn’t make them “aliens,” right?
Well, hold on to your brains, because that isn’t even the strangest thing about them. New research has shown that they can even edit their own RNA! Here’s a link to a video about this along with some supporting sources.
In the end, octopuses really are relatively alien, whether or not they’re from space. The thing is, even if they are from Earth, which honestly, they probably are, then that means some core things emerge, independently, in entirely different biological milieus.
That’s kind of awesome news, when you think about it!
Who knows? Maybe water bears really are from Mars and octopuses are from Jupiter, or well, Europa specifically. There is also that pesky little problem of that unexplained methane on Mars, so who knows?
We could by now, but we don’t.
Specific theories about octopuses and water bears aside, there are serious scientists that do believe that life on Earth may have come from space in general, and that said life might still be out there elsewhere in our solar system right now. We also have the technology that we need to find out what is, or is not, lurking about on other planets and moons. The real question is whether or not it will happen, soon, perhaps in some of our lifetimes, or at all, in the future history of humanity.
