#Tree Octopus

[amf-studios]

Did somebody say octopus!

No? Too bad, you get one.

This is Baka-takoak! (Baka tako(stupid octopus)+oak(tree)) he's based on the "northwestern tree octopus"

A sort of "cryptid" that's so obviously fake, it went on to become a tool in teaching American kids about critical thinking in computer class! XD

Those inspirited by this weird wooden octopus suffer from a sudden drop in intelligence. They become dumb enough to believe any scam, lie or conspiracy theory. Never let this thing be in the same room as a politician!

Baka-takoak is an E rank earth attribute. He's a Merican yokai of the Slippery tribe, and has the soultimate "brain strangle" which inspirits his opponents.

I hope you enjoy this literally stupid yokai! And if you do, commissions are open! Details on the blog

[briefbestiary]

Known as a test of media literacy to some, the story of dwindling population of Washington's tree octopuses is likely one of Lyle Zapato's most famous works. Quite dexterous, these semi-aquatic cephalopods are described as quite well suited to their treetop homes, swinging between branches with their eight appendages.

[doomboy911]

Theme Animal (Tree Octopus)

Prompt List

Creature Codex Art Challenge

Commentary

See now this would've been perfect for yesterday. The tree octopus is a hoax whipped up in the 90s. For this piece I was thinking of rendering of a octopus actually up in a tree but instead decided to go for a travel poster design. I really like it and will be trying to make more in the future.

Palette Picked

[cryptid-quest]

Hoax of the Day: Tree Octopus

Description: You hear something swinging from the trees above you, what could it be? Birds? Squirrels? Or the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus! No, it’s probably a bird. This internet hoax was created by Lyle Zapato in 1998, and claimed the Washington State Olympic Park was its home. 

[glarnboudin]

I actually have these as part of a small spec evo project I've got going on - I'll be sure to remember this when I get to them!

Today I want to talk about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (Octopus paxarbolis).

OK, so for those who don't know, the PNW Tree Octopus was an internet hoax created in 1998 consisting of a website detailing the animal's life history and conservation efforts. It's completely fake - saying that up front. This animal never existed.

But if you look at this from a speculative biology standpoint? It's genius.

There is one, and only one, thing preventing Octopus from colonizing and being hugely successful in terrestrial environments in the PNW, and that's the fact that no cephalopod has ever been able to overcome the osmotic stress of inhabiting freshwater. We don't know why this is; other mollusks evolved freshwater forms just fine. But if you hand-wave away that one, single limiting factor, the PNW is just primed for a terrestrial octopus invasion.

The Pacific coast of North America is an active tectonic boundary, meaning the coast transitions pretty much immediately into the Cascade and Coastal mountain ranges (contrast with the east coast and its broad Atlantic plain). It's also a lush temperate rainforest, with very high precipitation. This means lots and lots of high-gradient mountain streams with lots of waterfalls and rapids and cold, highly oxygenated water, and not as many large, meandering rivers.

This has important consequences on the freshwater fauna. For one, there are not many freshwater fish in the Pacific Northwest - the rapids and waterfalls are extremely hard to traverse, so many mountain streams are fish-free. There also just isn't much fish diversity in the first place - there's sturgeon in the big rivers, salmonids, a few sculpin and cyprinids and... that's pretty much it. These cold northern rivers are positively impoverished compared to the thriving fish communities of the Mississippi or Rio Grande.

Few fish means few predators, and depending on the size of the first freshwater octopus, salmon and trout just wouldn't be much of a threat. And while these rivers don't have much in the way of fish diversity, there's lots of prey available - crayfish, leeches, mosquito larvae, frogs and tadpoles, water striders, and other aquatic insects, just to name a few. So the first Octopus pioneers to invade the rivers would be entering what essentially amounts to a predator-free environment with lots and lots of food and no competition. Great for colonization.

These ideal conditions get even better once you get up past the rapids and waterfalls, since there's no fish whatsoever in those streams. Octopus, with their sucker-lined arms, are perfectly equipped to navigate fast-moving, rocky-bedded streams and climb up cliffs. They'd also be well able to traverse short stretches of dry ground to access even more isolated pools and ponds. In fact, once Octopus overcome the osmoregulation problem there's nothing at all preventing them from colonizing land in earnest, since the PNW rainforests are so wet; there's no danger of drying out.

Finally there's the question of reproduction. Octopus are famously attentive mothers, because they need to keep the water around their eggs moving and well-oxygenated. In a mountain stream, this wouldn't be an issue, because the cold, turbulent water holds lots and lots of oxygen. Breeding in high mountain streams would be ideal, and the mothers might not even need to attend to their eggs, freeing them up to evolve away from semelparity and allowing them to reproduce more than once in their lives; their populations would thus increase rapidly and dramatically.

I think, if octopus managed to invade freshwater ecosystems in the PNW, it would dramatically change the ecology much like an invasive species. They'd be unstoppable predators of frogs, bugs, slugs, maybe even larger animals like snakes, birds, and small mammals. Nothing would eat them except maybe herons, and things like bears and raccoons would give them a wide berth due to their venom. They would rule that landscape.

The tl;dr is that the PNW is primed for invasion by cephalopods, if only they could manage to overcome the osmoregulation problem and live in freshwater. If the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus really did exist, it wouldn't be a shy and reclusive species on the brink of extinction; it would be a pest, an invasive, overpopulated menace you couldn't get rid of if you wanted to. I can just imagine them crawling up onto people's bird feeders and either stealing the nuts or luring in unsuspecting sparrows and starlings. They would sit in the trees and throw pinecones at hikers for fun. They would be some unholy mixture of snake and slug with the personality of a magpie and I am incensed that they only exist in fiction.

[ilovethenintendods]

[ask-but-beware-the-consequences]

Autumn comes

You know that weird inbetween autumn and winter vibe? Ye, this goes by Autumn collection #6, which I couldn't finish in time from last year! Tho I did this in february so it's also Winter col. #2 lol.

[seabeck]

Octopus tree

[namelessmm2]

MerryDelishcember 2024!

Day 6 Tinsel/Ribbon / Day 7 Tree / Day 8 Winter King/Queen

[samimarkart]

preorders open until November 29th on these guys! the isopod phone charms went super fast last time so a preorder seemed to be in order to keep up with demand - I added panda kings to the lineup as well. and some fun shaker charms too!

[three-crows-in-hiking-boots]

Wings of Fire Worldbuilding: Royal SeaWing Family Tree [3011-3017AS; 4990-5012AS]

"The Royal SeaWings have had a tumultuous history, though there are long periods where not much was recorded aside from names. To keep everything concise, I've only gathered the two most famous eras of the royals- the time of the Great SeaWing Massacre and the time of the Dragonets of Destiny. It should also be noted that, due to his self-imposed exile and separation from the royals, descendants of Prince Fathom and Indigo's dragonets are unknown. "- June Beetle, historian

3011-3017AS

Gen 1: Prince Albatross, Princess Sapphire, Queen Lagoon, King Consort Humpback

Gen 2: Prince Eel, Princess Manta, Prince Consort Reef, Princess Splash

Gen 3: Prince Current, Prince Scallop, Queen Pearl, Prince Fathom, Indigo

Gen 4: Princess Clearpool, Prince Cowrie, Prince Ripple

Eel, Albatross, Manta, Lagoon, Humpback, Manta, Reef, Splash, and Scallop were killed in the Royal SeaWing Massacre of 3011AS

4990-5012AS

Gen 1: Prince Shark, Queen Coral, King Consort Gill

Gen 2: Princess Moray, Prince Turtle, Princess Anemone, Princess Orca, Prince Octopus, Prince Fin, Princess Auklet, Prince Cerulean, Princess Tsunami

The unnamed 12 female and 28 male offspring of Coral and Gill are not included in this family tree. We historians assume that the female offspring died in the egg, but the lives of the princes are not known. Did they die in the egg like their sisters? We don't think so, but their names and stories have been lost to us.

[cordycepsbian]

team snakemouth gijinka but more of a Fantasy™️ au than just regular humans. featuring our spin on the concepts of halflings and dwarves where they are creature animal. and leif is uh ??? the horrors

bonus doodle

[miitopia-go-brrr]

MEANWHILE

PAGE 2

First - Next - Back

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[original-post-locator]

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is a hoax made by Lyle Zapato. It describes an octopus adapted to live in trees, and its predator is the Sasquatch, an unreal creature.

Gowever, as it turns out, land octopi do exist.

The Midwestern land-octopus is a type of mollusc directly descended from octopi, some 50 million years ago, when it adapted for life on land. It’s native habitat is in the United States of America and Canada. Specifically the states of Minnesota, North Dakota and the Canadian province of Manitoba.

It looks radically different from its octopi kin, looking more like a slug than anything else. Its connection to the Octopoda order was only discovered in 2021 after genetic testing revealed that it was genetically distinct from other slug species, but most similar to an octopus.

References

Lyle Zapota. https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Benoit Baudry and Martin Monperrus. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2204.06826

[thelibraryghost]

Creeps and Crawlies

there's a theme here...

Deep sea life BBC. "Alien like colossal squid - Museum of Life - BBC Two." YouTube. April 16, 2010. Real Science. "The Insane Biology of: The Cuttlefish." YouTube. November 11, 2023. Real Science. "The Insane Biology of: The Octopus." YouTube. November 14, 2020. Real Science. "Why Animals Get Creepier the Deeper You Go." YouTube. June 10, 2023. Real Science. "Why Do Deep Sea Creatures Evolve Into Giants?" YouTube. July 16, 2022. Ze Frank. "True Facts About The Angler Fish." YouTube. December 27, 2012. Ze Frank. "True Facts About The CuttleFish." YouTube. October 30, 2013. Ze Frank. "True Facts About The Octopus." YouTube. April 1, 2014. Fungi National Geographic. "Glow-in-the-Dark Mushrooms: Nature’s Night Lights | National Geographic." YouTube. February 18, 2015. National Geographic. "What's in a Lichen? How Scientists Got It Wrong for 150 Years | Short Film Showcase." YouTube. January 25, 2018. National Geographic. "You Didn’t Know Mushrooms Could Do All This | National Geographic." YouTube. July 13, 2016. PBS. "How Trees Talk to Other Trees with the Help of Fungi | The Green Planet | PBS." YouTube. July 26, 2022. PBS Eons. "When Giant Fungi Ruled." YouTube. December 18, 2017. Ze Frank. "True Facts: Fungi That Control The Insects They Eat." YouTube. April 28, 2023. Ze Frank. "True Facts: Stinkhorns." YouTube. November 20, 2019. Slime molds BBC. "Mould Time-lapse - The Great British Year: Episode 4 Preview - BBC One." YouTube. October 18, 2013. BBC Earth Science. "Can Slime Mould Solve Mazes? | Earth Science." YouTube. December 5, 2018. Oregon Public Broadcasting. "Slime molds are gorgeous (you just never knew it!) | Oregon Field Guide." YouTube. January 3, 2022. Real Science. "The Insane Biology of: Slime Mold." YouTube. May 13, 2023. Ze Frank. "True Facts: The Self-Sacrificing Amoeba." YouTube. August 4, 2022. Ze Frank. "True Facts: The Smartest Slime." YouTube. January 31, 2023. Spiders National Geographic. "Deadly Cousin: The Redback Spider | National Geographic." YouTube. December 2, 2011. National Geographic. "How Spiders Use Electricity to Fly | Decoder." YouTube. April 25, 2019. Nature on PBS. "Social Spiders Spin Massive Nest." YouTube. April 14, 2015. Real Science. "Why Spider Silk is Stronger Than Steel." YouTube. January 15, 2022. Smithsonian Channel. "Incredible: This Underwater Spider Has an Actual Scuba Tank." YouTube. January 13, 2017. Smithsonian Channel. "This Terrifying Spider Hunts Fish Underwater." YouTube. May 26, 2017. Ze Frank. "True Facts: Mating Dance of The Peacock Spider (feat. Quinta Brunson)." YouTube. February 20, 2020. Ze Frank. "True Facts: Tarantulas." YouTube. November 19, 2022. Ze Frank. "True Facts: The Bolas Spider." YouTube. March 15, 2019. Ze Frank. "True Facts: The Ogre Faced Spider." YouTube. September 26, 2019. Worms ABC Science. "Blood-sucking leeches changed Cole’s life." YouTube. May 29, 2023. BBC. "The Amazing World Of Earthworms In The UK - Springwatch - BBC Two." YouTube. June 6, 2012. National Geographic. "Ice Worms | National Geographic." YouTube. September 17, 2007. National Geographic. "This Creepy Worm Pulls Its Prey Deep Under the Ocean Floor | National Geographic." YouTube. January 31, 2017. National Geographic. "Weird Worms Live Near Pacific Ocean’s Deepest High-Temp Vent | National Geographic." YouTube. June 11, 2015. Ze Frank. "True Facts: Bobbit Worm and Polychaete Pals." YouTube. August 17, 2018.

[unfoxmeart]

A recent piece for the incredibly kind @creativeshotput it was a fun concept to bring to life!

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