Comments

  3. says

    Kel, please go to sleep yourself. I suffer from the delusion of being the first person to post a comment about a PZ posting. You have ruined my day. May you have overcooked takoyaki for the rest of your life.

  5. Michael the G says

    Close encounters of the Cephalopod kind!!

    Does anyone have a guess as to where this was taken? Well, besides underwater anyway ;)

  6. Mark says

    Diver: “Huh? I wonder where…?”

    Cephalopod: “SURPRISE COCK-FACE!!!”

    Diver: **shits him/herself**

  7. Didac says

    Are we supposed to assume that, according to Mark Noman, Homo sapiens L. is now placed between the Cephalopoda?

  8. Brian English says

    Sepia Latimanus = Side handed cuttlefish? My latin isn’t good. Latus = side, manus = hand. Or maybe I got that wrong. :)

  9. Katkinkate says

    I cannot see the cephalopod! Is it supposed to be that black cloud on top of the divers head? I thought that was his hair. Or is it ink?

  10. Brian English says

    I cannot see the cephalopod! Is it supposed to be that black cloud on top of the divers head?

    In case your are asking, it’s the long, somewhat cigar shaped redish/whitish/cuttlefishish thing that extends from just above the diver’s hand towards the bottom left…..

  11. Rob says

    I had the wonderful delight of interacting with (over the course of many dives in Australia last year) several such giant cuttlefish. I was genuinely shocked to discover that these creatures can communicate their feelings and thoughts so very clearly to humans. I understood what they were “saying”! [Sometimes.] Their ability to change texture and colour (in milliseconds with multi-megapixel resolution), combined with the flexibility of their tentacles for gesturing, makes their bandwidth for communication amazingly broad. Broad enough that even slow humans can get hints to the meaning of what they want to say.

    I really wonder just how much they can convey to each other. They are highly intelligent even by cephalopod standards, but are (as I understand) tragically short-lived.
    (Two or three years at most).

    Cuttlefish rule.

  12. JackC says

    OK – nice pic and all – but surely that is a painting (from a book photo) and not a photo? I mean – the mask looks all strange – and appears to have a water line that is defying gravity… (note the direction of the bubbles)

    JC

  13. Katkinkate says

    “In case your are asking, it’s the long, somewhat cigar shaped redish/whitish/cuttlefishish thing that extends from just above the diver’s hand towards the bottom left…”

    Bloody good camoflage then. It looks like a chunk of coral.

  14. says

    Scuba diving in Sydney Harbour once, my husband had a cuttlefish follow him around for most of the dive. It seemed as fascinated by us as we were by him.
    It was very cool. Cutest beasties.

  15. says

    “I cannot see the cephalopod!” – #9

    It’s been described above, but here’s another picture from a different orientation that may help:

    http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1278/542406826_01ea90f518.jpg%3Fv%3D0&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/svenalgerie/542406826/&h=960&w=1280&sz=133&hl=en&start=90&um=1&usg=__Pl_-JsKji7a-UEVYBjfgrA35seE=&tbnid=gIA6meaPTCwRqM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsepia%2Blatimanus%26start%3D80%26ndsp%3D20%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN

  19. Drew says

    @ Jack C:

    It looks like a real pic, just listing to the left a little.

    Boy that diver sure has crappy bouyancy control. I hope he/she still isn’t laying on top of coral like that…

  20. says

    I just received “Cephalopods: A World Guide” in the mail this week. It occupies a hallowed position on my coffee table alongside “The God Delusion” and “God: The failed hypothesis”

  24. says

    So, is anyone going to take a cephalopod for blessing on the feast day of St. Francis?

    And to Glen Davidson (No. 17), THANK YOU for typing bone in quotations! Bone really is a misnomer in this case.