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"Argonaut" Octopus Sucks Air Into Shell As Ballast

audiovideodisco writes "Even among octopuses, the Argonaut must be one of the coolest. It gets its nickname — 'paper nautilus' — from the fragile shell the female assembles around herself after mating with the tiny male (whose tentacle/penis breaks off and remains in the female). For millennia, people have wondered what the shell was for; Aristotle thought the octopus used it as a boat and its tentacles as oars and sails. Now scientists who managed to study Argonauts in the wild confirm a different hypothesis: that the octopus sucks air into its shell and uses it for ballast as it weaves its way through the ocean like a tiny submarine. The researchers' beautiful video and photographs show just how the Argonaut pulls off this trick. The regular (non-paper) nautilus also uses its shell for ballast, but the distant relationship between it and all octopuses suggests this is a case of convergent evolution."

7 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Convergent Evolution? by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 2, Funny

    Nah. The Angels just mis-intrepeted the cocktail napkin with God's first specs on it. Then they had to go back and create the same design with hardware instead of software.

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  2. Mating Rituals by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Gives the term "Break it off inside her" a whole new meaning...

    1. Re:Mating Rituals by ivandavidoff · · Score: 2, Funny

      There's ugly, there's coyote ugly, and there's argonaut ugly.

    2. Re:Mating Rituals by somersault · · Score: 4, Funny

      The arm doubled as a penis, snapped off during sex and stays inside the female’s body.

      Yep, this has happened to me quite a few times. I'm just glad these things grow back!

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      which is totally what she said
  3. I for one by Ka+D'Argo · · Score: 2, Funny

    hail our new submarine octopus overlords

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    Aw Frell this
  4. Ubuntu? by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Argonaut Octopus" ... That's the new Ubuntu release, right?

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
  5. Re:I beg to differ on definition of "Coolest" by HeckRuler · · Score: 2, Funny

    Argonaut, Part Duex, bad to the bone!