Cephalopods and Tentacles

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Tentacles exhibition features hundreds of cephalopods (sef-uh-luh-pods), which is the class of mollusk animals that includes cuttlefish, squid, nautiluses, and octopuses. 

The chambered nautilus species first appeared on Earth 500 million years ago.   Their lifespan is fifteen years – the longest of all cephalopods – and they are the only member of their class to have a shell, which is shaped in a logarithmic spiral, and it is for this beautiful object that nautiluses (which are very slow to reproduce) are being baited, killed, and sold in human markets around the world.  Marine pollution and habitat destruction also contribute to the decline of the nautiluses and other sea creature populations, and if the current rate of their disappearance is maintained many will be either be hunted to extinction or driven out of the wild so that our children will only be able to see living species in aquariums or view their preserved specimens or fossils in natural history museums.

The octopus is well-known as one of the most bad-ass sea creatures to ever grace the oceans.  It is a solitaire invertebrate which has three hearts, blue blood, and is capable of translocating chromatophore pigments around its body in order to express its mood or to blend in with its surroundings.  They are terminal spawners, meaning that the octopi will die soon after mating.  The male wanders off and dies alone like a man, and the female will guard her clutch of eggs (which can contain upwards of 400,000 of her little babies) and will die after the they hatch.  (Octopuses make wonderful mothers, but perhaps not as unconditionally generous as some arachnid species which engage in matriphagy – a sacrificial process in which the body of the spider mom is eaten, from inside out, by her offspring.)

The Tentacles exhibit also features some incredible moving metal sculptures by SF Bay area artist Nemo Gould.  I’m unable to find out how long the exhibition goes on for, but if you’ve got forty dollars to spend and can get to Monterey, head on over the aquarium. 

Thanks for reading!  From inside the carbon-fiber pressure hull of a deep sea submarine in the Marina Trench (or maybe just inside a dark San Francisco dive bar), this is Mr. Aaron, signing off.  Right now.  Bye.