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Giant Octopus Attacks Sub
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jan 27, 2006 09:47 PM
from the not-as-cool-as-you-think dept.
from the not-as-cool-as-you-think dept.
Apostata writes "As reported by the CBC, 'Salmon researchers working on the Brooks Peninsula [British Columbia] were shocked last November when an octopus attacked their expensive and sensitive equipment.' Apparently it was caught on video, but no word on when/where it will be available. Apparently this is the first documented attack." Obviously the start of something bigger.
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Video of attack (Score:5, Informative)
A link to the original video can be found on this page [seaeye.com] (video is 2.9Mbyte .mpg file). Also, a mirror of the video can be found here [zippyvideos.com]. The link above to the video page has a detailed summary of what happened:
A giant pacific octopus attacked a Seaeye Falcon ROV working off Vancouver Island as it was locating and recovering receivers tracking pacific offshore salmon migration.
The incident was caught on the ROV's video by Mike Wood of SubOceanic Sciences Canada. He had just located a data recorder and taken a grip of the cable with the ROV's manipulator arm, when suddenly an 80 lb octopus launched an attack.
With tentacles 'as thick as man's arm' and a bite that he believed can exert 1000 lbs pressure, Mike Wood feared the octopus would bite the camera cable or umbilical and trip out the Falcon ROV.
Not wanting to lose the receiver that he had just located he decided to take on the creature and after tightening his grip of the cable with the manipulator arm, revved the ROV's thrusters in reverse in an attempt to blast seabed particles at the creature. For a moment the octopus appeared to intensify its attack with its mantle flared but eventually the swirling fragments drove it away.
The giant pacific octopus, octopus dofleini, is the largest species of octopods and although it grows to an average weight of 50 to 90 lbs with a span of 16 ft, a monster 600 lbs one has been recorded. They are intelligent creatures who can negotiate mazes and learn to unscrew jars to remove food. No problem disassembling an ROV then.
Re:Video of attack (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Video of attack (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Video of attack (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Video of attack (Score:3, Funny)
It was predicted (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Video of attack (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, will overthrow any leader I cannot spell.
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Re:Video of attack (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Video of attack (Score:5, Interesting)
My girlfriend wearing gold and yellow, the critter takes a yellow hue, then purple when it looks at me, then grey and blue as it looks my friend over. Cool stuff.
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Re:Mirror and another octopi video: (Score:5, Informative)
Link (pops) [contemporaryinsanity.org]
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Are you sure? (Score:5, Funny)
The Video is At the CBC (Score:5, Informative)
In the video some "octopus expert" said "could've been lookin' for a girlfriend, could've been senile".
Sounds like some kind of oceanographer joke: Why did the octopus attack the sub? "could've been lookin' for a girlfriend"
Re:The Video is At the CBC (Score:3, Insightful)
Dr. Venkman once said... (Score:5, Funny)
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.
Re:Dr. Venkman once said... (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, yes I would Kent.
Don't blame the Octopus (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't blame the Octopus (Score:3, Funny)
I -clearly- need to get out more. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I -clearly- need to get out more. (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting how the trend flows
Of course, the Chirac hoax went CBC->BBC->CNN, which is even more amusing
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8 Giant Tentacles!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Not so giant... (Score:5, Funny)
So it's not all it's cracked up to be. Huh. Why do I feel like I've done this before?
Re:Not so giant... (Score:5, Informative)
They're strong buggers, too. If you were underwater and had a choice between a shark or an octopus attacking you, go with the shark. You have a better chance of survival.
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Re:Not so giant... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'll try and bear that in mind. (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting point and all, but seriously dude... that is quite some hypothetical.
OCTOPUS: GurgleRarrr! *attacks*
ME: *oof* Ex-CUSE me, but I SPECIFICALLY requested the shark.
OCTOPUS: *slinks away, professionally embarrassed*
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Re:Not so giant... (Score:5, Informative)
It's still a cool video, though.
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This is not the first ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Best quote (Score:5, Funny)
"It was desperation. It's a $200,000 machine, and it's not insured," said Wood, who runs SubOceanic Sciences Canada in Duncan, B.C.
Even when you get your sub insured they neglect to mention you have to pay extra for underinsured gaint squid and octopus coverage.
Ouch! (Score:5, Funny)
Ouch, that sounds painful. Anybody ever had an octopus stuck to their sensitive equipment?
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Funny)
I haven't tried it myself, but this young lady seems to be enjoying it.
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-dream-of-the-fis
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This All Sounds Familiar (Score:3, Informative)
Proof the advertising is everywhere (Score:4, Funny)
BSG commerical over---back to eating my sub....
ROV != Sub (Score:5, Insightful)
And the so-called Giant Octopus weighed about 45 kgs. Hardly Giant.
Anyway.
Touch != Attack (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always easier when it's not your expensive toy down there, but it seems the operator was in panic mode. I'd like to think that if it were my ROV, I'd have held off on that little counter-offensive stunt a little longer, until I saw at least some indication of hostility. In the video, the octopus has barely started reaching toward the ROV by the time its starts getting pelted by the gravel. My guess is that the encounter would have ended quite peacefully, without any aggression on either side, and we would have had even more footage of this interesting interaction.
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Was this really an attack? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is the ASPCA? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Was this really an attack? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Was this really an attack? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Was this really an attack? (Score:3, Insightful)
given that the operator was responsible for a 200K piece of equipment, that no one really knows what an attack looks like, and had to make a quick descision I cant say I would have done any different.
As far as you or I know if the operator had not acted in this way the equipment may be swimming with the titaic.
Outrageous (Score:5, Funny)
Those Octopussies won't know what hit 'em!!
Defensive measures for future ROV missions (Score:5, Funny)
Mike Wood? (Score:4, Funny)
I didn't know (Score:4, Funny)
Octopii are very curious creatures (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm also betting that these folks had all their little lights blazing, all their little tools humming, and lord only know what else. I'm sure that they attracted the thing. Most people don't realize that octopii have problem-solving intelligence. (It's the one thing that makes me feel guilty about eating them. I guess if they were smarter they'd find a way not to taste so good) Anyway, because they're smart, they also investigate odd things. As fragile as they look, they are suprisingly strong. I've had an octopus not much bigger than my hand nearly pull my regulator out of my mouth. I can only imagine what 100lb octopus is capable of. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised they have sub left. I would suggest investigating to see if they can find out what they did to initiate the incident and "don't do that anymore."
2 cents,
Queen B
Plural of octopus != octopii (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I looked it up on AskOxford [askoxford.com] and it turns out that octopi is wrong and octopuses is customary, but neither are correct. The most correct plural is octopodes, but I've never heard anyone use it.
I used to dive (haven't in awhile) and I have yet to meet an octopus, but I have heard great stories about how curiou
Fuck (Score:5, Funny)
Look.
Do you know how fucking big a sperm whale is? It's huge. HUGE. And giant squid eat them. Listen to your heart - no matter what the scientists tell you, 4th grade ecology has convinced us all that whales are intelligent loving animals. Did you see Star Trek 4 [imdb.com]. They're the freakin' saviours of humanity man.
And giant squid eat them
Eat them
Not beacause it's easy. Oh no, not because a sperm whale is an easy catch. Big, remember? No. It's because squid are evil incarnate
Do you know how long they've been down there? No one does. But my guess is the squid and it's precurser have been down there in the depths for a lot longer than man has been knucklewalking. That's old. And you know they think down there. Brood down there. Their tentacles floating like the limbs of children relaxing in the water, they brood and wonder how to conquer us from below.
Things that think and brood also dream. And things that dream begin to worship the stuff of dreams. Out of man's insecurity we have sublimated a great father figure into the sky, according to Freud. What about the tentacled things in the watery darkness, whose females are larger than their males?
I'll tell you what they worship
A great multilimbed mother of the dark watery brood. Deep down in the very molten cracks of the earth filling the sea with inky blackness. THAT's what they worship. We killed men in the crusades. Men who looked the same as other men. What will the dark octupi and squid do to US who are mere flabby bloodsacks to rip apart and drink out fluids with their beaky maws? What in the name of their Dark Mother goddess will they do to us when they rise into our airy realm?
Think about it dudes
Us computer geeks are basically fucked
Re:Fuck (Score:4, Funny)
If you'd like to learn more about this, perhaps to better defend yourself in the future, I believe the Japanese have a huge selection of documentaries on this very subject.
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Who's he kidding (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like a well thought out revisionist history of "HOLY SHIT REVERSE MAN REVERSE!!!eleven!"
To me at least after viewing the video, he did what anyone would in a FPS. Run backward dropping 'nades to escape short range melee weapons in the hopes that his ass would survive long enough to get a new strategy. Good thing they had a rocky seabed or we would've seen the death of an ROV.
Too bad they didn't build this thing with a strafe-jump and gibber, he could've misdirected then lead the octopus into a lunge in which he pushed the gibber against its head by using it's off-balance timing and commitment to the lunge.
New headline: ROV driven by newb almost gets pwned by octopus.
How about an octopus attacking a 4 foot shark? (Score:5, Interesting)
Giant squid vs Creationism...... (Score:4, Funny)
"The world was not created for man by God, oh no!
For some years, some biologists have argued that there was a 7th day of creation, during which God thought about his prototypes and finally made the crowning glory of his creation here on Earth: the giant squid.
The basic problem with the idea that we humans are the peak of his creation was pointed out by none other than Charles Darwin. The problem is explaining the evolution of the vertebrate eye. He gave this as a very serious problem, because this organ doesn't fossilize at all, and it is difficult to explain how all the intermediate forms could have been sufficiently functional for Natural Selection to have selected them.
In recent years, Creationists have vociferously challenged the entire evolutionary paradigm, and some biologists have given serious thought to their criticisms, as well as Darwin's issue of the eye. Some have suggested the thought experiment: Suppose that the Creationists are right, and the world was built by some sort of Cosmic Engineer (which we may call "God" for short). What can we learn by studying the artefacts of the creation process?
One thing that we learn when we study the vertebrate eye is that it has a rather strange structure. The blood vessels and the nerves pass through the surface in a bundle (the "blind spot"), and spread out on the inside of the retina. This is a very bizarre way to lay out the "wiring". Why would any sensible engineer do it this way, rather than the much more sensible way of running the wiring along the back surface?
We might hypothesize that there is some obscure benefit to doing it this way, and we just aren't clever enough to figure it out. But this is shot down by a simple fact. The "camera" type of eye seems to have evolved (or been created, if you prefer) more than once. The cephalopods (a family of animals that include octopi, squid, and nautilus) have eyes that are superficially similar, but on close examination, we find that all the details are different. In particular, they have the "wiring" on the back of the retina, as you'd expect.
So, if there is a Creator, He seems to have done the job twice, once poorly (with vertebrates), and once well (with the cephalopods). This is very suspicious. It is especially suspicious when you consider that, while we humans claim that the planet was built for us, it is roughly 3/4 salt water. If you measure the areas that we humans actually inhabit in any significant numbers, we are talking about maybe 5% of the globe, whereas the giant squid is at the top of the food chain over roughly 70%. When you consider the actual volume of the inhabited space, the giant squid has a home range many thousands of times greater than ours.
So the evidence appears to be that humans were one of the experiments, good enough to let live but not good enough to be given a large range (or to rework things like the eyes so that they worked better).
If this isn't convincing enough, consider also that humans have quite a good record of wiping out all the large predators, on both land and at sea. We have devastated the cetacea and are busy wiping out the large sharks, tunas, and other major marine predators. There is one exception: Humans show little interest in interacting with the giant squid. Sure, we catch the little ones and eat them, but as for the biggest species, we almost totally ignore it, although it is a major predator in all the oceans. And if you are like most humans, you are probably thinking that this is silly. Who cares about a bunch of big squid?
This is very, very suspicious. We have a glaring blind spot here. Most large predators drive us crazy. We are terrified of wolves, bears, and sharks. Although very few humans have ever been injured b
Re:Obligitory (Score:4, Funny)
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