Things are getting too serious lately. I’m planning to paint an octopus vaudeville for a few chuckles.
Just finished the first painting today. It’s a blue-lined octopus,(Hapalochlaena fasciata), a tiny, highly venomous cephalopod found along Australia’s eastern coast.
Yes, it’s meant to be silly.
Wendy
Thanks for sharing! How does that octopus know which tentacles to put its shoes on?
On the ones on the floor! 
The Captain
Not to get all nerd on you, but an octopus is so flexible that it can pass through any hole its rigid beak can fit through. It’s one of their many astonishing talents. So the Octopus Dandy Dancer in my painting has lots of choices for his tap shoes.
By the way, the ringed octopus (including the striped species) has enough tetrodotoxin in one bite to kill a man. And the man won’t necessarily know he’s been bitten until he can’t breathe anymore. The only way to save him will be artificial respiration and/or a ventilator until the poison works through his system.
Wendy
Very nice!
My wife and I read a wonderful book a few months (years?) ago that incudes an octopus as one of the main characters. It was a truly delightful read and I wholeheartedly recommend it (Wendy, especially you, go to your local library and check it out for the weekend). It’s called Remarkably Bright Creatures.
Brains!
The Captain
I enjoyed it very much when I read it a couple of years ago.
Wendy
If I’m not mistaken, Wendy recommended the documentary movie, “My Octopus Teacher” a while back. Pretty sure it was someone here anyway.
It is about a guy who observes an octopus in the wild every day for a year. And before your eyes glaze over, it is a great movie! It won an Academy Award in fact.
@McLovin1981 you’re right! I did recommend “My Octopus Teacher” even before it won its Academy Award (richly deserved). A wonderful movie on many levels.
The fascinating science of the octopus is explored in at least two programs on PBS. NOVA scienceNOW explored octopus intelligence in Season 5, Episode 4 (“How Smart Is an Octopus?”) highlighting their problem-solving skills, ability to change color, and unique nervous systems. NOVA scienceNOW: How Smart Is an Octopus? (2011) examined whether octopuses are the smartest invertebrates, featuring marine biologist Roger Hanlon to discuss camouflage and brainpower. These had me stopping the video, backing up and replaying because the octopus transformed so quickly and completely that it seemed to simply vanish.
Nature: Octopus: Making Contact (2019) is a highly-rated PBS documentary about a scientist bonding with a pet octopus but I found this less informative than the NOVA program. It’s more similar to the book because it shows octopus-human interactions.
The weak point of the book, “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” is that the octopus’ natural life span is much shorter than the incident it is supposed to remember. (No spoilers here.) @MarkR
Wendy
I knew you would! 
Yes, it’s still fiction after all.
I watched this one, I think it was during COVID. I found it to be very interesting.
Very interesting! The connection of two arms to each other across all 8 skipping two each time is particularly interesting. Maybe despite the branch offs of life forms, “two” has some special way of working together when the organi$m has a complex brain?
