Talk:928: Mimic Octopus

How does the mimic octopus manage to mimic multiple fish? Does it split it's own body up or something? Davidy²²[talk] 13:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

"When under attack, some octopuses can perform arm autotomy, in a similar manner to the way skinks and other lizards detach their tails. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators. Such severed arms remain sensitive to stimuli and move away from unpleasant sensations.[23]"[1] 173.245.48.113 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Fine, but in the SCUBA diver depiction, would it really need to rip parts out of itself to mimic bubbles? I don't think that that is quite necessary. 108.162.241.131 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

It could also hypothetically mimic bubbles by *actually blowing bubbles*. (No word on how it does this.) 108.162.216.30 02:36, 2 January 2016 (UTC)Anon

Simple: This is a 2D cut-out of the octopus mimicking the fishes or the scuba in 3D. It assumes a very complex figure, so that in the cut-out we only see the 2D pictures above. 162.158.83.144 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

For the record, octopus is from the Greek ὀκτάπους, a compound of ὀκτά (eight) and πούς (foot); πούς is a third declension masculine noun, whose plural is πόδες. Therefore, the etymologically correct plural of octopus should be octopodes, not (as Orson Scott Card suggests) octopoda, since πούς is not a neuter.

Actually, it would be "octopuses", as it showed up after the regularization of English plurals to a final -s. As the video in the explanation explains, someone in the Victorian Grammarian Era "realized" it was "Latin" and pluralized it as such. This caught on and still haunts us to this day. "Octopdes" was coined around the same time by a more observant someone, who realized it was actually Greek. Personally, I avoid the whole trichotomy by saying "octopods". Unrelated etymologically, but has the same meaning and is unequivocally regular. Anonymous 08:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone checked to see if the title text is true? Whether it is or not, this should be added to the description. 108.162.212.18 11:53, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

What exactly is the pun here? 199.27.133.78 00:53, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't know, either!?! "Too many octopuses"???