139: Jorō Spider & Day Octopus
Ellen: Hey everybody! It's Ellen Weatherford.
Christian: And Christian Weatherford.
Ellen: And we're here with Just The Zoo Of Us, your favorite animal review podcast, where we review your favorite animals by rating the m out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics.
Christian: We are not zoological experts, but we do a lot of research and try our best to make sure we're presenting information from trustworthy sources.
And big ups to us for recording on time this week, it doesn't always happen. We, we made it happen this weekend. I'm very proud of us for that. Also I have a little bit of a cold, so I'm sorry if my voice sounds a little weird.
Christian: I don't have any excuses. I'm sorry.
Ellen: You're just like that. Your voice always sounds like that. I think a lot of people like it though.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Including me, I'm at the top of the list.
Christian: It's mostly in jest.
Ellen: Before we get into it for this week, I want to echo the announcement that we made on our last episode together, which is that we are collecting stories from listeners. So if you are somebody who listens to the show and it really means a lot to you, or you have some sort of cool experience that's related to the podcast that you want to share.
Like maybe you went on a really cool adventure and you listened to the podcast during that adventure. Or with somebody really important to you, or maybe it's inspired you to do something really cool. We want to hear about that stuff. So send an email to member stories@maximumfun.org or leave a voice message at (323)601-8719.
We're working on some special stuff that's coming up really soon. So you might get to hear your message shared on the podcast, or if you leave us a voicemail that might even get played too. So we don't usually do stuff like that. So this is a pretty cool, uh, opportunity. If you want to hear your voice on the podcast
Christian: Yeah, for sure.
Ellen: And that's all I had to, uh, preface this episode with. So I guess we can get right into it.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Christian, it's your turn to go first. What animal do you have this week?
Christian: Let me just change over my active app on my smartphone.
Ellen: Thank you so much for not, uh, specifying what brand of smartphone you use. Not only because we don't give out free advertising on the show, but also because I don't want to incite the smartphone allegiance war.
Christian: Not again. So I'm bringing what I would consider the animal of the quarter? Maybe?
Ellen: It's a hot topic critter.
Christian: It is, it's out there and that is the Jorō spider. Scientific name Trichonephila clavata and this species was submitted by Mick on Twitter. The information I'm bringing comes from national geographic.com and Penn state extension's website@extensiondotpsu.edu.
Ellen: Nice.
Christian: Yes, you'll notice I'm not including Animal Diversity Web this time.
Ellen: How have they harmed you?
I think it has more to do with the taxonomy of this species having changed in recent years.
Ellen: Really?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Interesting. Sorry, animal diversity web. You're going to have to sit with a phone out. We'll tag you in next round.
Christian: I think it was its genus that got updated. So I couldn't find it under its current genus and I didn't do any further looking beyond that.
Ellen: That's fine. It sounds like you got what you needed so we're okay.
Christian: So for those maybe unaware of spiders --
Ellen: have you heard of spiders? These things are so wild. You're not going to believe it.
Christian: Um, generally speaking, eight legs.
Ellen: And why do you say generally speaking isn't that like a defining characteristic?
Christian: I was, I was supposed to have other things in that list. And then I drew a blank
Ellen: Though, I do love hedging my bets, but I always say things like mostly, most of them have a leg--
Christian: Most things die. I don't know. Um, what's the term? What is, what is the high like classification that spiders belong to, along with like insects and such --
Ellen: Animalia.
Christian: That.
Ellen: Okay, am I getting warmer? (laughter) Arthropods.
Christian: Yeah, there it is arthropods. So they have an exoskeleton, I suppose you would call it, no bones,
Ellen: Nary a bone in sight.
Christian: No bone zone.
Ellen: No bone zone! My animal this week doesn't have bones either!
Christian: I actually don't even know what it is. So that'll be a nice surprise for me too. Whereas the listener has at least seen the title of the episode.
Ellen: That's true! Oh what a fun experience.
Christian: A lot of spiders will spin webs or have spider silk, will eat other bugs and insects and such some more interesting things. But this one is a spider that including its legs is about palm sized.
It's big!
It's pretty big spider!
Ellen: It's real big!
Christian: Um, the females are larger and they are neon yellow with silver bands with a little splash of red at the end, and they have spindly legs.
Ellen: Spindly is a good word. They're long and pointy.
Christian: As opposed to something like a tarantula has very, I dunno, beefy legs.
Ellen: They're very pointy.
Christian: Yeah. Where they're found. Now, this is a big, important one where they are natively found, that range includes Japan, except the northern most island of Hokkaido, North and South Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and India. So that's their native range.
Ellen: Eastern, Eastern Asia.
Christian: Yeah. However they're introduced range in the U S includes the states, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina and Tennessee.
Ellen: Okay. That's kind of creeping our way.
Christian: Yeah. And it's that range that makes them a hot topic right now.
Ellen: Gotcha.
Christian: They seem to have been introduced into that area around 2014, likely in shipping containers from Asia to Atlanta. And those unfamiliar Atlanta is not near the ocean, but it is a big hub for all things.
Ellen: Everything goes through Atlanta, everything in the south goes through Atlanta,
Christian: Especially commercial airlines.
Ellen: Oh yeah. They have like the big like airport that -- everything goes through Atlanta.
Christian: They're taxonomic family is Araneidae
Ellen: Araneidae? I would say Arandeidae.
Christian: I actually looked up the pronunciation and spelled it out for myself and everything.
Ellen: Oh, I'm so proud of you!
Christian: Uh, other things in that family are other orb weavers spiders. And just to note on that term in this usage orb means round not spherical.
Yes. So it was more of a 2d descriptor than a 3D.
Ellen: Okay. I get, I get it. We're not pondering this orb. Next episode, next week, lots of orb pondering.
Christian: And let's get into our first category for our new listeners. That category is effectiveness and this describes physical attributes that kind of helps them do the things that you like. I'm giving an eight out of 10. That's pretty good. So the biggest thing we think about with spiders is spider silk, or at least that's what I think about first.
And this one does have spider silk and it does build webs and the orb weaver kind of moniker, it talks about that classical spiderweb shape that you think of probably.
Ellen: It's gorgeous.
Christian: So usually you'll find these spun between a few branches or something. Big web designed to catch things that are flying. Basically.
Ellen: I like that orb weavers do this because they have effectively just optimized the hunting process where they're like, I really don't feel like moving that much. I just think I'm not gonna do it. I'm going to let my prey do the flying for me
Christian: Yeah, that actually comes into play a little later too.
Ellen: Or weaver webs, anybody living in the south is intimately familiar with orb weaver webs because we have here the golden silk orb weaver, which we also call banana spiders, which are known for making these massive webs that they often will spin across walkways and pathways where people will walk and they really don't care whether you're going to be walking there or not.
They're going to make their web there and you're going to walk right into it. Every single time. You get really, really good at like, detecting these webs before you hit them. If you do a lot of walking around in the south.
Christian: If you're very tall, are typically the first person walking in your group of people in a forest.
Ellen: You get real good at it real quick.
Christian: That was the role I often played. The web clearer.
Ellen: The web clearer.
So before
Christian: I keep getting too much further, I want to talk about a little bit more about why this species has come up so often. So something of a... I'll call it hysteria, I suppose, around this introduced species into this part of the United States. So it's being talked about just because like, ah, new spider, big spider--
Ellen: New big spider. Babe, wake up. New spider just dropped.
Christian: And you know, the question is, should we be concerned? Short answer's no. And one of the things that concerns some people is this next point, I'm giving them for effectiveness. And this is the ability of ballooning.
So this is when, when young they can let loose some of their silk, then the wind can carry them to other places.
Ellen: Okay. So for some reason, I didn't think about it being a balloon made of their silk. Some strange part of my brain thought they were somehow inflating their bodies,
Christian: Oh no --
Ellen: Like turning themselves into a little balloon and a flight, cause I'd seen this word ballooning and just some part of my brain filled in the blanks and was like, clearly yeah, they blow up their body like a puffer fish or something and float through the air.
Christian: That's be pretty good. But no, they, they let out some of their silk, I don't know if it's an actual balloon shape or not. I think it just might be some little strands of silk because this is when they're, when they're young and it's very small, so it doesn't take much. But using that method, the wind can carry them for tens to hundreds of miles.
Ellen: They can't crawl that fast. So this is a big speed boost for them.
Christian: It spreads them out.
Ellen: It's the end of Charlotte's web. Spoiler alert. I'm terribly sorry if you haven't seen that cartoon from the 1970s.
Christian: And the next thing we want to talk about is their venom or more generally their bite. This is a big reason why you shouldn't really worry about them I suppose. So first the venom is weak. It's not life-threatening to humans and also the size of their fangs makes it difficult to puncture humans. So, if you are bitten by one of these it'll hurt, but it said to be less painful than a bee sting, and will generally, you know, self resolve without any kind of medical intervention.
Ellen: Right. Barring like an allergy, which naturally you could be allergic to anything. But yeah, they're really not that scary. I mean, like even our, even our banana spiders here that we have, we're not terribly scared of them. Yeah.
Christian: And when we get to the next category, there's another reason you don't have to worry about being bitten very much.
But the next thing I want to talk about with effectiveness is their cold tolerance.
Ellen: Oh, interesting. I guess you'd have to have that to be making the kind of moves they're making.
Christian: Um, so this is a topic that was the subject of a paper that was released in recent months, that kind of spawned all of the news hype around this spider.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: And that article was titled "Physiological Evaluation of Newly Invasive Joro Spiders Trichonephila Clavata in the South Eastern USA Compared to the Naturalized Cousin Trichonephila Clavipes" CLA-vee-pays. Cla..veep --
Ellen: Clava-pees?
Christian: That makes more sense, uh, by Davis and Frick in the year 2022.
Ellen: Oh, that's, that's really fresh.
Christian: Yes. Um, I believe that second species is the golden silk orb weaver.
Ellen: Oh, okay. And they said they called it naturalized, interesting.
Christian: Yeah. That's why I think it was also introduced, but along like hundreds of years ago.
Ellen: Sure, yeah yeah. A long time. It's been here awhile. They've settled in, they've got posters up on the wall, they've painted --
Christian: So basically this study was trying to see how well do they deal with, uh, cold weather, like the joro spiders versus the golden silk orb weavers and the joro spiders on top. So the joro spider, 74% of specimens survived brief freezes compared to 50% of the golden silk orb weaver. Which makes sense, considering where they're found in Asia.
Ellen: True, they can get pretty far north.
Christian: Japan gets very cold, although not the most Northern bed of Japan, but still, you know, North Korea, South Korea.
Ellen: I mean, it's, it snows you know, like it, it gets real cold there, colder than it does here.
Christian: And that cold tolerance is largely due to greater metabolic rate that helps them stay warm.
Ellen: Oh, so they kinda got a little steam engine pumping in there.
Christian: Basically yeah, so that wraps up effectiveness, moving on to ingenuity. This is the category that describes smart things, could be hunting methods, tool, use that sort of thing. I'm giving it a seven out of 10. Yeah. So personality wise, I suppose. They're not quick to bite humans.
Ellen: I don't know of any spiders that are quick to bite humans.
Christian: I think there are spiders that are unfortunately just positioned in places where if you come across them, they're probably going to bite you. Like we talked about like a black widow. They like to hide under places and stuff. So if you come in contact with them, you're probably accidentally grabbing them.
Ellen: Right. You're probably already well within the danger zone. You are already being bitten.
Christian: Oh my. I mean, we can't talk about ingenuity without talking about building webs, right?
Ellen: Yes! It's great!
Christian: I had to get to that conclusion. It's it's a, it's almost tool use that we kind of take for granted with spiders.
Ellen: It's built in tool use. Spiders do some incredible things with their webs. They make beautiful works of art with them. Some spiders can be really clever about their positioning of their webs, but I would not say that orb weavers are among them because we always see orb weavers like in our yard or around our house or something, putting their webs in the least strategic places, they're always putting them like across doorways or like across a fence or somewhere where something is definitely going to be walking through there and breaking your web. Stop putting it there. And then when you walk through and break their web, they rebuild it in the same spot. They didn't learn from the last time. Stop putting it there.
Christian: I mean, they can't have that kind of macro view of their universe. Right. It would be like some deity saying like, "ugh, stupid humans putting their planet in the way of a meteor."
(laughter)
Christian: Um, yeah. So the next thing I wanna talk about is they are passive hunters. So they build these webs and they wait for something to get caught in their web. They're not like actively hunting.
Ellen: Sure. It's an active dismantling of that, like, entrepreneur grind- set like those, like you got to get out there every day. You got to wake up at five AM, go to the gym and I don't know, wear a suit everywhere you go. Then spiders are like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Christian: The opposite of whatever Kim Kardashian saying right now. Uh, and then finally they have a tendency to build their webs high up, which gives them an edge on other species in the U S range because not many other spiders do that in Georgia. For example, this study was largely conducted in Georgia, by the way.
Ellen: Sure. Okay. So they're more like up in the higher, like a canopy maybe area.
Christian: Uh, so yeah, that wraps up ingenuity and we finally get to our last category of aesthetics. This one is how interesting they look,, this can mean cute or cool. Again, 7 out of 10 on this one. So the females are large and colorful, but the males are smaller and mostly brown.
Ellen: I thought you may have gone higher on this one because they just have kind of an edgy look. And I liked that.
Christian: Yeah. Um, I've mentioned their spindly legs, uh, which makes me think of the banana spider, like you said, but, uh, also this might be a bit of a deep cut, but have you ever seen Jumanji?
Ellen: Okay. I personally haven't, I'm sorry. I know that's-- babe, I've seen three movies and one of them is Hunger Games. And I've already talked about that.
Christian: Well, the premise of Jumanji, which you probably already know, but in Jumanji, there's this magical board game that makes, you know, jungle animals and stuff. Not all of which are jungle animals, but that's okay. And, you know, people getting sucked into the game, whatever. Well, at one point in the movie, giant spiders come out and they have those kinds of legs. And every time I see a spider of those kinds of spindly legs, I think of Jumanji.
Mm, interesting.
Ellen: You know what I think of when I see like a spider with cool spindly legs I think of that scene towards the end of the Nightmare before Christmas, where, uh, Jack Skellington is in the Oogie Boogie Man's lair and the Oogie Boogie Man has this big, like, it's like a roulette table that he's spinning and it's got a little like guns on it. And Jack Skellington is on the roulette board, like kind of crawling along. It it's spinning underneath him, but you know, that character has very long twiggy legs because he's a skeleton, right? That scene always makes me think of a spider crawling along. And because I also consider that to be a very cool character with like good character design. I think that also makes me feel warmer towards the aesthetics of spiders, because I see a spider crawling around and it reminds me of Jack Skellington dancing on a roulette table, which is cool.
Christian: That is cool. It's just some miscellaneous info for these nice little spiders. They could potentially pray on problematic insects species that other spiders don't eat in the US.
Ellen: Well, that would be nice. I would like for them to do that.
Christian: I think they were seen they've been seen eating a type of stinkbug that other spiders don't typically go for and that stink bug can be problematic with our agriculture.
Ellen: Okay. That would be helpful for them because it helps if like the prey that you're able to go after isn't preyed on by a lot of other stuff. Because then that just reduces competition for you.
Christian: Yeah. That's the thing with this of how this is spreading in the United States is where does it have a niche that isn't being filled? Right. So it's talking about that the movement southward is not happening as quickly as it is northward, and that's potentially due to more competition in the side.
Ellen: That makes sense. Cause you mentioned that they can withstand the cold better, right?
Christian: There's far fewer spiders that can do that. So they will have less competition in the Northern part of the country.
Ellen: That makes sense. So y'all can keep them all up there. We're good with what we've got down here. Yeah. We are at spider capacity.
Christian: Oops. All spiders
Ellen: We're overstocked with spiders.
Christian: Passing the savings onto you. (laughter) And I just want to take a little bit of note about the terminology with non-native versus invasive species.
Ellen: Please do.
Christian: So according to the U S National Park Services an invasive species is a quote "non-native species that causes harm to the environment, economy, or human animal or plant health". Whereas non-native species are organisms that do not occur naturally in an area, but are introduced as the result of deliberate or accidental human activities. So all invasive species are non-native, but the opposite is not true.
Ellen: But not all non-native species are what we would consider invasive.
Christian: Right. So that might be more nitpicking because you will often see those terms used interchangeably.
Ellen: Especially because I feel like a lot of the coverage of the spider very recently has been intentionally fear-mongering it feels very like, because I know what it's doing, right? It's clickbait. It's trying to get people to open these articles and read because they think, "oh, we're going to tell you about this big, scary, new spider that you need to read this article so that you know about it because you need to be scared of it."
Christian: Right. And to be clear, it is not the research. Like it's not the original research paper that's doing this. It's all the news article, like companies that are picking up and talking about it.
Ellen: And they're taking that angle of, oh, there's this big, scary spider that could be moving into your neighborhood. Like trying to make you be afraid of it when it's not that big a deal. They're also, I think, throwing around the word invasive a lot when they don't necessarily mean that. And I'm thinking of like the everyday person off the street who doesn't engage with a lot of nature content and maybe has never heard the word invasive when applied to an animal before they might hear the word invasive and think that means this animal is invading your space actively right now. Like they might think this means this is a brand new spider that is actively invading the place where you live. And that's something it's an invader that you need to be afraid of. And I think that a lot of news outlets aren't explaining what that means and just letting people run with it. Right. Because it's something they could hype you up about.
Christian: Because at the end, you know, the, the reader's question is, well, what does that mean for me? The answer is nothing, nothing. Cause right now, you know, it, it doesn't pose any significant risk to individual people and the impact on the environment and the ecology of that area. Good or bad. It's just not. Yeah. Yeah. And I saw a place where, you know, saying, you know, at this time we do not encourage you to kill these spiders on sight.
Ellen: Please don't do that! Now. I should say, if you're listening to this, you do not have to worry about these spiders. If on the other hand you are a stinkbug, boy, do you have to worry about these spiders. I mean, board up your windows.
Christian: And I know, you know, spiders can be a touchy subject for lots of people, even people who understand, you know, they're not in any real danger, but still experience fear about them. There are products out there that can help you deal with them in a peaceful way. I've seen all sorts of little critter, grabber type things that is like a brush that lets you grab them and then place them outside. Yeah. We'll typically just use a cup or something in a piece of paper.
Ellen: I have a tried and true strategy when I find a spider in our house, and that is that I find you, and I ask you to get the spider out for me.
Christian: Yeah. I mean, honestly, being found by one of us is the better option than being found by the cat.
Ellen: That's true. The cat has no such mercy. All right. You want to talk about invasive species? Let's not. (laughter) That being said, you do not need to kill these spiders. They're not going to hurt you. You probably won't even be able to tell them apart from the spiders we already have here that we've already had for hundreds of years. And haven't really been a big deal at all.
Christian: Maybe you will now though after listening to this episode.
Ellen: I don't know if I would trust my ID skills enough to be able to like, give an on the fly differentiation between
Christian: I'd have to be pretty close, I feel like.
Ellen: And I wouldn't be.
Christian: But yeah, that's the joro spider.
Ellen: Thank you. I hope we've eased some fears out there. If this spider is keeping you up at night, please rest assured you are fine. You do not have to worry about the spider.
Christian: Don't call me though. That's only for Ellen.
Ellen: Rest easy. Hopefully get some, get a good night's sleep tonight. Now that the weight of spider anxiety is off of your shoulders. Thanks, babe.
Christian: No problem.
Ellen: Let's take a quick moment to hear some promos from our friends on the max fun network. Now we'll get into my animal.
Christian: All right, Ellen, what animal do you have this week?
Ellen: Sometimes we like set each other up for our animals knowing full well what the other person is about to say, and Christian was over here with nary a thought behind those eyes, completely head empty. No idea what I'm about to say. This is the day octopus.
Christian: Agh. I was guessing worm of some sort.
Ellen: I mean that's not like, the farthest off you could have been. They're also known as the big blue octopus.
Christian: Big blue octopus!
Ellen: Big blue octopus. They're not blue, though.
Christian: Wait, what was the first common name you said?
Ellen: Day octopus.
Christian: D-A-Y?
Ellen: Yes, like daytime. Uh, scientific name is octopus cyanea.
Both: Octopus is the genus.
Ellen: Yup. I know, how'd they get that one, right? Like, like how did they, how did they clutch that right.
Christian: The person on Reddit who has the username "user".
Ellen: It's like they got in really, really early. So they got to like, get their first name as their username. It's like me when my mom signed me up for all of my email addresses when I was like eight and the internet was extremely young and she could still get just my plain name with no numbers attached to it as my email addresses.
Christian: No periods, no nothing.
Ellen: No nothing. Not a number. Not an underscore, just my name. So this is the octopus cyanea and this species was submitted by Kailyn Doss, who is 10 and listens from Alaska.
Christian: Oh wow!
Ellen: I know, right? And sent me just the most delightful email about these octopuses, um, which I'll get into later. It was for a very specific reason that I think you're really gonna like. I'm getting my information from the Marine Bio Conservation Society, the Aquarium of the Pacific and Monterey Bay Aquarium, and also a paper that I'm going to name when it comes up, because there's a huge spoiler in the title, right in the title.
Christian: As is the way.
Ellen: It just spills all the beans right there. No mystery to it whatsoever.
So this octopus is the body part of it is about six inches long or 16 centimeters. But the arms can be 32 inches long or 80 centimeters. It's pretty big. It's not the biggest octopus, but it's on the bigger side. They're found in the Indo-Pacific region, which includes the Indian and Pacific oceans. So basically from the Eastern coast of Africa, all the way to Hawaii. Pretty big range. You can find them in lots of places. And throughout that range, they like to live in coral reefs or in any sort of area where there's a lot of like rubble, like things that they can nooks and crannies for them to hide in. Yeah, they are in the taxonomic family octopodidae, most known octopus species belong to that family, including the blue ringed which you talked about before. And this one is called the day octopus because it is active in hunting during the day, as opposed to the night where most other octopuses hunt at night,
Christian: It's DayQuil and NyQuil.q
Ellen: It's the sun and moon version. While we're talking about like octopus taxonomy, an octopus is a type of cephalopod along with squids and cuttlefish.
Uh, cephalopods are mollusks, other things in the mollusk phylum are snails and slugs, and then more distantly related to cephalopods are bivalves. So like clams and oysters. There's other stuff in there too, but those are the mollusks you've probably heard of. So to get into my ratings for the day octopus, for effectiveness, I give it an eight out of 10.
So to talk about effectiveness for the day octopus, we have to take like a quick tour of the octopus body, because it is so different from any sort of vertebrate anatomy, uh, it can be kind of like you look at it and you're like, I don't know where all of your parts are, so they are invertebrates. So no skeleton, no bones.
So their body is really soft and squishy and the body is made up of two kind of sections. The first one is the mantle, which is what we might think of as its head. Um, it's like a big sack basically, or it looks kind of, I think like a water balloon, you know, it's like bulbous and soft, but all of their internal organs are inside of the mantle.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: So everything that's going on inside their body, is tucked up inside that little floppy sack and then coming out from the mantle, are their eight long limbs. A lot of people call them tentacles, I guess they're technically not tentacles.
Christian: What?!
Ellen: They're called arms.
Christian: I feel lied to.
Ellen: So yeah, I mean, if this is one of those things, that's like, it really only matters if you want to get super, like, pedantic about it--
Christian: What are true tentacles then?
Ellen: I'm glad you asked, Christian. The difference is in the suction cup. So octopuses have these arms that have suction cups all the way down from the base, all the way to the tip. Tentacles though only have suction cups at the very ends. So imagine like those little sticky hands that you could get at, like Dave and Busters for like 50 tickets, the little gummy sticky hand that you could like stick to windows or the ceiling, and then it gets stuck up there and leave a stain on your ceiling. Yeah, those are tentacles. Squids have tentacles.
Christian: This is squid propaganda.
Ellen: This was written by a squid. Um, so octopuses technically don't have tentacles, but I mean, if you call them tentacles, somebody-- people will know what you're talking about. I don't think it's that big a deal, but if you want to be extremely accurate. You could say their arms.
Christian: I will opt to not be. On purpose.
Ellen: You fight the power, Christian. So having such a soft body free from rigid structures, like bones really gives octopuses a lot of freedom to squeeze through surprisingly tight spaces. Like they could get through an opening that's an inch wide and they're pretty big animals.
Like they're not tiny, but there are, yeah, like the, the giant, uh, what is it? A giant Pacific octopus is enormous and it can still get through like incredibly small openings. I saw like a video that said, I think he was from the Monterey Bay Aquarium that said that a giant Pacific octopus could squeeze through a hole, the size of a quarter.
Christian: I guess I always thought the limiting factor I thought was their beak.
Ellen: That would be probably the hardest structure on their body.
Christian: Or their eyeballs.
Ellen: Yeah. Something like that. They're extremely malleable. They can get through tiny, tiny, tiny little spots, which is really important to them in the wild, because it lets them slip into nooks and crannies. Right. Like I mentioned, they live in a coral reef, so they can squeeze in between little crevices and rocks and coral and stuff. And even when they're not squeezing into crevices, day octopuses are actually able to hide in plain sight because they are masters of camouflage. So these are the ones you've probably seen videos of where they'll settle onto a rock or onto a piece of coral or something. And within seconds they have vanished because they just completely become one with the surface they have landed on. So their idle skin color is kind of like a reddish rusty orange, but their skin is covered with these specialized cells, which we've mentioned before called chromatophores. We talked about chromatophores with the veiled chameleon, but the octopus 's work a little differently.
The chameleons were like layered in such a way, but with the octopus, so the cells contain different colors of pigments. In the octopus, they are red, yellow, brown, or black. And it's got this network of these colorful cells all over its body. And the octopus can use its muscles to either expand or contract those cells, which then displays more or less of those colors. So for example, if it wants to turn red, it will just expand all of its red colored cells and shrink all of its non red cells. So what you're left with is just a completely red sort of canvas, but it can do this with remarkable precision. So it doesn't just change its whole body to this color at one time, it actually focuses certain areas to be different colors, to mimic the markings, it can mimic light or shadows. It can move the markings around to like match the flow of the water over its body. It's almost like an invisibility cloak, right. That just like mimics exactly what's going on below. It is so cool. But so lots of octopuses can change their skin color like this, this octopus, the day octopus can actually take that a step further.
They can actually contract their skin in such a way that forms protrusions on their body and change the actual texture of their skin. It's so cool. So they can make their skin bumpy. They can make it jagged, they can make it spiky. Like, they can do some really incredible things to just make their skin look like it's not an octopus. It can be really challenging if you find like a, a video of like a scuba diver coming up on one of these things, it can be really challenging to find the octopus. Lots of great videos of this on YouTube. Challenge yourself to watch one of these videos and find that octopus, it is not easy. But should their hiding and camouflage both fail and they still find themselves threatened they can spit out of cloud of ink.
Christian: Very good.
Ellen: Yes. So it startles and disorients their predator and it gives them a chance to escape like a smoke bomb. So something kind of funny about this is that the ink that is produced by the ink sac, it is made up of melanin. So the same pigment found in mammal skin. It's nearly pure melanin.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: Yeah. And it is bound together by mucus. So it's like just a melanin snot mixture that it makes in this ink sack and then kind of spits out through its like siphon. So the thing about that, is that it is literally just melanin and mucus. It's perfectly safe to eat. Yeah. So octopus and squid ink is used as a food additive. It gives color and flavor to all sorts of dishes, including noodles.
Christian: Yeah, noodles is the one I've seen.
Ellen: Yeah. Have you ever had squid ink noodles? I haven't had it. I've heard it has a very seafoody flavor and I don't like that, but it's supposed to be very tasty.
Christian: What sauce would I put on it? I don't know.
Ellen: Well, I was going to say also that the ink sack themselves are even fried and eaten on the Greek island of Kalymnos. Yeah. They just eat the whole thing. When I was a kid one time in like a science class, we dissected a squid and part of the assignment was to find the ink sack and stick a toothpick in it and write our name in the squid ink. It was pretty neat.
Christian: We might have experienced the same curriculum.
Ellen: We went to school pretty close to each other. So I wouldn't be super surprised. So I did have to give some deductions for the day octopus. So the first one is that I'm thinking about octopus in the context of other mollusks and there's other mollusks out there like snails, nautiluses, which are closely related. They have a shell, like a hard structure to protect their soft body and octopuses don't have that. And I feel like that warrants a deduction because we've seen what the mollusks can do. Defensively.
Christian: It's a trade-off though, right? Speed for defense.
Ellen: Yeah, it does grant them dexterity, it grants them agility, and flexibility. Some octopuses like the veined octopus make up for this lack of armor by grabbing on to coconut shells and pulling them around their body to form like a shield. Have you seen this?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: It's adorable. They will kind of like pull the coconut shell closed around them and then roll around in them.
Christian: This is, isn't this also the subject of that sad video where it found like some garbage or something.
Ellen: Yeah, probably. I mean, that sounds like something that probably happens all the time, but yeah, I mean, octopuses do use other objects to protect themselves with. But I just feel like if that armor was just already built into their body, that would just free up their arms to do other cool stuff with it. It was like more crime opportunities. If you have all of your arms free, because you're not holding a coconut shell.
Christian: I don't know if you can run away, you have a chance to do so, but if you are slowed down by a heavy shell and something comes along, that has the strength to get through it, that's it.
Ellen: But, with the octopus as it is, it requires very little strength to get through the body of an octopus. So I just feel like there's some room for improvement there. And the other thing I, I deduced, uh, a point for is that octopuses, like all octopuses are surprisingly short lived. Um, the longest lived species is the giant Pacific octopus, which only lives around three years. Even the giant squid, which can grow up to 43 feet long, it is absolutely enormous. They only live for about five years. The only like cephalopod that does live for a really long time is the Nautilus. Nautiluses can live for a really long time. The octopuses are here for a good time, not a long time. They're a blip. Usually not around for very long. So the day octopus usually doesn't live for longer than about 15 months. And then during that incredibly short life span, they, like other species of octopus, only reproduce one time and that's it. So they reproduce and then immediately die, like roll credits when condition met, that is the end of the road for them. They reproduce. And then they're like, well, that's it mission accomplished, wrap it up.
So after a female octopus lays her eggs, she just completely stops eating. She'll stay with the eggs and like protect them, wave water over them, clear them away from debris, kind of like take care of her eggs, but she doesn't eat. And she just eventually starves. And what's interesting about that is that it's kind of thought that this may be something that's built into their brain. And what happens is when they lay their eggs, their brain shuts off their hunger. Like they don't get hungry anymore after that. And this may be in order to keep them from eating their babies because octopuses will not hesitate to eat each other. It is not a big deal. They have no loyalty whatsoever. So it's thought that maybe this keeps her from just eating her babies immediately, if she just doesn't get hungry anymore.
Christian: That's one way to do it.
Ellen: Right. I mean, it is. I mean, other animals just don't eat their babies. Like there's easier way to do this.
Christian: Are we in ingenuity yet?
Ellen: Not yet, but we're about to be.
Christian: Seems like a good negative there. So not smart enough to not eat your own kids, that you have to be hardwired to cease eating at all.
Ellen: Yeah. It's an all or nothing thing. Like, well, if I'm not going to eat my babies, I guess I won't eat anything at all. I feel like building it into your body to only reproduce once and then die is like quite literally putting all of your eggs in one basket. You know, like you are just rolling your dice and being like, well, hope this is a good batch. Cause that's the only one I'm going to get. You know?
Christian: I guess it's important to know those clutches are very large.
Ellen: Yeah. They lay lots of eggs at the same time. I mean, probably not that many of them are going to make it to adulthood. They do lay a lot of eggs at a time, but still it's just the one and that's it. That's the only chance you got. Yeah. Hey guys. Welcome to my any percent. No item, no save speed. Run. I'll be playing an octopus like and subscribe to my Twitch.
Uh, next category for the day octopus is ingenuity. And this is really why we wanted to talk about this octopus. So what octopuses and other cephalopods do have is a really sophisticated, nervous system. Like their whole brain situation is going great, which gives us some really unexpected and cool behaviors. So earlier I mentioned they can change their colors and textures in very targeted ways on their body. They can do this one thing that's a display called a passing cloud, and this is where they pulse dark, bands down their body. And it looks like a passing cloud, like a black cloud that's passing over their body. And this is thought to maybe confused or startled prey. Um, they definitely do it while they're hunting. So it's something that they're doing to disorient their prey in some way, a lot of psychological warfare going on with cephalopods, which we talked about with the cuttlefish. Did you do the cuttlefish or did I do the cuttlefish?
Christian: I think I did. I remember digging into the eyes
Ellen: That stuff's wild --
Christian: Not literally --
Ellen: I would hope not. That'd be gross. So there are a lot of examples of octopus ingenuity that I could use, but in the interest of time, I'm going to focus on one specifically that Kailyn highlighted.
So being a predator. Pretty tough job. It can get a little easier when you team up with other predators and engage in something called collaborative hunting. So a famous example here in the USA is tag teams consisting of coyotes and badgers. Did you see that like super viral video, a couple years ago of a coyote and a badger like playing in a storm drain together?
Christian: No.
Ellen: It was the cutest thing I've ever seen. They were just like goofing off together. It was so cute, but coyotes and badgers team up to hunt squirrels cause coyotes are fast. So they chase the squirrels and then the squirrels go into their burrows and the badgers dig them out. They have overlapping skillsets and can team up to chase squirrels together.
So this happens on the reef. It happens in the ocean. So the day octopus has been known to team up with predatory fish on their reefs, like groupers are a common one that they'll team up with. So the groupers will hunt around and above the reef. And then the octopus chases prey through tight spots in the reef. So the grouper is kind of scaring the prey into the reef where the octopus then is able to squeeze through those nooks and crannies to sort of complete the chase. So there's kind of nowhere safe, right? Like you're swimming around the reef. You're going to get caught by the group or you go into the reef, you get caught by the octopus.
So they kind of have this pretty choice arrangement between them. The thing about this strategy that made headlines recently was the octopuses' way of exerting some control over their hunting partners, their way of making sure that their hunting partners don't take more than what the octopus may consider to be their fair share, because you know, they may be hunting together, but they are still hunting. They're still in it for themselves, you know? So I'm just going to read this quote directly from the paper that it was published in, because it is just like the perfect poetically academic way of describing this behavior. Here we report a series of events dating between the 1st of October, 2018 and the 1st of November, 2018 and the 10th cyanedae May, 2019 and the 10th of July, 2019.
So these are two different one month spans in 2018 and 2019 where different octopus cyanea individuals engage in active displacement of partner fish during collaborative hunting. To this end, the octopus performs a swift explosive motion with one arm directed at a specific fish partner, which we refer to as punching. And that is science for throwing hands. The, and this is from the paper titled, this is why I couldn't tell you this. At the top, the title of the paper is "Octopuses Punch Fishes During Collaborative, Inter Specific Hunting Events." And that is by Eduardo Sempaio, Martin Costa Seco, Ruis Rosa and Simon Gingins. And that was published in Ecology in December of 2020. So really made the rounds in 2021.
So the paper suggests a few possible motivations behind these punching events. This was apparently a consistent thing. This wasn't just like a, one-off like, oh, the octopus punched a fish one time. We could think like "maybe it was doing something else, and it was an accident". This was like a very intentional, very consistent punch connecting with fish. Yeah, enough times that you're like "this, they're doing it on purpose". So one of the suggested explanations is that the octopus is just moving the fish over to kind of claim dibs on the prey item, you know, just like knocking it out of the way basically. So it could grab, you know, like say there's a, there's one last cookie in the jar and you and your sibling are both running to grab it. And you just like jab them with your elbow to knock them out of the way so you can grab the cookie first. That's kind of the idea.
Christian: But your arm is made of marshmallow.
Ellen: But your arm is made of marshmallow because you're an octopus. But then sometimes the octopus punched the fish, even when it didn't take prey afterwards.
So this is like you and your sibling are just sitting there and you jab them with your elbow for no reason. This was not like for any specific reason. So the paper suggests two possible explanations using concepts from game theory, which is the study of strategy. Um, and this is another quote from the paper:
"Benefits are disregarded entirely by the octopus and punching could be a case of spite. No emotional connotation, used to impose a cost on the fish regardless of self cost. For example, after defections, stealing prey by a usually collaborative partner. So maybe there has been a past instance of that partner stealing prey from the octopus and the octopus punches the fish as an expression of frustration." like, "Hey, I saw that", you know. It's more of a retributional jab, right? The other suggested explanation is that this could basically be a flex to keep the misbehaving partner in line so that maybe like that partner needs a little reminding that the octopus can and will strike at any moment.
Christian: Awfully toxic for an animal without any venom.
Ellen: It's funny you say that, they do have venom.
Well, there goes that gold comedy,
But it's a, it's a mild venom. It's more used for paralyzing prey, but they have a little bit of it. It is toxic though. It is a very toxic environment. They're a horribly manipulative partner.
Christian: I guess I should have thought about that when we said it was related to the blue ring octopus.
I mean, they're
Ellen: related in the sense of, they're both like octopuses, they're not closely related. They belong to the same family. So this, I mean, it's interesting because this punching behavior really introduces like a manipulative dynamic to the partnership, unlike most other inter-species collaborations, which are kind of purely, you know, they're sort of acting in their own best interests, parallel to each other. And this one, the octopus is kind of trying to get the other animal to do something and like interacting with it in a way that is trying to make it do something else, which I think is very interesting. I would like to note that in Kailyn's email to me requesting the octopus, this aspect of their behavior was really the driving force of the pitch.
Um, and Kaylin proposed some theories as to why the octopus punches fish, including the fish being annoying and the octopus being a jerk, but also including the fish doing something to the octopus and the octopus holding a grudge, which is not far off. Like that's, I mean, scientists are probably never going to be able to know exactly what's happening in an octopus 's mind when it decides to punch a fish. So we're probably never going to know for sure why they're punching fishes, but Kaylin, your theories are consistent with the research. Like the data is there definitely as valid a theory as any.
Christian: Jealousy over differences in longevity.
Ellen: Oh, you think maybe the octopus is jealous that the fish gets to live for more than 30 seconds? Yeah, maybe that's it. That's all I really wanted to dive into for ingenuity. There's a billion other things I could say about octopus ingenuity, but we'll save them for future octopus episodes. The final category for the day octopus is aesthetics. I give it an eight out of 10 because we've seen what octopuses can do with their bodies, like, aesthetically with the blue ringed octopus, which is yellow with bright iridescent blue rings. And this one doesn't have those beautiful blue rings, which is kind of a disappointment. Like it's a little bit of a step down aesthetically. I feel like we started off so strong with the blue ringed octopus and then its resting state, it looks like a pretty standard octopus, you know, but it's also, I feel like it's hard to know what they really look like because they're always changing their appearance to camouflage themselves. So like, it was really difficult for me to find like pictures or videos of them just in their relaxed, natural state when they weren't actively camouflaging themselves. I mean, I find octopuses very cute. I like that they have those big round eyes that are really close together that really has sort of a cartoonish effect. And then that big bulbous, like water balloon head, I don't know, they look so goofy, but in a really charming way, I think they're cute, that's why I gave them an eight.
Yeah, to wrap things up for the day octopus they're of least concern as far as conservation goes. So their populations do seem to be stable, but that being said, they depend pretty much exclusively on coral reefs. So, because they are so intricately linked with coral reefs, they are vulnerable to climate change because reefs are vulnerable to climate change. So if the reefs go, the octopuses will then also go and reefs are going through a lot right now with climate change, affecting the oceans in a lot of big ways. So. If you love these octopuses and find them as delightfully fascinating as I do, only action items I could really tell people to do would be to look into ways that you can help support your ocean. If you live near a coral reef, maybe you see if there are some local action items for protecting your local reefs, just, you know, look out for our ocean because that's where the cool octopuses live.
And that is the day octopus. Thank you.
Christian: Good octopus.
Ellen: It's a great octopus. Thank you Kailyn for bringing this to my desk.
Well, thank you to everybody who has listened today. I hope that you enjoyed it. I know we did. It's always nice to talk to you, Christian.
Christian: Likewise.
Ellen: Uh, if you liked what you heard today, it would really mean a lot to us if you could leave us a good review. I hope that we have earned five stars from you also right now on Podchaser, they're doing a fundraiser throughout the month of April, where for every review that is left on podcasts or episodes, you can review like individual episodes on Podchaser, so for every review that's left and then reply, which I can reply to reviews on Podchaser was I think is cool. They make donations to support charities. I believe this one goes to feeding refugees from Ukraine. So it's a, it's a great cause. Uh, so if you feel like doing that hop over to Podchaser and leave us a review and we'll reply to it to double your donation.
You can also connect with us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Discord. You can also shoot me an email. My email address is ellen@justthezooofus.com. That is, by the way, the best way to get ahold of me, you know, social media can get a little hectic sometimes. So if you have an animal you want to hear us talk about or something, if it's something that requires my attention, please do email that to me.
Christian: Why's our social media so hectic right now, Ellen?
Ellen: I don't know. Christian. Why is it ?
Christian: Causing problems?
Ellen: I am. I've been a menace on Twitter recently. Sorry.
Christian: Also related to octopus.
Ellen: It was related to octopus. I, kind of my notes for this sort of prompted that. So, uh, we'd like to wrap up by saying that you could have Maximum Fun for having us on their network, alongside their other, just delightful shows, like the ones that you have heard promos for here today.
I'm going to be specific with my Maximum Fun shout outs. This week, I've been listening to Depresh Mode with John Moe a lot recently, it's a really nice show. I really like it. So if you're looking for a new show to add to your lineup, I really like Depresh Mode. I'm going to start trying to be specific with my Maximum Fun shout outs at the end.
Yeah. While you're over there at maximumfun.org, we would love it if you signed up for a membership to keep us going alongside the other shows on the network. And finally thank you to Louie Zong for our incredible theme music, which we love so dearly.
Christian: It is so good.
Ellen: And that's all for today. Next week's episode is about PANGOLIIIINS.
Christian: Bye.
Ellen: See ya!
Christian: Bye.
Ellen: Byeeeee.