Showing posts with label International Cephalopod Awareness Days. Show all posts
Showing posts with label International Cephalopod Awareness Days. Show all posts

October 11 – Kraken Day

Posted October 11, 2018


Zeus, in Clash of the Titans, gave this order to unleash the gigantic sea monster known as the Kraken. The Kraken also appeared in the movie The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead 
Man's Chest, and it swallowed Captain Jack Sparrow and his entire ship whole!


For as long as there have been humans living near oceans, probably, there has been fear of gigantic tentacled monsters. That's probably because every once in a while a giant squid washes ashore...



By the way, if you ever see a photo like the one below, it's likely fake (this one is definitely fake):


You see, people will take a real photo of a giant squid, like the first one below, of a gigantic 30-foot squid, and they will drop it into a crowd scene (the second one below), maybe from a sand castle building event, and they then proudly proclaim that a 160-foot squid washed up!




The longest giant squid ever measured is 43 feet long, but of course humans can imagine bigger. And scarier: a giant cephalopod that hunts us, that wants revenge or that loves to attack anything from ships and people to buildings and bridges.



Today we celebrate the tentacled creatures or cephalopods of myth and legend, of story and movie. It's all a part of Cephalopod Awareness Week, which is celebrated every October 8 to 12. 

The Kraken is joined by other mythical cephalopods: There's the enormous octopus Akkorokamui, from Ainu (Japanese) folklore. There's Kanaloa, an enormous squid (or octopus) in Hawaiian stories. And there's the Cecaelia, the octopus woman from Native American peoples such as the Tligit and the Nootka, who live in the Pacific Northwest, what is now Alaska or Western Canada.




Also on this date:

October 10 – Squittle Day

Posted October 10, 2017

This is the third day of Cephalopod Awareness Days

We started with Octopus Day on the 8th (for all the 8-armed species), then moved onto Nautilus Night 
yesterday (for all the lesser-known cephalopods that are still alive today). 

Today is Squid and Cuttlefish Day - aka Squittle Day! It's on the 10th because squids and cuttlefish have two tentacles along with their 8 arms (and 2 + 8 = 10).

Tomorrow will be Kraken Day, for the mythical and fanstastical cephalopods of fiction and legend. 

And the next day will be Cephalofossil Day - because that day is also National Fossil Day.

Tentacular species!

Cephalopods are probably the world's smartest invertebrates. (Invertebrates are animals without backbones.) As complex as bee communication is, as amazing as ant societies are, insects and spiders do not show the problem-solving abilities that cuttlefish, squid, and octopuses (or octopi) demonstrate. Maybe it's just a matter of having bigger brains - cuttlefish and octopi have the highest brain-to-body mass ratios of all invertebrates.

Squid have long, torpedo-shaped bodies that are able to shoot through the water at around 15 mile per hour (24 km/hr) - and some squid have been clocked at an astounding 22 mph (36 km/hr)! That makes them one of the fastest invertebrates in the world.








Cuttlefish are masters of camouflage. These might be the same species, despite their different coloring:





Long-ago ancestors of modern squid and cuttlefish had external shells. But these creatures evolved to have stiff supporting structures inside their mantles - a bit more like internal skeletons that vertebrates have. Squid have "pens" and cuttlefish have "cuttlebones."






Learn more about the cuttlefish's camouflage ability here. And here is a long documentary about cuttlefish. 

Did you know that there are giant squid? Check out this and this other video.



Also on this date:







































Ada Lovelace Day in the U.K.(Second Tuesday in October)







Plan ahead:



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October 9, 2012 - World Post Day

Ever since 1969, October 9 has been celebrated around the globe as World Post Day. Post offices of various countries use the day as an excuse to share with customers all the services provided by their postal workers.



Of course, in 1969 instant messaging through e-mail, texting, Facebook, and Twitter didn't exist. There were few private companies such as FedEx providing shipping services for small packages, back then, and there were few private mail centers. Things have changed a lot since then, and many people wonder if we really need government-run mail service anymore. However, I have a feeling that having a low-cost public option does help to keep prices down for FedEx, UPS, and other companies.


Did you know...?

In many cities and towns in the past, until maybe the early 1960s, mail was delivered twice a day, morning and afternoon. It was common to have morning and evening newspapers delivered, too.

In Victorian-era London, mail was delivered to each house TWELVE TIMES A DAY! Remember, back then, there was no telephone, let alone texting! Smaller cities had mail delivered six times a day

So, basically, using “snail mail” less and less these days is just part of a larger trend of diminishing use over the decades.

Don't forget, it's Nautilus Night tonight!

All hail the shelled cephalopod known as the nautilus! This creature can withdraw into its shell completely and close the opening, but it is more commonly seen with its many short tentacles—about 90 of them!—extended into the sea and its eye peeking out from the shell.The nautilus's tentacles do not have suckers, but instead have ridges—and they somehow manage to have such a strong grip that it is easier to tear a tentacle off the nautilus's body than it is to break its grip.

The beautiful nautilus shell has long been popular in collectors' “Cabinets of Curiosities,” in art pieces, and even in home décor! The nautilus shell is also popular with mathematicians, since it forms a logarithmic spiral, a sort of fractal shape made by connecting points on a series of Golden Rectangles, or by building boxes with the dimensions of the Fibonacci numbers. What the heck does all that mean? you ask. Check out this video, and then this here and that other math website to find out! 



Also on this date:

October 8, 2012 - International Cephalopod Awareness Days Begin!

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.

 Wait, wait, wait...what's a cephalopod?

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!


  • Eat special Octopus Day foods, like octopops and “octopus” soup (don't worryit's not made with octopus!heck, it's not even soup!). 




Also on this date: