ICAD
is the annual five-day-long celebration of the most intelligent
invertebrates (animals without backbones) in the world. Tomorrow
night is Nautilus Night, Wednesday is Squid Day, Thursday is “Release
the Kraken!” Day (a day to celebrate the fantastic cephalopods of
myth and legend), and Friday finishes off with Cephalophossil Day
(coordinating with National Fossil Day, this day celebrates
cephalopod fossils).
And today is
Octopus Day!
What
do we do on Octopus Day?
We
celebrate all the eight-armed-and-no-tentacles cephalopods! (Squid
and cuttlefish have eight arms but also two tentacles, so they have
ten long, flexible appendages.)
Wait...what's
the difference between an arm and a tentacle?
Cephalopod
tentacles only have suckers at the end, and cephalopod arms have
suckers along their entire length.
But
a lot of sources I am finding use arms and tentacles in the same way.
So you'll read in some places that octopi have eight tentacles and
squid have ten tentacles, for example.
The
Greek word part “cephalo-” means “head,” and “-pod” means
“foot.” So the name of this group of animals means “head-footed.”
That is because these mollusks have larger, more important heads and
larger brains than other mollusks such as clams and snails. And that's
why these creatures are smarter.
Most
cephalopods are hunters, and you have to be smart to be a successful
hunter. (A few cephalopods are scavengers rather than hunters. In
other words, they eat scraps of dead bodies.)
Celebrate!
- Do some octopus arts and crafts.
- Eat special Octopus Day foods, like octopops and “octopus” soup (don't worry—it's not made with octopus!—heck, it's not even soup!).
- Play octopus games, or watch some awesome videos.
- Speaking of awesome videos, have you seen the one of the octopus who steals a video camera—while it's still recording?
- And I particularly like this video showing an octopus using its amazing camouflage skills!
- Sing "Octopus's Garden"!
Also
on this date:
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