Tag: Cephalopods

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A toxic relationship by Mike Fainzilber

love hurts
the semen
and the venom

by Mike Fainzilber

Blue ringed octopi are small (they can fit in the palm of your hand), beautiful and extremely deadly – a venomous bite from the octopus nestled in your hand can kill you. Female octopi are larger than the males and will readily devour their smaller male partners during mating. The male solves this problem by biting into the female’s aorta,  injecting a large dose of venom that paralyzes the female for long enough for the male to complete mating and escape (1, 2).

A previously published SciKu by Debbie Lee describes application of a similar principle in insect biocontrol (3).

Further reading

(1) ‘Blue-lined octopus Hapalochlaena fasciata males envenomate females to facilitate copulation’, 2025, Chung, W., et al., Current Biology, available: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(25)00057-0

(2) ‘These octopuses inject their lovers with one of the world’s deadliest toxins’, 2025, Wilcox, C., ScienceAdviser, available: https://www.science.org/content/article/these-octopuses-inject-their-lovers-one-world-s-deadliest-toxins

(3) ‘Toxic Male’, 2025, Lee, D., The Sciku Project, available: https://thescikuproject.com/2025/02/27/toxic-male/

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike here.

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Sentient Sea Play by Douglas J. Lanzo

sentient sea play
upside-down tentacles swirl
through schools of minnows

by Douglas J. Lanzo

Watching a common octopus in the movie ‘My Octopus Teacher’ harmlessly herd tide-surged minnows into a school and repeatedly maneuver its tentacles through it, harmlessly playing with it, I was astounded by its high level of intelligence. Despite interacting with the helpless minnows for an extended period of time, the recreational creature did not eat or catch a single minnow.

Further reading:

For additional information, besides watching the movie ‘My Octopus Teacher’, please take a look at a fascinating article on adaptive behavior in the March-April Issue of Harvard Magazine entitled ‘Inner Senses’ and a recent Harvard Law School article entitled ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ that chronicles the exploratory behavior and ability of octopi to individually recognize humans.

Author bio:
Doug is an international author whose Newbery-nominated novel, The Year of the Bear, won the 2023 Ames Award for Young Adult literature, was a finalist for the 2023 Hawthorne Prize and is a 2022 Firebird Award Winner. He has published 337 poems in 70 literary publications in 10 countries. He and his twin son poets enjoy nature, fishing, tennis, hiking and snorkeling. His Author’s website is at www.douglaslanzo.com .

Check out other sciku by Doug here.

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Ornamental Defense by Douglas J. Lanzo

Christmas ornaments
pursued seabed octopus
adorns legs with shells

by Douglas J. Lanzo

I was inspired to write this Sciku by watching the movie ‘My Octopus Teacher’ and observing a highly intelligent Common Octopus evade a Pyjama shark predator in a kelp forest in False Bay, South Africa by covering its arms with seafloor seashells.

Its amazingly high level of intelligence was reflected in its recognition of the free diver who dove to its lairs in the kelp forest on a daily basis to interact with it, its playing with fish with its tentacles in the tide, its cloaking itself with strands of kelp to temporarily escape from a Pyjama shark, its dashing onto a sand beach to escape the jaws of the menacing shark and its riding atop the startled shark and slipping off its back to complete its getaway.

Further reading:

Please check out ‘My Octopus Teacher’ for more information about the intelligence and remarkable sentience and adaptive behaviors of octopi as well as the recent article ‘Inner Senses’ by Jonathan Shaw in Harvard Magazine for information about its adaptive behavior at https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2023/03/feature-nicholas-bellono-animal-adaptations

Author bio:
Doug is an international author whose Newbery-nominated novel, The Year of the Bear, won the 2023 Ames Award for Young Adult literature, was a finalist for the 2023 Hawthorne Prize and is a 2022 Firebird Award Winner. He has published 337 poems in 70 literary publications in 10 countries. He and his twin son poets enjoy nature, fishing, tennis, hiking and snorkeling. His Author’s website is at www.douglaslanzo.com .

Check out other sciku by Doug here.

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Backlit Billboards in the Sea by Prof Teena Carroll

Sending messages,

luminescent Humboldt Squid

flicker in the deep.

by Teena Carroll

A group of scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute conducted a study of Humboldt squid using remote operated vehicles.  They wanted to determine how a group of squid could execute complex behaviors in low light deep sea conditions.  For instance, the squid avoid body contact with each other even when pursuing the same prey.

Burford and Robison (2020) found that the squid used specific color patterns on their bodies primarily when they were hunting in groups.  Normally, such color changes would not be visible in the deep sea; Humboldt squid are bioluminescent which researchers hypothesize essentially provides backlighting to highlight the color changes.

The complexity of the color changes prevented the researchers from translating exactly what the squid are communicating.  However they were able to document that the patterns are a consistent and effective communication method.  After observing repeated patterns, they think that the visual language of the squid may be evolved enough to use syntax.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1920875117

Additional information: https://www.mbari.org/humboldt-squid-signaling/

Teena Carroll is a mathematics professor at Emory & Henry College in Southwest Virginia and has been a poet longer than she has been a mathematician. @Teena Carroll