Larger Pacific striped octopus | Hacker News Reader

Larger Pacific striped octopus

en.wikipedia.org

136 pointsolalonde74 comments

Irony: Nowhere on that page does it say how large that octopus actually is. An inch? 2 meters? Unclear.

To save you the google search, it's about "tennis ball size" according to https://30a.com/larger-pacific-striped-octopus/ . Somebody should add that to the wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Being_the_Right_Size

"The most obvious differences between different animals are differences of size, but for some reason the zoologists have paid singularly little attention to them. In a large textbook of zoology before me I find no indication that the eagle is larger than the sparrow, or the hippopotamus bigger than the hare, though some grudging admissions are made in the case of the mouse and the whale."

Somebody? Why not you?

Indeed. Even easier: complain on the article's Talk page. Somebody else may then do the work for free.

It's Wikipedia, I'm sure you can add it to the wiki in about as much time as it took you to write that post.

Not really, because you need a reputable source. The popular science article they linked is good enough for HN but WP would remove it.

Also, how many are there? Is it even known?

Wikipedia didn't say it directly, but they already had a reference to a source that did

> "The LPSO is a small animal, with a striped body about 7 centimetres long and spotted arms that make it look like it is wearing a polka-dot dress."

Anytime you're looking for more info on topic while reading its wikipedia article checking the sources is a good place to start.

> The species was first documented in the 1970s and, being fairly new to scientific observation, has yet to be scientifically described. Because of this, LPSO has no official scientific name.

Is that a joke? It takes over 50 years to come up with a scientific name for a species?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2227516-octopuses-were-...:

“In the late 1960s, Aradio Rodaniche was diving off the coast of Nicaragua when he made the discovery that has tantalised cephalopod biologists ever since.

[…]

The discovery of an apparently social species was so implausible that few believed it and Rodaniche’s story passed into legend. He published a short account of the species in 1991, but hardly anyone had seen the animal and no one could confirm the report”

That takes account of (at least) a few decades.

I also think the issue isn’t coming up with a name but scientifically describing it. That (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_description) can take time.

Finally, the group of people interested in having a species description may not be very large; and the group willing and able to create one even smaller. Nowadays the money in biology is in biochemistry.

> Finally, the group of people interested in having a species description may not be very large; and the group willing and able to create one even smaller.

Perhaps, but the caption on the picture in the article [0] says that it was taken at "an aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences", which sounds like the kind of place where octopus scientists hang out. And the article cited in Wikipedia [1] has quite a few authors, which makes me think that there's something more complicated going on here.

[0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Larger_Pacific_Strip...

[1]: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134152

Huh interesting. I, like most San Franciscans, know the Cal Academy as primarily a public aquarium with a smaller research arm associated with it. I didn’t know they do the kind of research that leads to species description. Would have expected them to be downstream of that.

That may be so, but I would expect the people who work there to be 1) interested in getting a species name for the unnamed species they had in captivity, and 2) certainly know who to reach out to to get a species description even if they were unable or unwilling to do so themselves.

Hey, that's unfair. I'm working through the backlog as fast as I can!

Blame I.T. - they keep resetting my password and I'm not allowed to write it down on a Post-It like back in the old days...

It’s been thousands of years and there’s still no firm definition of “species”.

There is a firm definition of species that works most of the time, but has been expanded with a lot of complexity and exceptions like rings of species for example.

In short if two animals can mate and produce fertile offspring similar to the parents, they are in the same species,

This means that all extant humans are in the same species (even if some are hybrids and some were isolated for a lot of time. Even if they never want to mate by religious reasons, geography or personal preferences)

Of course things can get messed fast. A tomato with a codfish genus included by humans to stand frost, is not a codmato suddently.

Sometimes, yes. Many invertebrate research is done almost for free, so it takes what it takes.

One critical feature of these octopuses is that they don't just die after mating (most species of octopus do)... Which opens up possibilities, like teaching their young skills they have acquired.

Life expectancy is 2 years. They can mate more than once, but not many times more.

A lifespan of 2 years for intelligent creatures is heartbreaking

Only if their critical flicker frequency isn't in line with those 2 years.

oh wow, I'd never heard of this. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold - now I think I understand why I can always tell GM vehicles with LED taillights at night. I can spot them a mile away, literally, because their taillights blink slower than others and I can see it, and it drives me crazy.

Thanks for opening me up to this!

There is also an auditory gap detection threshold, but no wiki page, sadly.

They are extremely intelligent for a mollusk(like, these folks are family with slugs and clamshells), but they are not that intelligent if you compare them to a pig or a dog.

Their main brain is after all very small(although huuuge for a mollusk), most of it is dedicated to the processing of vision, with two big lumps next to the eyes, and there's a small lump in between these two for the brain proper.

Well, unfortunately - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus#Reproduction - a just-hatched young octopus doesn't stick around, but drifts away in the current.

Also worth a read - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

The deep-sea octopus Graneledone boreopacifica has the longest known observed 53 month egg brooding period.

We could test this if we managed to get a dna sample of the colonies. It does seem unclear if the colonies are "chosen" family or biological.

That is indeed a tantalizing eventuality which we may one day discover .. imagine the things they could do if they start teaching future generations of octopus how to deal with things!

Another of my favorite octopus facts, is the existence of octopus settlements, which .. if you think about it .. is kind of astonishing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopolis_and_Octlantis

All the elements for civilization are there .. social life, building constructions, edge-case evolutionary triggers, etc.

I surely hope one day to learn that octopus are on the evolutionary path to take over (not so long) after we're gone .. I've spent countless days in my youth playing with the octopus of the reefs off the coast of Western Australia .. I love them.

They are absolutely wonderful creatures.

I once lured an octopus out of its lair with an Aussie gold coin, reflecting sunlight into its hole until it got curious, and we then spent an hour playing fetch - I'd take the coin to the water surface, let it sink in the sunshine, the octopus would dart around excitedly, catch it, swim around a bit, drop it like a dog playing fetch .. over and over, just the two of us having fun until the surf got too rough and the sharkiness levels went a bit too high for both of us. I sure wish I'd had an underwater camera back then, it was a wonderful moment.

Octopuses are not people. Young octopuses are food, not scholars

You're a fucking weirdo

I've been fascinated by Cephalopods since reading (the excellent) book "Other Minds" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. They are probably the closest we'll get to an alien intelligence. Their nervous systems evolved along a completely different evolutionary path from us vertebrates. It pains me that they are so short lived, though. I wonder what potential could be unlocked by their intelligence if they lived for 40 years or longer.

You just need to convice the ethics review board on some research lab to allow for editing the genes of a few octopus to make them longer lived, give them education, etc...

Q: What do you get when you cross an octopus with a cow?

A: An immediate cessation of funding and a stern letter from the Ethics Committee.

For your consideration, a cephalopod joke I made while stopped in traffic considering the name of an SUV:

Q: What do you call a mischievous mollusk?

A: A Naughty-lus

As I believe the kids say:

Thanks, I hate it.

;-)

The nautilus is a genetic precursor to the octopus on the cephalopod branched tree of life and takes 20 years to mature.

You should read Time by Stephen Baxter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(novel). Part of it deals with this precise topic.

Thank you - ordered!

"the mountain in the sea" is recent sci fi that deals with this idea.

You will be happy to read this then:

https://www.ciwf.org/media-and-news/press-releases-and-media...

"Other Minds" is definitely worth a read.

or read "Gentle Giant Octopus" to your kids, the ending hits parents a little hard though.

You might find the recent Theories of Everything podcast interview [0] with Peter Godfrey-Smith interesting.

0. https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/peter-godfrey-smith-thi...

Something about seeing "gregarious nature" used to describe a non-human animal feels so... whimsical? I like it. Likewise with "intimate embrace" and other descriptions that follow.

The photo they've chosen for the article even supports this. It's like he's leaning on a bar twirling his moustache whilst giving you the side-eye.

"Gregarious" is a standard term in biology.

Quite confusing how the referenced paper [1] juxtaposes Guatemala, Panama, and the (British) Columbia region of Canada.

Unless they actually meant Colombia. But peer review would certainly catch that.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4534201/

The paper doesn't seem to mention Canada anywhere. Columbia has coastlines on the Pacific and Caribbean. I can see how the adjective stack could lead a person astray tho.

  In the 1970’s this species was common in the Bay of Panama, Panama, and commercial shrimp trawlers found individuals on the northern Pacific coast of Columbia.

So they (and you) really meant Colombia instead.

What happens when they find even bigger ones?

They name the new one The Largest Pacific Striped Octopus

They ask the guy who also names telescopes for the next name on the list.

Unfathomably Huge Pacific Striped Octopus

LPSO Astra.

ELPSO

Pro Max is still available

lmao

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_tit

Do we know why this species evolved to be social when most octopuses are solitary?

Game theory?

A long while back, I read (and just now refound) an article about a biologist's take on cooperation and competition. David Sloan Wilson is quoted as saying "Selfishness beats altruism within groups, [but] altruistic groups beat selfish groups, and everything else is commentary."

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/06/david-sloan-...

Perhaps with sufficient intelligence and time, altruism/cooperation is discovered to be a better fit for any given environment, and that's passed on.

Extra warm waters maybe. A lot of animals seem to be acting strange in the last years.

The more I learn about octopus, the more they seem like alien species.

They have something like 8 different brains, can regenerate limbs, incredibly smart, can change colors & texture to match surrounds, and more.

I once read that zebras have stripes to keep mosquitos away.

Could be as there are bloodsuckers also in the sea, but my bet would be Batesian mimicry.

Many dangerous animals have stripes. Some similar species of octopuses are known to master moves an patterns mimicking sea snakes and lionfishes.

Despite the efforts of many of centuries, we are still so ignorant of the vast variety of life that surrounds and supports us on this planet. We should have more humility about this, but we (collectively, as a species) do not.

Some will say that AI can solve this, as is the fashion. But so far the things people are interested in doing with the new potential for synthesizing and translating animal sounds does not inspire any confidence[0].

[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-04/ai-s-next...

Not to be combative, coming from genuine interest, I'd like to ask you why we should care? I study biology, and can think of a plethora of topics that we can study about human physiology that we don't understand and if we did would more directly lead to treatment of human diseases. That is not to say we need invest all resources towards this frontier but in the optimal scenario we must weight resource allocation to the potential usefulness of the discovery.

I don't think we have to understand the natural world to care about it. But I will go further haha: I think we _already_ prioritize human health and advancement above preserving anything about the natural world (unless we have identified that the preservation is advantageous for our own purposes.) And I reject this anthropocentric view, which is I suppose where we might differ :)

General knowledge is unpredictable. If you want to treat human diseases, explore the natural world, because a huge portion of the pharmacopea we have is in some way directly derived from general knowledge - the taxane family is derived from yew, sometimes when you explore easter island you find rapamycin, penicillin is a very old story of accidental primary research, it goes on and on. And many of the synthetics we have now are adaptations of an older drug with negative side effects to manage the side effects.

Hypothetically, in 100,000 years, if human activity has led to the death of everything not human on this planet and we ourselves are on the brink (effectively leading Earth to go back to square one) would you rather that, or humans end in 50,000 years but through conservation and study made way for other life on this planet that will eventually conquer space and some of the mysteries of the universe.

Obviously the timelines are insane but just as a thought experiment, I would suspect we would get different answers depending on who you ask, and thus the study, understanding and conservation of other life that shows a form of intelligence becomes much more important to some, whilst human preservation at the expense of all else is more important to others.

(I also recognise you aren't saying that by the way, but it's what came to mind when I read your comment. I personally think we have more than enough resources to do both. I'd also imagine we will learn more about ourselves and what's possible in medicine by studying other species.)

"usefulness" being the keyword here. I agree that the investment of resources goes towards the "usefulness" as in, there is a profit to be made here "usefulness" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

From a purely utilitariatic POV, understanding your environment helps avoiding mistakes that mess it up which then indirectly impacts you too since you depend on your environment. So, more understanding improves policy making.

Second, what people know is often valued more. If you can tell people about the environment then you can create a fascination and make them value their surroundings more, maybe causing them to think twice before dumping trash mindlessly in the forest or voting for the next guy who wants to expand fracking operations. And in order to tell them, you first need to understand it.

Third, it can give you material for creating useful tools or medicine which then improves lives, like vaccines or airplanes (which we wouldn't have without curiosity about birds).

Apart from that, it's empathy too. Animals can suffer and causing them suffering is usually against empathy people feel. More understanding helps with that. (It's not too long ago that the prevailing view of "that's just a fish, they don't feel anything, so I can eat them even though I'm vegetarian" was challenged and slowy overturned.)

And finally, beauty. Nature is just beautiful. Compared to a dead rock like mars, it's absolutely amazing what we have around us.

I hope these five reasons give you some perspective as a biology student.

I wonder, what made you choose that field of study?

Animals feel pain.

Let’s raise them humanely, kill them swiftly, and use they wholly letting nothing go to waste.

This is an entirely reasonable ethic.

Thanks for the response, I think these are some great points. I originally studied electrical computer engineering as that was the most interesting to me but by happenstance went on to work in a neurobiology lab and felt that I had the ability to contribute a different perspective/skill-set to the lab/field. Through research and witnessing human diseases, I now feel more strongly about contributing to understanding of human disease mechanisms.

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