#tree octopus

[doomboy911]

Theme Animal (Tree Octopus)

Prompt List

Creature Codex Art Challenge

Commentary

See now this would've been perfect for yesterday. The tree octopus is a hoax whipped up in the 90s. For this piece I was thinking of rendering of a octopus actually up in a tree but instead decided to go for a travel poster design. I really like it and will be trying to make more in the future.

Palette Picked

#Tree Octopus #Codexartchallenge #Pixel art #year of art #year of art 2024 #retrotronic dx

[cryptid-quest]

Hoax of the Day: Tree Octopus

Description: You hear something swinging from the trees above you, what could it be? Birds? Squirrels? Or the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus! No, it’s probably a bird. This internet hoax was created by Lyle Zapato in 1998, and claimed the Washington State Olympic Park was its home. 

#cryptid #cryptids #cryptozoology #cryptid of the day #hoaxes #tree octopus

[ilovethenintendods]

#tree octopus #image

[craftingcreatures]

Today I want to talk about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (Octopus paxarbolis).

OK, so for those who don't know, the PNW Tree Octopus was an internet hoax created in 1998 consisting of a website detailing the animal's life history and conservation efforts. It's completely fake - saying that up front. This animal never existed.

But if you look at this from a speculative biology standpoint? It's genius.

There is one, and only one, thing preventing Octopus from colonizing and being hugely successful in terrestrial environments in the PNW, and that's the fact that no cephalopod has ever been able to overcome the osmotic stress of inhabiting freshwater. We don't know why this is; other mollusks evolved freshwater forms just fine. But if you hand-wave away that one, single limiting factor, the PNW is just primed for a terrestrial octopus invasion.

The Pacific coast of North America is an active tectonic boundary, meaning the coast transitions pretty much immediately into the Cascade and Coastal mountain ranges (contrast with the east coast and its broad Atlantic plain). It's also a lush temperate rainforest, with very high precipitation. This means lots and lots of high-gradient mountain streams with lots of waterfalls and rapids and cold, highly oxygenated water, and not as many large, meandering rivers.

This has important consequences on the freshwater fauna. For one, there are not many freshwater fish in the Pacific Northwest - the rapids and waterfalls are extremely hard to traverse, so many mountain streams are fish-free. There also just isn't much fish diversity in the first place - there's sturgeon in the big rivers, salmonids, a few sculpin and cyprinids and... that's pretty much it. These cold northern rivers are positively impoverished compared to the thriving fish communities of the Mississippi or Rio Grande.

Few fish means few predators, and depending on the size of the first freshwater octopus, salmon and trout just wouldn't be much of a threat. And while these rivers don't have much in the way of fish diversity, there's lots of prey available - crayfish, leeches, mosquito larvae, frogs and tadpoles, water striders, and other aquatic insects, just to name a few. So the first Octopus pioneers to invade the rivers would be entering what essentially amounts to a predator-free environment with lots and lots of food and no competition. Great for colonization.

These ideal conditions get even better once you get up past the rapids and waterfalls, since there's no fish whatsoever in those streams. Octopus, with their sucker-lined arms, are perfectly equipped to navigate fast-moving, rocky-bedded streams and climb up cliffs. They'd also be well able to traverse short stretches of dry ground to access even more isolated pools and ponds. In fact, once Octopus overcome the osmoregulation problem there's nothing at all preventing them from colonizing land in earnest, since the PNW rainforests are so wet; there's no danger of drying out.

Finally there's the question of reproduction. Octopus are famously attentive mothers, because they need to keep the water around their eggs moving and well-oxygenated. In a mountain stream, this wouldn't be an issue, because the cold, turbulent water holds lots and lots of oxygen. Breeding in high mountain streams would be ideal, and the mothers might not even need to attend to their eggs, freeing them up to evolve away from semelparity and allowing them to reproduce more than once in their lives; their populations would thus increase rapidly and dramatically.

I think, if octopus managed to invade freshwater ecosystems in the PNW, it would dramatically change the ecology much like an invasive species. They'd be unstoppable predators of frogs, bugs, slugs, maybe even larger animals like snakes, birds, and small mammals. Nothing would eat them except maybe herons, and things like bears and raccoons would give them a wide berth due to their venom. They would rule that landscape.

The tl;dr is that the PNW is primed for invasion by cephalopods, if only they could manage to overcome the osmoregulation problem and live in freshwater. If the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus really did exist, it wouldn't be a shy and reclusive species on the brink of extinction; it would be a pest, an invasive, overpopulated menace you couldn't get rid of if you wanted to. I can just imagine them crawling up onto people's bird feeders and either stealing the nuts or luring in unsuspecting sparrows and starlings. They would sit in the trees and throw pinecones at hikers for fun. They would be some unholy mixture of snake and slug with the personality of a magpie and I am incensed that they only exist in fiction.

#long post #octopus #speculative biology #speculative evolution #spec bio #spec evo #pacific northwest #pacific northwest tree octopus #truly a shame that there are no freshwater or terrestrial cephalopods

[cordycepsbian]

team snakemouth gijinka but more of a Fantasy™️ au than just regular humans. featuring our spin on the concepts of halflings and dwarves where they are creature animal. and leif is uh ??? the horrors

bonus doodle

#bug fables #bug fables spoilers #bf vi #bf kabbu #bf leif #gijinka #stuff i made tag #we have never showed the face of our kabbu gijinka before now #we just don't think he's meant to be de-helmeted but it was necessary to show off his funky mole nose and whiskers #most of leif's octopus features are still covered by their clothes though. nobody needs to see that #the bee (halfling) kingdom still lives in a tree like usual #vi here is based on tasmanian devils but they're mostly inspired by possums and the like #the parts about their ages were only included because we think it's funny #vi says she's 13 and means 'im almost an adult' but kabbu hears 'that is a TODDLER' #we have even more thoughts about the setting in general but we should. read more of the thing that inspired this first #about 40 chapters to go... hooray (this is fun to read we are not actually complaining)

[lynaferns]

Instagram sketch request 1

Jul 14 2022

This was a depressing day, as I realized how slow I am at drawing.

I doodled this after finishing all the requests

#my art #old art #sketch request #doodle #sketch #drawing #mugman #bill cypher #fnaf sun #fnaf moon #happy tree friends flippy #spamton #luigi #totoro #professor layton #cagney carnation #dr flug #beppi the clown #hairdresser octopus #deltarune kris #jevil #llama #pirate llama #the collector #toh the collector #henry creel

[waterwindow]

You're getting old (positive) (affectionate)

Nice try. I mean if disliking stuff getting stolen, retooled and reposted out of context irreverently as an inferior version of itself makes me old then I'm embracing my new primordial status wholeheartedly.

#bring on the clouds I'll shake my fist at all of them #anyways because of a comment i got on this I'd like to clarify #since im not allowed to be sassy on the internet when someones being rude #im mildly perturbed about the tiny little lies that a sprinkled around the internet #where things that are meaningful get watered down and changed and commodified until they lose all meaning #hell if dick seal was real I'd think shits hilarious- but its not and most people dont know #and theres millions of things like that everywhere you go and theres no way of knowing what's really real #ive probably seen tons of stuff and believed it without question #just thoughts in my head #still reserving the right to BACK IN MY DAY tho lol #reminds me of that old lesson they taught in school about articles on the internet and there was one about a tree octopus #anyways the point was to pick out what was fake and can you believe it the TREE OCTOPUS WAS REAL #(no it wasnt)

[wiley-treehouse-gardens]

#schefflera #umbrella tree #octopus tree #strangler vine #miami #plant photography #plant blog #plants #flowers #nature #tropical plants

[nothorses]

Really immoral of you to believe that it's ok to throw children into an active volcano. I know you've never said that but it's still very wrong of you to think that

damn, why didn't anyone tell me nothorses was a known child-in-volcano apologist. block this creep, everyone! stay safe!!

#this is a joke this is a joke this is a joke #I want to believe yall will get that from context #but after the tree octopus debacle I just cant be sure anymore

[nightmarish-qeuwusha]

The question I ask and request, how would Bitter feel about a knock on their door from a mail skeleton? What would they do?! Do they answer?

Of course they will answer

Who wouldn’t?

BITTER BELONGS TO ME

#sans au #sanses aus #undertale au #undertale aus #bitter sans #send help #yes they have an octopus #abcdef #there is no colors bc my life is in black and white p #my name is no qeuuuueeeddeee #no colors too lazy #all my greatest it doesn’t come from free #all my talent it does grow on trees

[doomordestiny]

i see her everywhere i go….

#this was a fake tattoo dispenser at dollar tree #jrwi #jrwi riptide #jrwi pretzel #pretzel the frogtopus #its a regular octopus but it still reminds me of her

[everythingfeelswrong]

Octopus tree hehe, just in time for Halloween

#my art blog #art #ink #inktober #pen and ink #black pen #october #halloween #happy halloweeeeeeen #spooky #spooky scary skeletons #creepy #crowcore #raven #trees #old #old trees #octopus

[rat-king-co]

My Australiana themed drop is live on my website! Check it out- I now have international shipping available 🐨 link to my website in my bio!

#australia #australiana #australian artist #australian animals #octopus #sea creatures #marine life #frogs #jacarandas #jacaranda #ibis #bin chicken #brush turkey #moon jellyfish #moon jelly #beetle #frog #green tree frogs #glass lampwork #cute frogs #amphibians #handmade #lampwork #cottagecore #glass jewellery #rat #glass #rats #bees #aesthetic

[treeoctopusreview]

The Handmaiden (2016) has so much lesbian scissoring because it's actually a metaphor for them cutting men out of their lives

#the handmaiden #park chan wook #film #tree octopus shitpost

[isai-64v16]

#roots #colors #octopus #poet #origin #cosmichorror #horror #wisdom #secrets #trees #cosmos #twisted #influence #Scopur #pixelart #art #redbubble

[merlinsbed]

holy fucking shit swarm of flies is so broken against malenia and this is AFTER the bloodloss was nerfed and honestly her bleed resistance is low enough that I still see it proc on her more often than I expected with just this incantation

like it can straight up fucking knock her out of waterfowl dance if you time it well enough and she almost never dodges it

literally all I’m doing is using swarm of flies and blade of death with tiche as my summons and I’ve almost beat her several times (phantom spirits is usually what gets me in phase 2 it’s been a while so I’ve forgotten the dodges for it)

#elden ring #I was already using it to fight her #but I was only using it occasionally #then I used it on a land octopus #the one in the hidden path to the halig tree through the window #and it kept procing blood loss and staggering it #and I was like 'holy shit I have to test this against malenia IMMEDIATELY' #I don't even care about the whole 'yay I beat melania' bragging or whatever #I just want her fucking katana #I wanna do waterfowl dance #one of these days it's all gonna come together and I'm gonna beat her #I literally got her to like one fucking hp #or I think tiche did #but I'd died seconds before #I'm gonna fucking do this on my black knife assassin rp build and that is incredible