The Octopus Man :: essays papers

The Octopus ManThey lurch color, texture, and body shape... reserve three hearts... atomic number 18 jet powered... let members in every ocean of the world... do inspired legends and stories since recorded history... ar the just about intelligent of all invertibrates, yet are related to clams and oysters... clear eyes and senses that rival our own... and can make their own smoke separate decoys out of ink. They are Cephalopods - octopi, cuttle angle, squids, etc. - and they are far more absorbing than adept might think.Cephalopoda means, head foot, and they certaintly are of an past group... they first appeared several million years before the first aboriginal fish began to swim the oceans, in the late Cambrian era. They were once one of the dominant life forms in the sea, yet today there are only 650 or so living species left. (This may seem give care quite a bit, but compare it to the 30,000 living species of bony fish on this planet and it loses its prominence.) Y et in terms of productivity, some scientists determine that cephalopods are still giving fish a run for their money.With so much information on cephalopods available, it becomes neccesarry to narrow down the catagories. Thus, I have determined to zoom in on the order Octopoda as the main focus of this paper, a group on animals which contains, in my opinion, some of the more interesting and intelligent creatues on this planet.Members of the order octopoda have eight arms. Over the corse of evolution, the trend has been a reduction of shell size. Octopi, having no shells at all, have carried this trend the furthest. The suborder ncerrata contains the familiar, unfinned octopuses that humans know the most about. Octopi have evolved mechanisms to protect themselves from predators. Some of the amazing abilities of octopi include their ability to change theircolor, texture, and seeming size to expel ink and to modify their environment to suit themselves. Octopi are able to jet wa ter through their siphon by spotting their mantel to provide quick, explosive thrust. They have the intelligence and ability to capture into and out of fishermens crab and fish traps and to get under an undergravel filter dwelling house in an aquarium. They can adapt to new situations and appear to be risible about their surroundings. Octopi can use their bodies as a nets to trap fish.