This is incredibly cute: the combination of the kind divers helping a vulnerable little octopus, the way the creature explores the proffered shells with its tiny tentacle, and its final acceptance of a new home. Lovely!
Speaking of new homes, check this one out:
Awww, too cute, Cup-o’-noodles!
Dang, that’s so cute, it might be a while before I can eat scungilli again (which technically isn’t even the right word for octopus, but it’s what my paisan buddies in the old neighborhood used to call it when we were kids and their moms cooked octopus for us).
Lucky you! Had wonderful scungilli in Charlottesville, VA, where my dear departed mother spent he& last days, but have never seen it anywhere else, despite Toronto’s having a huge Italian population. Where was your old neighborhood?
Cleveland, East side.
According to “The Language Chef,” strictly speaking scungilli is conch, but I recall that when I was in Tunis, everyone called the Vietnamese restaurant Chinese.
This makes me wonder just what was the “scungilli” in Charlotesville, VA. Coulda been mountain oysters gussied up.
I love the idea of a language chef. I want one at every meal.
Oh, Jenny, I had forgotten. The scungilli in C’ville were in fact conch! I did manage to get a friend in NJ to send me some canned scungilli, which weren’t bad, but not as good as the C’ville ones (these in a mom and pop Italian restaurant.). I had wonderful raw conch in the Bahamas, kinda ceviche style. I was the only one at the resort who would try it. Heavenly, and fyi you’re sposed ta pronounce it conk, like a conk on the head🤓
Btw, I love the sound of scungillllli.
I love the sound of scungillllli, too, and I’d love to try some, raw or cooked, whatever name it goes by and however it’s pronounced. But straight from the sea, not from a can.
Yeah, technically scungilli is conch, which I eat all the time, cracked (which is to say pounded and marinated) or ground (in chowder or ceviche).
Conch have beautiful shells, many of them, but the animal inside, I’ve never come across a one ’em too cute to eat. 🙂
Just as well it wasn’t captured by PZ Myers. I can’t even describe the horrors that would await the poor cephalopod if that happened.
PZ would be nice, i am very sure.
He’s be **very** nice.
Although the octopus might have a different view!
I think PZ has a cephalopod day on his calendar of commentary just as Jerry has his Caterday. He’d be supportive with all 8 arms.
spiders these days….
…but still eight legs
There was a recent episode of NOVA about ‘making contact’ with an octopus. It was quite moving, really.
Octopi always make me a bit sad. They are so cute and clever, you can really pull for them. But, they live very short lives. I seem to remember, about 3 – 6 months for the cute tropical ones. This seems such a waste of sentience. I imagine if they lived many years, they could develop culture, learn to communicate, become citizens and vote. 😎
It makes me more than a bit sad.
That said, I just found this article about their, to me, astounding life-cycle (Oops, I almost wrote “life-style”) https://www.sciencealert.com/mother-octopus-senescence-death-after-mating-eggs-reproduction-rna-sequence-optic-gland.
Right now I’m engaging in a little fantasy that the octopus with the portable coconut shell house interrupts Michael Palin walks in, in the middle of the Monty Python skit “How to make horses hooves from a coconut” and steals the show. And I said “walk” because that octopus was steppin’ like nobody’s business.
I had never seen this “origin story”🤣 My younger brother kept trying to describe the coconut scene several years before I saw Holy Grail.
Good grief! Betting a lot of would be Octo-moms electing to have the surgery: “In 1977, researchers removed this gland and found that the octopus’ mothering instincts disappeared. She abandoned her eggs, started feeding again, and went on to live a much longer life.”
Oh no! I’d forgotten about “Octomom”! As Monty Python has it, “Say no more.”
🤓
It’s sadder than I thought.
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
How sweet!
Remarkable!