Eye of Octopus

14 responses to “Eye of Octopus”

1. 

   jurvetson

   Nov 25, 2011 at 11:40 pm

   All this and cool eyes too. Here is a closeup I took today, and a lens comparison with my hawk eye photo which was published in Science …
   

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2. 

   scleroplex

   Nov 26, 2011 at 12:08 am

   beautiful!!

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3. 

   Pieces of Eye

   Nov 26, 2011 at 1:36 am

   Don’t forget Mauna Kea!

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4. 

   solerena

   Nov 26, 2011 at 2:10 am

   So not real…incredible! and so we can learn from bacteria about networks and how to bring the light:D yep, fun talk about fish too and their communication, very funny about changing colors:) lucky you at TED:)

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5. 

   cjeam

   Nov 26, 2011 at 3:49 am

   They are amazing, they can also walk on land and offer us crabs.

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6. 

   r.AI (-)

   Nov 26, 2011 at 6:42 am

   Their retinas are unique, too, in that they the photoreceptors are at the outermost layer. This, unlike mammals where light has to go through layers of neurons and blood vessels before reaching the photoreceptors.

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7. 

   momof3xx

   Nov 26, 2011 at 5:26 pm

   thanks for bringing us there, amazing

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8. 

   jurvetson

   Mar 27, 2012 at 9:34 pm

   popularity is growing… Saw this in San Francisco magazine last night:

   

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9. 

   jurvetson

   Mar 31, 2012 at 4:42 pm

   Who knew… Fascinating creatures. Here are some excerpts from another love story with the octopus:

   “I have always loved octopuses. No sci-fi alien is so startlingly strange. Here is someone who, even if she grows to one hundred pounds and stretches more than eight feet long, could still squeeze her boneless body through an opening the size of an orange; an animal whose eight arms are covered with thousands of suckers that taste as well as feel; a mollusk with a beak like a parrot and venom like a snake and a tongue covered with teeth; a creature who can shape-shift, change color, and squirt ink.

   Athena’s suckers felt like an alien’s kiss—at once a probe and a caress. Although an octopus can taste with all of its skin, in the suckers both taste and touch are exquisitely developed.

   Three-fifths of an octopus’s neurons are not in the brain; they’re in its arms. It is as if each arm has a mind of its own… For example, researchers who cut off an octopus’s arm (which the octopus can regrow) discovered that not only does the arm crawl away on its own, but if the arm meets a food item, it seizes it—and tries to pass it to where the mouth would be if the arm were still connected to its body.

   For its color palette, the octopus uses three layers of three different types of cells near the skin’s surface. The deepest layer passively reflects background light. The topmost may contain the colors yellow, red, brown, and black. The middle layer shows an array of glittering blues, greens, and golds. But how does an octopus decide what animal to mimic, what colors to turn? Scientists have no idea, especially given that octopuses are likely colorblind.

   But new evidence suggests a breathtaking possibility. Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and University of Washington researchers found that the skin of the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis, a color-changing cousin of octopuses, contains gene sequences usually expressed only in the light-sensing retina of the eye. In other words, cephalopods—octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid—may be able to see with their skin.”

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10. 

    jurvetson

    Apr 2, 2012 at 12:27 am

    and then add the Black Rock Desert pyro fun… and voilà!

    Or, as seen on Wimp today, the amazing glowing firefly squid of Toyama, Japan

    

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11. 

    jurvetson

    Aug 28, 2013 at 3:58 pm

    This just in from Guy: Detatched octopus arms show awareness, react to danger:

    "It’s further evidence that octopus intelligence is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Their arms continue to remain alert, reacting to pain, long after they have been removed from the body of the octopus. This isn’t just post-mortem twitching — the tentacles are aware of their environment, and responding to danger.

    This raises the question of whether the arms have something like minds of their own. Though the question is controversial, there is some observational evidence indicating that it could be so. When an octopus is in an unfamiliar tank with food in the middle, some arms seem to crowd into the corner seeking safety while others seem to pull the animal toward the food, Godfrey-Smith explained, as if the creature is literally of two minds about the situation.

    No matter what the reason for the strange movement of the severed octopus arms, one thing is certain. This kind of scientific experiment probably won’t happen again any time soon. Because there is so much evidence for octopus intelligence, the European Union has issued a directive stating that no experiments may be done on octopuses (and possibly other cephalopods like squid) that cause them unnecessary pain or distress."

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12. 

    scleroplex

    Aug 28, 2013 at 10:37 pm

    attention and memory are not the same
    and should not be used interchangeably

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13. 

    jurvetson

    Oct 16, 2013 at 3:39 pm

    monkey see, monkey do. I notice the video has a disclaimer overlay at the start now.

    Meanwhile, the octopi keep on amazing us. They must have so much fun playing hide and seek.

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14. 

    jurvetson

    Apr 14, 2016 at 12:56 am

    And here is an amazing example of recent octopus jail breaks to the sea: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/04/13/octopu...

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