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b"Happy birthday to me! For my birthday, we're all going to learn about octopuses, including a mysterious gigantic octopus (maybe)! Thanks to Wyatt for his question about skeletons and movement that is a SURPRISE SPOOKY SKELETON SEGMENT of the episode, or maybe not that much of a surprise if you read this first.\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nHow octopus arms make decisions\\n\\nOctopus shows unique hunting, social and sexual behavior\\n\\nKraken Rises: New Fossil Evidence Revives Sea Monster Debate\\n\\nThe larger Pacific striped octopus is not especially large, but it is interesting and pretty:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe giant Pacific octopus is the largest species known. It even eats sharks, like this one:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nToday happens to be my birthday, and not just any birthday. It\\u2019s a significant birthday that ends with a zero. That\\u2019s right, I\\u2019m TWENTY! Or maybe a little bit older than that. So for my birthday celebration, and one week closer to Halloween, let\\u2019s learn about the octopus. The episode was going to be about possible giant octopuses, but as I researched, octopuses in general turned out to be so interesting and weird that that\\u2019s what the episode is about. But we will talk about some mystery gigantic octopuses at the very end.\\n\\nThe first thing to know about the octopus is what the correct plural is. Sometimes people say octopi but that\\u2019s actually technically incorrect, although it\\u2019s not like you\\u2019ll be arrested if you say octopi. The correct plural of octopus is octopuses, although octopodes is also correct. No one says octopodes because that sounds weird.\\n\\nBut who cares about that, because we\\u2019re talking about awesome creepy weird cephalopods! The octopus lives in the ocean but it can come out of the water and walk around on land if it wants to, although it usually only does so for a matter of minutes. The octopus breathes through gills but it can also absorb a certain amount of oxygen through its skin, as long as its skin stays moist. Generally people don\\u2019t see octopuses come out of the water because most octopuses are nocturnal.\\n\\nMost octopuses spend their time on the ocean floor, crawling around looking for food. When it\\u2019s threatened or frightened, though, it swims by sucking water into its body cavity and shooting it back out through a tube called a siphon, which allows it to jet propel itself quickly through the water headfirst with its arms trailing, so that it looks like a squid. But most of the time the octopus doesn\\u2019t swim like this, because when it does, the heart that pumps blood through most of the body stops. The octopus has three hearts, but two of them are only auxiliary hearts that move blood to the gills to make sure the blood stays oxygenated.\\n\\nOctopus blood is blue because it\\u2019s copper-based instead of iron-based like the blood of mammals and other vertebrates. This allows it to absorb more oxygen than iron-based blood can. Since many octopuses live in cold water that doesn\\u2019t contain very much oxygen, they need all the help they can get.\\n\\nThe octopus also uses its siphon to release ink into the water when it\\u2019s threatened. Of course it\\u2019s not ink, but it is black and resembles ink. Also, people have used octopus ink to write with so, you know, I guess maybe it is sort of ink. Anyway, when the octopus releases ink, it can choose to mix it with mucus. Without the mucus, the ink makes a cloud of dark water that hides the octopus while it jets away, and it may also interfere with the predator\\u2019s sense of smell. With the mucus, the ink forms a blob that looks solid and in fact looks a lot like a dark-colored octopus. This is called a pseudomorph or false body, and the octopus uses it to confuse predators into thinking it\\u2019s still right there, when in fact the octopus is jetting away while the predator attacks the false body. Researchers have found that young sea turtles who attack the false body thinking it\\u2019s the real octopus later ignore real oct..."