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Wily Octopi Walk on Two Arms
lousyd writes "Offering hope for new forms of ambulatory robots, biologist Christine L. Huffard, at UC Berkeley, has caught individual octopi sneaking away from predators by using two of their arms as legs. They use the other six arms to make themselves look like coconuts or algae. The research is being done as part of a project on robotics. This reminds me of the Far Side cartoon where the cows drop to all fours when humans come around, but resume standing on two legs otherwise." And I for one welcome our new mollusk overlords.
And I for one welcome our new mollusk overlords.
Octopus are spooky smart. They are pretty good problem solvers, they have excellent vision and a bizarre sense of curiosity. They will explore just about everything they can access, and have distinct personalities. They are in all likelihood the smartest organisms in the sea second to cetaceans. I wrote in a previous discussion on Slashdot about my pet octopus, Cephus (short for cephalopod), but that was only one instance of amazing behaviors I had witnessed. I have also dived off the Pacific Northwest with giant pacific red octopus (Octopus dofleini) and found them to be quite curious and for the most part docile (this is in contrast to squid which are truly ruthless aliens that would kill you if given the slightest chance) unless you piss em off and which point they usually simply want to get away. However, I have seen them steal items from divers and swim off with them as well.
The interesting thing about robotics and control of complex systems like this is the computational control required of such structures. Octopus can almost seemingly turn themselves to liquid and fit through the most amazingly small spaces, yet their strength would amaze (and I suspect scare) you. Even my pet octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) who was about a foot long could generate incredible forces from very muscular arms. The giant octopus would be so strong, they could likely (literally) tear you apart if they were not so docile. Here is the deal though: They need an aqueous environment to move effectively. I suspect that for robotics teams, some combination of hydrostatic muscles and exoskeletons would be necessary, which now that I am thinking about it could be huge for artificial limbs for amputees. Right now the most advanced artificial limbs have internally driven servos that have limits on torque that are quite low. This technology could open the door for more capable artificial limbs and exoskeletons to enhance human movement as well as robotics.
Oh, other links of interest to the original Science paper are here, but you need a subscription to see the full text article. The movies linked there though are free.
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But can they juggle while doing it?
Mind you, a large clump of reddish flesh walking along a sandy seabed with greenish water as a background is not what I would call camoflauged.
WARNING: NOT SCHOOL/OFFICE SAFE
http://www.b0g.org/wsnm/uploads/octopussy.avi/
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Gay Nigger Zombie Jesus rises from the Grave to kill Jews
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL (Al Jazeera) - Just in time for the Easter season this year, GNAA historical researcher malaclypse (Th.D., Doctorate of Divinity) has released a surprising and vastly different picture of the last days of Jesus Christ.
In a release of his paper, apparently written on the skin of Jewish newborns, malaclypse discusses his findings with the world. The following are several of the more interesting excerpts:
"As many of you know, Jesus was a black man. But my research has uncovered facts that have been hidden from us by the Zionists, Jewish Cabal, and the Catholic Church for milennia. Jesus was a Gay Nigger, here to spread the "Word of the Lord" (Gay Nigger Seed) to the common people of the time. He didn't heal people of leperosy, he healed their syphilis, and "healed" blindness (caused by glaucomas) by gving out "weed" (marijuana) to the afflicted.
The Jews, who had managed to gain control of the government at the time (having not yet learned to hide their manipulations in the shadows) feared the exponential viral spread of the Holy Seed and decided that Jesus would have to be crucified. He was betrayed by Judas (obviously a white Jew) and sold to the Romans for 30 pieces of silver, one of the earliest documented examples of the Jewish love for money over all else. He was then crucified, crying out to his father and his homeboys to forgive the people whom he anally loved for not saving him.
Jesus waas then placed in a cave, where over the next few days, the Holy Seed worked a miracle upon his tortured body. He arose from the dead, his body well-formed and glistening with sweat, wielding a massive erection and unsatiable lust for revenge upon those who killed him. Yes, Gay Nigger Zombie Jesus had risen from the dead."
"... [he] moved calmly among the crowds of people, seeking to feast upon the brains of the Jews who hd killed him. After every Jew he killed, he was able to deliver the holy seed to another follower, ensuring the spread of Gay Niggerhood throughout the world, even if he were to be killed again. He was quoted as saying "Arrrrrrgggghh... Jewbrainssssssss" as he wandered the earth, searching for revenge. After killing untold thousands of Jews and spreading the Holy Seed widely among the people, he was killed for the last time. The Jews slowed him down by throwing razor-sharp Stars of David at him, felled him with lances made from the bones of dead Niggers, tied him with ropes soaked in the menstural blood of virgin Jewish women, and finally burned him, pouring naptha and pitch onto the conflaguration until only ashes remained.
The lack of any solid remains, however, is not truly indicative of his utter destruction, but shows that his Father, the Lord, took him bodily up into heaven, burned and maimed, to recover and bide his time until the Second Coming [properly spelled Cumming] when he will return to Earth and kill Jews until the rivers run red with their filthy blood. The faithful will receive the Holy Seed from his glistening shaft, and be assured their place in the Gay Nigger Heaven, were the soap is always dropped in the showers, the assholes are all pink and clean, and the screams of the Jews burning in hell can be heard on the radio whenever you desire."
The Catholic Church, which has been a front for the Jewish Cabal since its inception, has been hiding these documents, keeping them from the public to appease the Jewish masters that they think hold the power of life and death over all the world. Expending a great amount of effort, spending untold sums of money on bribes, and after immense amounts of anal sex, malaclypse was able to access these documents, copies of which were protected by the hidden Ordo GayNig within the church, and bring his findings to the world. "With this," malaclypse commented, "the orld finally knows the truth of what happened to Christ, and what awaits those who don't accept the Holy Seed
"Offering hope for new forms of ambulatory robots, biologist Christine L. Huffard, at UC Berkeley, has caught individual octopi sneaking away from predators by using two of their arms as legs.
Do they run Linux?
http://members.tripod.com/~damyano/images/Far_Side _101901.JPG
What better way to ring in the opening of the Hardware section than with... invertebrate biology? Wait, WTF?
now this means we can create bender from futurama some day, with his crazy bendy arms and all
timeo Danaos, et dona ferentis
It is octopodes, you terrible, terrible people.
they are Come propaganda and cans can become recent article put operating systems, bben the best, one Here but Znow exemplified by Fuck The Baby live and a job to
So the plural should be octopodes.
(In the same way, platypodes is the plural of platypus)
That's just DISGUSTING.
Now worksafe? It's Not VOMIT safe.
What it is: Naked woman in doggiestyle position with an octopus in her vagina.
There's really no precedent.
I think octopi, octopodes, and octopedes are all accepted.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Cthulhu fhtagn, Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
When I saw the headline I automatically thought of a certain octopus boss from a Megaman game.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
He's right.
With great power comes great fan noise.
Does slashdot always cover stories from the nightly news a day or 2 later???
Always nice to have solid ammunition for arguments in bars.
Well, what sort of bars do you go to?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Just make sure they don't get their tentacles on any firearms.
At least that's what I read from another source and what it looks like to me.
Obligatory Far Side cartoon
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Long gone are the days when Slashdot has stories before mainstream media. I head this on NPR, oh well Slashdot, so much for being edgy.
I wonder how the octupi would react if they were caught masturbating by scientists?
NPR did a story on this today. You can get audio of the story as well as video of the octopi walking at:
y Id=4561136
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
Kingdom: Animalia
Order: Mollusca
Class: Cephalopoda
Anyone wanna complete this?
In related news, the babylonians have attacked the greeks, and the roman empire's power is waning.
John Cusack's mom would have to say about this?
http://www.walkingtaco.com
welcome our new cephalopod overlords
So I take it we've all heard the story about the guy who filmed his pet octopus climbing out of its saltwater tank, crawling 12 feet across the floor and up a stand into a freshwater tank to eat the goldfish before heading back?
I've never been aware of being close to large squid and couldn't begin to guess their mindset, but I've swum amongst thousands of modest sized squid who have exhibited no hostility whatsoever.
In all seriousness, I've found squid to be some of the coolest creatures I've ever seen, and they can be very hard to see. They usually make themselves appear to be just like water, which is probably useful for animals that most things would find to be tender and yummy. So if you're looking for squid, you don't quite look for anything tangible, mostly you look for an odd change in the refraction of the water, and then you see if the refraction has eyes.
If you can do this, and it is admittedly an odd skill, keep looking, and you may find that the eyes are studying you very intentedly (and I always assumed without malice!) Often once you see one you will realize that you are surrounded by hundreds of them, and once they realize you see them and don't seem to be a threat, they sort of 'uncloak'. Their skin is the coolest thing you have ever seen, it almost has a television like effect, as it pulses and flows with many colors, very fast and trippy.
They have the oddest motion, they approach you tentacles first, but they flee tentacles back, and as they watch you, they pulse back and forth in curiosity (maybe that is malice!) and fear, with their colors and patterns pulsing in time. I have always felt that they are communicating with a visual language, though obviously that language lacks phrases like "Stay away from the boat with the bright lights!"
I agree with you that octopuses are super cool, I sometimes look for them when I snorkel, and again looking for an octopus is like looking for something that isn't quite not there. They have great camoflage, so mostly you look where they ought to be in a crack or something, and you usually figure out they're there before you quite see them. They have the coolest ambulation and jet powered swimming too.
I've read that octopuses are mostly built of liquid tissue. Can't pretend to understand exactly how that works, but I've seen a large octopus flow through a pinhole, it's the weirdest thing.
hardware.slashdot.org? Where's the slashdot announcement? And why are octopi in the hardware section? Do they run linux or something?
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
The octopus is dead. Now if it were a live octopus we might have a winner.
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
Err ... maybe they want us to imagine a Beowulf cluster of those?
Octopus or dragonfy?
So everyone is speaking Greek when they talk about an octopus? I don't think so. Greeks don't say octopus when they want to talk about eight-armed cephalopods with no tentacles and no shell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus#Plural
We've always known that octopi could walk.
Doctorow is a complete jackass.
I didn't know coconuts 'sneaked' away from predators away? What do they do, roll away innocently whistling?
In Soviet Russia, octopus studies you!
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Octopus are underrated. Seriously. I used to have an (Octopus bimaculoides) [utmb.edu] as a pet (her name was Josie, short for Josephine) and I was always amazed at the intelligence and problem solving abilities she exhibited. One day I was returning from working all night at the sleep lab followed by a day of class. I had a new bag of goldfish to feed her and placed them in the "goldfish tank" across the table from her 100gal aquarium. She always got excited at that and would hang on the side of her tank and look at the goldfish. At any rate, I got a couple hours of sleep and then ran back to work for another all night shift. Upon stumbling back home the next day, I was stunned to find no goldfish in the goldfish tank! I did not know if I was just seriously sleep deprived or what, but closer inspection revealed goldfish scales floating around in Cephus's tank........and a trail of dried salt water on the table top from her tank to the goldfish tank. She had opened the top of her tank, navigated across the table to the goldfish tank, helped herself to every last goldfish in the goldfish tank and then crawled back home, closing the top of her tank! All I could do was stare in dumbfounded amazement.
She also exhibited curiosity with new objects placed into her tank, exploring them extensively, and I must admit, it is most interesting in that unlike other aquatic non mammalians.....when you looked into an octopus eye, they look back at you. There is something absolutely intelligent behind those eyes.
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollusk
:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod
Mollusks include cephalopods. No need to be pedantic.
"This reminds me of the Far Side cartoon where the cows drop to all fours when humans come around, but resume standing on two legs otherwise." And I for one welcome our new mollusk overlords."
did you have to take possibly the two best replies along with it?
And at the same time, most science stories get squat. (The T. Rex story died out when reporters found out that they weren't cloning dinosaur armies). What the hell?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
This is copied and pasted from a comment linked to by the first post. The idiot didn't even bother to change the name Cephus to Josie.
The plural of octopus is NOT octopi!!! This is a completely incorrect declension assuming octopus ia a Latin word. It isn't. I don't care what dictionary.com gives, it's wrong. The plural is octopuses (or even octopodes if you want to be clever).
Where have I seen this comment? Oh, I know! BWJones posted it several months ago here. Sad.
I for one welcome . . .dammit!!!
If you pay your taxes you support terrorism!
to dEliver wHat,
English is not Greek, and, like it or not, "octopuses" and "octopi" are both listed in dictionaries of the English language, but "octopodes" are not.
:)
Octopi here, but no octopodes.
Or to put it another way, I'm sympathetic to your argument, but I still disagree with you.
is octopuses, octopi, or octopodes. Though that last one doesn't get used so much.
No really, nerds are funny, keep making jokes, just keep doing it.
I'm kind of drunk, ok, really drunk on this good friday and like any IT professional, I came home and hit refresh on my always-open /. firefox tab.... I saw this.. I laughed. Is it not amusing that octopi hide by acting as coconuts? I thought it was. so laugh with me. Laugh, damnit. It's funny.
It's just Crap.
I laugh at your claim of the existence of an "automobile". Surely anyone inventing such a device would be educated enough to know that it should be called either an "ipsomobile" or an "autokineticon."
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Octopuses may be mad smart and walkers, but they still only live a year or two. The only octopuses that could lord over us would be ones we genetically modified.
does anyone notice how slashdot has become a dupe of news.google.com?
So yummy !
Just throw away what's inside as well as the eyes and mouth, then cook them for one hour in boiling water, peel them, cut them in 1 cm slices, then eat them cold with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, olives, spices, salad...
Delicious !!! That's why I like to capture them while snorkeling.
That being said they are really really fascinating and funny creatures. Just for fun try to give them some dead fish in your hand, they will come and take it away from you to eat it in they nest (usually below some rock).
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Don't be scared of watching the video at work.
Tentacle sex is not considered erotic or pornographic by American office managers. They are simple unfamiliar with the tentacle sex fetish and think its just a boring National Geographic documentary.
Don't worry you won't get into trouble all I got was a Jacques Cousteau DVD for my birthday as my coworkers thought I was into boring sealife docus.
Put octopuses in virtual reality and make them do all sorts of cool stuff.
The New(er) version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the classic Disney movie, which I saw again recently. Go rent it. It's got a CRAZY documentary on the Humbolt Squid, which I think they said reaches 12 feet. These suckers (Pardon the pun) are fierce. They bash heads.
It's also just a good movie in general, but it is worth seeing the DVD for the short (8-10 minute) documentary on the Humbolt Squid, which was the inspiration for the Giant squid in the movie.
Don't you mean.. BIZZARO!
...for an octopus. These creatures never cease to amaze me; they're absolutely fascinating. It's therefore such a pity that they all have such short lives: once they reach sexual maturity, they reproduce and die. Most do not live more than one or two years. The giant Pacific octopus lives longer than most: males about 4 years and females about 3.5.
Perhaps it's their reproductive strategy which is to blame. The females produce zillions of little eggs, which they guard with their lives, but do not take care of the young once they've hatched. Having been so successful in producing so many offspring, there's no evolutionary advantage for them to be around any longer and so they die. Being part of the same reproductive strategy, the males don't last much longer either (actually, I can't think of any examples in the natural world where one sex significantly outlives the other).
As I was saying, life is short for an octopus.
Crap, I hope the sharks over there don't have internet access or these octopi are in some serious trouble.
So then instead of saying viri or viruses I should say virodes?
Sounds a hell of a lot better then 'virii' and if you know latin, its just as correct.
Since we're calling things by the most popular terminology: My hard drive was acting up, so I took my CPU into the store. They said I didn't have enough megahertz for the software I was running, so I asked them to buy me more. when I came home I asked my neighbor boy to download my bonzai buddy again. He had to bring over the internet because I didn't have that anymore either. The rascal said I should click on this fox-thing on my computer instead of the internet to surf the web. I wish he'd just put the internet back, but as long as I can sell my knitting on ebay I'm happy.
Click here for the story and streaming video clip.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
moronic americans
Redundant.
Maybe they got a boner? I dunno...
Oh.
dammit.
I actually saw a talk by one of the people involved in the work being done at Berkeley on this very subject Thursday. His names Robert J. Full and he's with the Biology dept at Berkeley. His and his students work have inspired an entire host of materials engineering and robotics applications. For instance his work with geckos has lead to work being done on producing nanoscale nonsticky adhesives which are based on van der Waal forces. Also based on his studies of the cockroach(and again his students) we're seeing some robots which are capable of climbing up walls and transversing really really rough terrain. Definitely someone to keep track of if you're interested in biological inspiration for engineering.
I don't care what you say, all I need is my Wumpabet soup.
Yes, it's interesting but jeez guys, it's not fresh. Whatever happened to the cutting edge /.?
I mean it's getting so that the 'news that matters' is showing up days after it's debut.
Anyway, there are some movies here.
Which may be old news as well ;-)
Octopus is of Greek and not Latin origin. Therefore the (more) correct plural is Octopuses.
Couple of months back Boing Boing pointed to a news story reporting that global warming has created such favorable conditions for squids that the cephalopod biomass is now greater than the human biomass. We don't know how many there are or how big they get. We are NOT ready. Play it smart.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Curse those evil octopi.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
That reminds me of a person with an upturned garbage can sneaking away from danger that you might see on several movies or cartoons. What a hoot!!
That's because using torque to generate torque is easy to calculate.
If it's easy to calculate, it's easy to model. if it's easy to model then its less risky to build, and you know why it doesn't work when it doesn't work.
Of course there are a few undergrad mechatronics engineers at my university that want to do what you say. Let them see the math. If they crack the math, then I'll sign up to pay them for my first hardsuit.
There outta be a rule that the original /. poster CANNOT include in his post any of the standard tired old slashdot response jokes, i.e.:
/.ers of their major form of amusement! Next thing you know, all original posts will begin with "frist prost!".
(1) I, for one, welcome, etc.
(2) In Soviet Russia...
(3) Any Simpsons reference.
(4) 1,2,???,Profit!
And I'm just too darn outraged to think of the others right now, but YOU know what they are!
The very idea, depriving
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
"Octopuses may be mad smart and walkers, but they still only live a year or two. The only octopuses that could lord over us would be ones we genetically modified."
US presidents are only around for 4 years, and that's without genetic modification...
Aw, GREAT, now that you've said that it's been slashdotted!
;p
Oh, what? Oh, uh, YEAH! Horrible, vile perversions! Grandparent should be banned, or something.
Why aren't they using two of their legs as legs? What makes a limb an arm vs. a leg? I'm pretty sure that chimpanzees can do the same things with their legs/feet as with their arms/hands, so why don't chimps have 4 arms?
a loop. Not only are they sneaky, they're funny too.
sup
Errr, (1) comes from (3). It's what the anchorman Kent Brockman on the Simpsons says with a deadpan.
Back to the original topic, the PBS series "Nature" has a wonderful show on octopuses and their relatives called "Incredible Suckers". A related website can be found at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/suckers/. I urge everyone to see it (it's available on home video); it will make you think twice about eating calimari. Another "Nature" program is "The Octopous Show"; read more at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus/.
These animals are clearly intelligent and curious, and possess amazing capabilities as has been discussed by other posters on this page.
In Soviet Russia, Simpsons make profit for YOU, which I, for one, welcome.
How quickly we forget the lessons of Babylon 5.
Remember what the Vorlon ships looked like - and what the Vorlons looked like outside of their encounter suits? Remember how ugly it is to deal with a pissed off Vorlon?
As for how big squid get - a Vorlon mothership makes Moby Dick look like an anchovy filet on a large all toppings pizza.
You have been warned!!!
We have met the enemy and he is us - Pogo (Walt Kelly)
This reminded me of an Onion article, for which I believe the headline was,
Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs; Humanity says, 'Oh, Shit!'
Soon they'll be thanking us for all the fish, too...
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
That was INCREDIBLE!
Moderators, where the hell are you?!?? It's a video of an octopus getting eating a fucking shark!!
Yes, takoyaki is tasty.
...followed by dicing noises)
I welcome them too!
Ensuing dialouge with said "overloards":
"Of course you're our overloards!"
"A knife? Why no, that's just a handy pointing utensile.
(Whack!
(humms to self: knife goes in, guts come out)
In Baja, the typical "diablo" squid story involves a hapless fisherman...
What the quote fails to mention is that the "fisherman" is fishing for Humbolt squid.
Sure they're "vicious" when you have dozens of fishing boats dropping bloody bait into the water as the squid come up for their nightly feeding.
They're also "vicious" as the fishermen begin hauling them up with 6" long multi-barbed hooks that literally shred the squids as they're being drawn up.
However, if there isn't any human squid fishing in the area you can swim with Humbolts with no problem. I wish I could link to the documentary I learned this from, but I can't find it.
Bottom line: you screw with any top tier predator you're going to get aggressive behavior.