The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
zapatopi.net
zapatopi.net
> The Pacific Northwest tree octopus is an Internet hoax created in 1998 by a humor writer under the pseudonym Lyle Zapato. Since its creation, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus website has been commonly referenced in Internet literacy classes in schools and has been used in multiple studies demonstrating children's gullibility regarding online sources of information. [1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octopus
But then they wouldn't learn anything about reading critically.
We have zero evidence of octopus fossils in the ocean.
Largely, the campaign failed because of the joint US/Canadian invasion of the Republic of Cascadia based on (ironically, false) claims of Weapons of Media Deception (WMD) being deployed with imminent plans for use against North American civilian targets.
I believed it too. The thing is, this is something no one is really incentivized to lie about. If some website says "politician did X", then your lie detector turns on, because it's worth it for lots of websites to lie or mislead about that. It would be very hard to go through life questioning the veracity of every inconsequential bit of information that no one has an incentive to lie about. I don't think it demonstrates much that students believed it. And I especially don't think it means anything about gullibility about information found online. Almost certainly, if it were printed in a book, they'd be even more likely to believe it.
People thought the Platypus was a hoax was it was initially discovered. It is real.
There could be. The name of the animal isn't what gives the lie away.
There are people who say birds aren’t real, or that Australia isn’t real, or that the earth is flat.
The animal involved not meeting heuristic models for plausibility may be something that should trigger skepticism, but its not the thing that should tell you this is a lie.
There are fish that can survive on dry(-ish) land for extended periods of time.
And don't get me started on the utterly bizarre slime mold.
The number of species that defy our expectations is countless.
Bluntly, there's a lot of arrogance in the claim that anyone should be able to easily and automatically rule out the existence of some species based on their personal knowledge, and that anyone who fails to do so is "gullible".
some, certainly yes.
i don't think anyone would disagree that some claims are more plainly ridiculous than others. i'm replying to someone who let themselves be convinced the tree octopus was real by a page picturing an octopus climbing a tree. let's not abdicate our regard for common sense.
For example, why is a tree octopus any less likely than the platypus, a venomous aquatic mammal that has a beak, lays eggs, and detects prey by sensing electric fields like a shark?
do i think i'm as intelligent as anyone, or that everyone is as intelligent as me? of course not. but i do think your standard for gullibility is too high if you don't think believing the linked article satisfies it.
I suppose that's enough to make my point for me.
the difference between people who initially believed this and those who didn't is gullibility, and this is a great example of gullibility because of how outlandish the claim is and appears to be. that's all i'm arguing. the counteraguments i see boil down to "but if someone is gullible enough, they'll think it's actually not outlandish and accept it on face value" which is not contrary to what i'm saying.
if you were one of the gullible ones, sorry! sucks to be more deficient than others in some way, but we all have deficiencies.
But I suppose you have your deficiencies too, same as those who thought it to be real (however briefly).
1) obviously photoshopped -- a real octopus on a tree branch would look totally different, it would sag in some places, it would affect the pine bristles underneath, it wouldn't have a shadow that makes it look like it's hovering an inch above the branch, etc. Also, that octopus image looks totally out of proportion, but I can't pin down why -- I _think_ it's because the level of detail is higher than for the branches.
2) It looks exactly like a regular octopus. Not only should an animal the size of a small bird have different proportions from a regular octopus (compare e.g. bats and fruit bats, or cats and tigers), but it should also look only distantly related to a regular octopus because it's adapted to a totally different biome.
All that leads me to the following conclusion: Common sense, in the sense of broadly understanding how the world works, really is what prevents you from getting fooled, and the more things you understand, the less likely you are to get fooled. Also, the more information a hoax has, the more likely it is to get exposed, because just one sufficiently glaring inconsistency can sink it.
- Tree lobster - Tree crab - Tree clam - Tree fish
I don't think it's lying in the sense of trying to make someone else actually believe it. It's just a form of creative fiction writing. It can be a lot of fun to write in this mode; when well done it's a pleasant kind of erudite humor because to produce it (and get it) you have to be somewhat knowledgeable in the topic. Mockumentaries might be the film/TV equivalent. Unfortunately (especially for certain subjects) it also confuses and causes strife if readers take it too seriously.
'Click here to donate to my gofund me to save the amphibious octopus.'
You really think it means absolutely _nothing_ about this topic? It's literally an example of people believing what they read online! I think you're having an overly defensive reaction to probably falling for it.
> It would be very hard to go through life questioning the veracity of every inconsequential bit of information that no one has an incentive to lie about
The issue is you may not understand or fathom the reasons someone may lie about something. Imagine the strange traditions that leaders have maintained throughout history to help control their subjects. To those subjects, I'm sure they weren't even imagining that these things they thought were spiritual were just fictions.
As for my point - yes you should try go through life with a certain level of curiosity and apprehension when people tell you things. I feel like a lot of our societal issues are a result of things continuing for no good reason, just because we've done it in the past. It's become fairly easy to fact-check, and while not popular at parties, it's important if you're actually trying to learn and build an accurate mental model.
If people were more comfortable questioning all aspects of our society (and if society was receptive to the criticism), I feel like we would be better off.
The purpose of misleading about “politician did X” is to sell a call to action. Any time there is a call to action supported by a claim, there is an obvious motivation for misrepresentation (the very same one present when “politicia did X” is the claim.) This contains a call to action, ergo, it has an obvious motivation for misrepresentation.
> I don't think it demonstrates much that students believed it.
I think it demonstrates a lot that half of 13-year-old students in the US study believed a page which referenced a fictitious nation-state in the Pacific Northwest was reliable, leaving aside the other indicia of deception. Though whether what it says is about internet literacy or complete failure of education on geography perhaps less clear.
I'm just going to leave this here
>> Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch.
Are you referring to Cascadia? That's a perfectly non-fictional name for the region (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest).
Or maybe I missed another reference?
Or at least pretend to.
The problem is in getting hold of them, as trade in this protected species is illegal.
No, I just made the mistake of trusting you and your persistence!
I don't think believing makes you gullible, is just that the consequences for believing in this case are negligible. At worst, you repeat the story to someone else, as second-hand fact. Mostly likely however, you'd never think of this conversation again, and it would have no effect on your behaviour. I think it says much more about the person telling the lie (this is a shitty thing to do to a friend) than the person accepting the lies.
Extraordinary claims may require extraordinary evidence, but it really only matters at the point where believing those claims affects one's behaviour and the consequences are tangible and different from refutation of those claims.
Is there a subtle truth to your friend's lie? It need not be related to scallions. We perceive the world through narrative. Perhaps your friend was introducing a fundamental truth through the revelation of scallions growing in a bathroom. Or at least that's how we would interpret it on my home planet of Zeta Reticulii IV. Of course the "fact" that I'm from Zeta Reticulii IV is a lie. I grew up in Texas. You can make your own decisions regarding the relative adherence to consensual reality between Texas and Zeta Reticulii IV.
Perhaps the story of growing scallions in the bathroom is nothing other than the creation of a shared history. Does it matter that history is counter-factual? We're social beings. We do things like that.
* live in Australia
* love to eat Blue Swimmer Crabs
I think it’s the same basic principle as hanging up if a relative calls you begging for money or proclaiming to be kidnapped and calling you back. The costs for double-checking incredible claims is often not that high.
Some fish-looking sea creatures are actually mammals. Sea horses have pregnant males. Deep sea fish look like horror monsters. A fresh water octopus just isn't that unbelievable.
But really, if there were something as bizarre as a tree octopus, you would have heard of it.
I mean absence of incentive to lie is far from universal criteria to distinguish false information.
As if this had ever been different. I would even argue that, because it is simply much easier to do, people are more incentivized to fact-check imformation, than 100 years ago.
That is, there used to be some pretty universal, trusted sources of information. Encyclopedia Brittanica, for one simple example. And I'm not saying these sources never had errors or they didn't embed some of the societal biases in their reports, but they clearly had an institutional desire to report facts correctly, and pretty much nobody questioned that intent, regardless of political leanings.
The ease with which anyone can publish anything on the Internet is a double-edged sword. It makes it more possible to challenge the status quo, but it also means that some crackpot can produce a slick video that, to many people, is just as valid as some well-researched documentary that at least attempts to be unbiased.
The WP article is a great read--recommend.
I was extremely susceptible to this story, because I absolutely love octopuses, and everything related to them. However I’m not an expert and it would not surprise me at all (given how surprising octopuses are generally) that there was a octopus group that could adapt to an extremely high humidity area, so it seems plausible!
I like getting fooled like this occasionally cause it keeps you on your toes and shows you how vulnerable and easily fooled we all are.
And not to make everything about this, but in light of this, interpret various currently fashionable and harmful pseudoscientific ideologies being peddled in schools and backed by the force of the regime.
Children are very gullible. That's one major reason why they need parents, to protect them from predation and to guide them toward the minimum of adulthood. Worse still when parents themselves buy into these ideologies.
https://arthropoda.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/coconut-crab....
and the prairie squid: https://subgenius.fandom.com/wiki/Prairie_squid
It's like when I used to read through Snopes feeds, and 9 times out of 10 I'd think "wow, that's so dumb, how could anyone believe that", and then the tenth time I'd think the same thing for a story that actually ended up being true.
“Tourists, business travelers, and other visitors are allowed to "come" to the "country" in order to "witness" its "existence." In reality, these people are waylaid at the common borders of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and taken to NWO branch facilities where they have false memories of vast sprout fields and chocolate factory tours implanted.”
After reading about parasites that turn ants into zombies to do their bidding, I'm pretty much all out of "that's just a nonsense story" when it comes to nature's variety. I'll be skeptical, but I tend not to outright dismiss immediately.
https://objectiveministries.org/
(But once you've gone down the rabbit hole, there are some spectacular give-aways)
I must admit however that I’m a tad disappointed that the list of factors contributing to the critical endangerment of this wonderful specimen still has not been updated to include mention of the extinction of its once-primary source of nutrition, the harvest of the spaghetti tree [0].
Perhaps in ten more years this oversight will have been corrected!
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/04/that-time-the-bbc-foo...
The reason is that unlike humans and other land creatures, they are completely immune to the toxic effects of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO). In fact, they require regular immersion in it.
This also explains why the octopuses don't migrate farther south. When on the land, they still require ongoing contact with DHMO, which on the Olympic Peninsula is found in abundance in the very air!
I say this, because there was a photo of blue teddy-octopi's legs hanging from a tree on the site, and I started imagining a dad telling his kid how this is something real, that he/she should watch for them to see if he/she can spot them occasionally.
Hurts my heart, but the site is nice, like a cherished thought which someone wanted to keep alive.
I always did a week on internet literacy, and would open the lesson with a worksheet that included this fella, along with a number of other fake animals, and some that look fake, but aren't.
Each kid was supposed to come up with a summary of what the animal was, where they live, what they eat, etc.
It was a lot of fun, but I've got to say... Parents: please take some time to teach your kids how to critically evaluate information that they read online.
A quick google shows it seems to be a well known classic hoax from the late 90s.
But there really are crabs and lobsters that live in trees and things, as do lots of type of mollusc (eg slugs and snails). So it isn’t completely silly.
So it’s not like a tree octopus is any more ridiculous than the coconut crab?
It seems there is no good way to know the truth anymore, as searching the internet might just find collaborating lies and conjecture…
It's very likely OP discovered it through the link on this HN post that was at the top yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36739920
It is a lot more ridiculous though because land crabs are a well known thing (e.g. hermit crabs) whereas land octopuses don't exist. Octopuses are very much a water-only type of organism.
It just requires a little prior knowledge about the broad strokes of animalian orders.
They're not though. Octopi generally don't like being out of water, but they're capable of traveling on land short distances and in fact the Abdopus Aculeatus octopus regularly goes on land by choice in order to hunt crabs in different tidepools. Sir David Attenborough discusses the octopus here, which this octopus was one of the animals featured in The Hunt documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebeNeQFUMa0
Ice Worms and Their Habitats on North Cascade Glaciers
https://glaciers.nichols.edu/iceworm/
and the Australian Drop Bear
Urban legend I was told (In Auckland - not Australia)
In the war the US army moved vast reserves into North Australia for quite obvious reasons.
Tanks on exercises in the Australian desert got very hot, so naturally kept their hatches open whenever they could.
Massed tanks on manoeuvres in the desert will from time to time run into trees.
Koala spend 90% of their time asleep in trees.
Completing the picture a tank blunders into a tree and koala are dislodged and rain down.
Through open tank hatches.
The "Great Australian Drop Bear" is a recently woken angry Koala in fight mode in a crowded tank.....
As a bonus, I think we were also asked to review some information on the aluminum foil hat. https://zapatopi.net/afdb/build.html
I think it is begging for B movie treatment... OK Down vote me as being Reddit-esque... But come on, it's Sunday afternoon, have a little fun...
Tree Octopus's on a Plane.. Tree Octopus- nado Suction cups... We're gonna need a bigger backpack.
Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
I love this PNW Myth, deserves love right up there with Sasquatch and DB Cooper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_Is_Wild#Hothouse_Wo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_movement
which, when I first read about it, I questioned as a potential hoax. But - no, if you're not from the US, you should know that it's a very real thing, and apparently, a full third (!) of people 18-34 years old support it, according to relatively recent polling mentioned at the link.
I used to see graffiti proclaiming "TINA CHOPP IS GOD" all over Bellingham, WA in the early 1980s (and it later spread to Seattle).
Still with us...
First the scientific name, obscura just sold it out as fake - but as someone who lived in the area - it would've been much more obvious and probably involved in tons of actual campaigns and protests.
I think it just seemed out of place, like someone bringing up a topic in a forced way. Kind of “trying too hard”.
The photoshopped image of an octopus and a sasquatch hand was what first tipped me off. I wanted to believe this was a real animal, octopuses are magnificent creatures.
I feel like I should have figured out this was a gag sooner...