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Does the Octopus Hold the Key To Robot Design?
balancedi writes "Simultaneously controling 8 jointless arms without getting them all tangled up is a neat trick that octopuses do with ease. According to a National Geographic article several researchers from around the world think understanding the octopus holds to key to the optimal robot design."
Cephlapods don't tend to live long. Don't know about octopi, but a lot of small squid species only live 2 or 3 years.
The coolest part about the Movement of Octopus is the fact that only the body desides where to go. It's up to the legs to figure out how they're going to get there.
If you ever get down the the Aquarium of the Americas you can get a pretty good display of this. Just make sure you make it for one of the feeding times 'cause the feeders do all the classic Octopus tricks(fish in a bottle, fish in a tank, fish with mirrors, mazes, etc).
..which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably designed for cooling the blood-T P
caring for a salt water animal of any kind is a serious and expensive undertaking.
Also octopus only live a year so they aren't the best pets if you grow attached.
love is just extroverted narcissism
If you don't mind me asking, what happened to 'Cephus'? you speak of her in the past tense.
She died of old age. When I got her, I had found her on my SCUBA tank after we had returned home. She was soooo tiny (about the size of my thumbnail), and we were miles away from the ocean by that time. I did not want her to die, so we mixed up some artificial sea water and I carried her home to place her in a 100gal aquarium I had. Fed her with feeder goldfish, but clams and crabs purchased from the local pet store was what she really enjoyed. She lived about two years (which is very good for an octopus), grew to about 13 inches and finally died from old age.
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Correction: the Greek plural is -podes. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=octopus
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Lesson on the correct plural version of Octopus. Very interesting read.
Creative Demolition
Good ol' dictionary.com does list "octopods", but that seems like a generic term for any eight-legged creature, not incorrect for an octopus but not specific either.
(Mostly OT anecdote: When my older sister first called to announce her engagement to a quadriplegic, my mother, startled, turned to the rest of us and announced, "Nancy's going to marry a quadraped!"
(We speculated furiously until she hung up and explained-- a dog, perhaps? Horse? Wombat?)
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Actually, the word octopus derives from the Greek oktopous, -odos (unicode: o)kta/pous), so the plural is octopodes. Many of the words that stem from octopus have endings indicative of a Latin root in English, due to the misconception that it comes from the Latin octopus, -i.
There is no generally-agreed plural. Strictly speaking, since it's a Greek word ("Okto", eight, plus "pus", foot) the "correct" plural would be "octopodes". Nobody really likes that, though, and most dictionaries suggest the English neologisms "octopi" or "octopuses". Either is good English usage. (Definitely not "octopii", however, as that would be the plural of "octopius".)
Actually, the word octopus derives from the Greek oktopous, -odos (unicode: o)kta/pous), so the plural is octopodes. Many of the words that stem from octopus have endings indicative of a Latin root in English, due to the misconception that it comes from the Latin octopus, -i.
From Wikipedia:
A note on the plural form: Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses", and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic. The Oxford English Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi, and octopodes (the order reflecting decreasing frequency of use), stating that the last form is rare.
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Correct URLD =132&CephID=495
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/viddb/vidsrch3.cfm?I