June 26th, 2019: Wet Blanket

How many octopuses, octopi, octopodes, could a Woodchuck chuck...?
Octopodes is linguistically correct, octopuses is generally accepted, but octopi is the most fun.
Screw linguists, power to the people, they can take our money, property, and civil rights, but they can’t take our... Octopi Wall Street.



But I digress...
Female Blanket Octopi direct their energy into growing, males into getting laid. The male scores and dies.
The female just moves on and kills... uh, suicide assists... er, mates repeatedly collecting the male's hectocotylus as she goes.
When she is no longer amused by her swath of corpses, she chooses one of the loads of sperm she’s been saving and fertilizes
all 100,000 of her eggs, then after they hatch she dies, probably with a flourish and drama.



Blanket Octopi are immune to the stings of the Portuguese Man-O-War, so the males and young females rip arms off the M-O-W
and use them like light sabers. The growed-up females use the blanket for defense.
So next time you go in the ocean marvel at the many things that can eat you.

Neat.

I picked up a Portuguese Man of War stranded on the beach. Once. It was a tiny thing, half the size of my fist. They are well named, it waged total war on my skin. It felt like I'd been branded.

If you see one, yield. Go around. Go back. Do not engage. Its fuckin NAME is War and you will lose.

Somewhat related to Box Jellyfish in Australia. If you touch it, you end up wanting to die, no antitoxin exists (I think), all you can do is tough it out in hospital.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce So next time you go in the ocean marvel at the many things that can eat you.

No but there is more in the ocean somewhere over half to as high as 80%. You not only can't see them coming, you couldn't recognize them as a threat if you could see them.

Oh, I was marveling at the things in the ocean that could kill me, I just don't gotta be there to do that.

My only contribution is to say that Portuguese Man O' Wars (men of war?) aren't really much like box jellyfish or indeed any other jellyfish. They aren't jellyfish at all in fact, or even a single creature, instead they are several different specialised animals living together in symbiotic style. Pretty cool really.

They maybe cool, but they hurt, I found them quite disagreeable.