Wonderpus is a spectacular cephalopod that has appeared a few times on the Friday Cephalopod. How can you forget an octopus with this kind of psychedelic color?
Wunderpus photogenicus
Now a reader has sent me a link to the formal taxonomic description of Wunderpus photogenicus, and we can get more details on this beautiful animal.
A taxonomic paper is more than a couple of gosh-wow pictures and the announcement of a spiffy name — it’s a fairly detailed description of as much as is known about the species, with special attention paid to the technical features that distinguish this species from other similar ones. They tend to be a little dry, but are usually well-illustrated and fun to read for the pictures, if nothing else. But we also learn about behavior, distribution, and anatomy.
Wunderpus photogenicus n. gen. and n. sp. is a spectacular long-armed species that occurs on soft sediment habitats in shallow
waters (typically less than 20 m deep) in Indo-Malayan waters. It is characterized by small eyes on elongate stalks, a long,
conical papilla over each eye and a dramatic and fixed color pattern of white bars and spots over a brown-red background. The
distribution of the species is centered in the Indo-Malayan Archipelago and extends from Vanuatu to Papua New Guinea,
Indonesia and Malaysia, north to the Philippines. Animals typically emerge at dusk and dawn to forage in the twilight,
primarily catching small crustaceans and fishes by flaring the arms and webs over patches of sand or coral rubble to trap
enclosed (and typically buried) prey. The species also extends its arms into holes to probe for potential prey. The distinctive
color pattern of this species is most pronounced when the octopus is disturbed or threatened by real or perceived attackers. It
appears to be a warning display and may represent one of two scenarios: either 1) it warns that the octopus is directly toxic or
venomous by nature or; 2) it represents impersonations of toxic or venomous creatures with similar color patterns which co-occur in the same habitat. The new genus and species is compared with, and distinguished from, other long-armed octopuses.
I don’t know about you, but when I first read a taxonomic description I immediately flip ahead to anything about reproduction, sexual anatomy, and development (I’m a developmental biologist…I’ve got an excuse). This paper doesn’t disappoint. Here’s the hectocotyl arm, one arm of the male that is specially modified to act as an intromittent organ.
G. Copulatory organ, oral view; H. Copulatory organ, left lateral
view. Abbreviations: C = calamus; CG = copulatory groove; SpG = spermatophore groove.
Spermatophore. Abbreviations: EA = ejaculatory apparatus; OC = oral cap thread; SR = sperm reservoir.
Just in case you’ve forgotten all the fun details of cephalopod sex, I’ll remind you that males produce a sperm packet called a spermatophore (that’s one to the right) which, as a preliminary to mating, they more or less ejaculate onto the tip of one specialized arm, the hectocotylized arm, which they then insert and deposit into the funnel and mantle of the female. Beware: a cephalopod male copping a feel actually is trying to impregnate his target.
If you really want detail, there’s also a discussion of the guts of the animal: here are the gonads and reproductive tract.
A. Reproductive tract
of mature male, ventral view; C.
Reproductive tract of mature female, ventral view; Abbreviations: Ap = appendix; AG =
accessory gland; D = diverticulum; DO = distal oviduct; O = ovary; OE = ovarian egg; OG
= oviducal gland; PO = proximal oviduct; SG = spermatophoric gland; SS = spermatophore storage sac; T = testis; TO
= terminal organ.
I was disappointed in one way: there are eggs there, but no description of their development! That’s not surprising, though, since as I’ve mentioned before, cephalopod development is hard to study. I can dream, though, of a day when every taxonomic paper is accompanied by a complete genomic sequence and a full staging series. The former will become a more likely feature than the latter, I suspect.
Hochberg FG, Norman MD, Finn J (2006) Wunderpus photogenicus n. gen. and sp., a new octopus from the shallow waters of the
Indo-Malayan Archipelago (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae). Molluscan Research 26(3):128-140.
Wunderpus photogenicus? Sounds like a hot adult film star.
You probably posted this somewhere and I missed it but justin case you haven’t…
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbookdisclaimers/
A closely related species, Wonderpus congenialitii, doesn’t photograph as well, but everyone really likes her attitude and spirit.
(Note: In the event that Wonderpus regina cannot fulfill the duties of her genus, Wonderpus runnerupus will take her place. Wonderpus photogenicus is out of the running, but will appear at trade shows and auto showroom openings in the tri-cities area.)
Don’t forget Wonderpus whitebreadicus, HP… well known for 27 essential vitamins and minerals for growing bodies.
“The distinctive color pattern of this species is most pronounced when the octopus is disturbed or threatened by real or perceived attackers. It appears to be a warning display and may represent one of two scenarios: either 1) it warns that the octopus is directly toxic or venomous by nature or; 2) it represents impersonations of toxic or venomous creatures with similar color patterns which co-occur in the same habitat.”
Adaptationist just-so-storytelling.
I’m a big fan of it. Note that these are testable hypotheses, based on analogy to many documented examples among other animals, for the adaptive function of this amazing octopodal psychedicism. Some enterprising field biologist could easily set up controlled experiments to rigorously test both alternatives.
I just finally read George C. Williams’s The Ponyfish’s Glow, an excellent, succinct summary of his career’s theoretical work for a semi-popular audience. I recommend it; in the present context it includes a spirited defense of the adaptationist program.
Species descriptions like this one, based on a 19th-century approach featuring careful observations and meticulous reporting of phenotypes, are still highly relevant to “modern” reductionist gene-centered biology.
So HP, is this Wonderpus p. in formal wear? Are there any photos of it in swimwear?
My reasons for asking are purely scientific, of course.
Brownian – I think this shot was actually taken during the talent competition. She’s an impersonator, donchaknow.
Don’t be an idiot, erh. She looks nothing like Elvis.
This looks like mimicry. The pattern looks very like the lionfish which has poisnous spines. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionfish
Now I’m wondering how long it’ll be before we find one of the chameleonic octopi deliberately mimicking something venomous.
Something like Octopus oreillyi or O. coulterus, perhaps?
I believe that’s been observed already: I know I’ve seen footage of one mimicking a ray.
More importantly, I wonder when they’re going to start mimicking us. Perhaps our future cephalopod overlords have already begun their world conquest. They might be among us right now…
The related mimic octopus has been observed pretending to be all sorts of critters (flounder, lionfish, sea snake)
us denizens of tonmo.com are a bit concerned that wunderpuses are showing up in the aquarium trade a bit now, since they’re apparently quite easy to catch in the wild, and the populations have not been studied, so I want to mention that there is a lot of concern that, because they look so “cool,” the exotic aquarium trade has a potential to wipe them out. This is hypothetical, since we don’t know much about their distribution and population in the wild, but I can certainly say that they are not good choices for pets for anyone who isn’t very experienced in octopus husbandry.
If anyone cares, I noticed wunderp.us was available, so I have a very preliminary web site about these octos, but I suppose if I’m going to plug any cephalopod porn, I should plug the tonmo.com image galleries. But if anyone has any wunderpus pictures or video that they’re willing to give me the web publishing rights to, I’d love to build out the wunderp.us site a bit. Ditto for GPOs, since I got enteroctop.us as well (and have done even less with that). Feh, I can’t say “ditto” like I did in grade school without evoking images of Rush Limbaugh, that’s unfortunate; another perfectly good word down the drain… :-P
Actually, I’m a bit curious about the “Friday Cephalopod” images, since I’ve been wary of scanning pictures from Mark Norman’s book since I’m not sure what “fair use” covers in cases like this… is Pharyngula enough of an educational site that reposting is covered by that, or did you (PZ) get permission from Norman, or what? I’m not intending to make a profit off of wonderp.us, but I don’t know what it takes to be able to legally say it’s educational….
Speaking of captive Wunderpuses – at Daisy Hill Cuttle Farm’s site there are a couple of video clips of Wunderpus photogenicus in action. http://www.stickycricket.com/cuttle/wunderpus/
I’m not enthusiastic about seeing them captured either.
Wow. Double wow! Between Wunderpus and Vampyroteuthis book-ends, we get Beauty and the Beast Big Time, Cephalopod-style. Fantastic! Love it!
Thanks PZ!
Octopi on acid.
I read the species description. Until then, I thought when you called it Wonderpus you were kidding.
“This looks like mimicry. The pattern looks very like the lionfish which has poisnous spines.”
Jim that sounds very logical but I am partially skeptical. As a diver I see a lot of the closely-related Atlantic scorpion fish. They hide on the bottom and merge extremely well into their surroundings where they are well comouflaged. The bright colors are hidden. Maybe they use them at some other point of ther lives than when they are lying on he sea bed, but I have not yet seen that.
My grandnephew’s favorite octopus video:
Hungry octopus kills shark
Before reading your caption, my first impression was of a congregation of lionfish (at least 3).
And now they are known to have individually unique spot patterns: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003732
The next step is to expand the database of photographs http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/Wunderpix.html and use photoidentification to monitor population density and home ranges.