Octopus Appreciation

Dear person who is reading this,

Octopuses. Let’s talk about them. So, I was casually browsing through my Instagram feed and I stumbled across this Tumblr post about octopuses in which people shared anecdotes about them and basically how smart they are.

This intrigued and so, I started googling stuff. Here’s some facts I gathered from various sources:

• They have 3 hearts
• They can taste things using their arms
• No, their arms are not called tentacles and the plural is not octipi
• Some scientists also refer to them as octopods
• They can change their colors
• They can pass through the tiniest holes and escape (one octopus passed through a 1-inch hole)
• They have human like eyes, except they don’t have a blind spot
• They have shown to exhibit human-like emotions

The last fact is what got me mainly interested. I mean, I know animals have feelings too, but this is an octopus we’re talking about. Sea creatures are never given the same -for the lack of a better word -importance, as land animals. As I further researched, I learnt that they are like us. Scientists have done experiments where they gave them jars to open and they figured it out, after which they gave the child-lock jars to see what happens. Guess what, it took one octopus an hour to figure it out! How amazing is that.

I feel like I’m the only one going crazy over here…guys we have only explored less than 5 percent of the oceans. Less than 5. For all we know, there’s a giant Godzilla-esque octopus living in the rest of the ninety-five percent. Let’s call him Octzilla. They will take over the world one day. They’re smart, capable and cute. Literally have been around for centuries. According to Smithsonian, ‘the oldest known octopus fossil belongs to an animal that lived some 296 million years ago.’ How amazing is that!?

There is so much we don’t know about the oceans on Earth and that’s so scary to think about. Anyways, let me know what is your favorite ocean/sea creature and why!

-Amna

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