[HN Gopher] The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
___________________________________________________________________
The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
Author : cratermoon
Score : 272 points
Date : 2023-07-16 15:11 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (zapatopi.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (zapatopi.net)
| yissp wrote:
| This is great, reminds me of a classic from my childhood, the
| house hippo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TijcoS8qHIE
| booleandilemma wrote:
| That photo was so ridiculous but I badly wanted to believe it was
| real!
| Modified3019 wrote:
| http://www.lakemichiganwhales.com/
| uoaei wrote:
| Critical thinking is hard. Stay vigilant.
|
| The photoshopped image of an octopus and a sasquatch hand was
| what first tipped me off. I wanted to believe this was a real
| animal, octopuses are magnificent creatures.
| thyrsus wrote:
| I was completely taken in until the octopus hat. There's no way
| 1920s fashionistas go from feathers to a pile of brown turds on
| their heads. The 2nd ddg hit was the Wikipedia article, the
| second word of which was "fictitious".
| BMc2020 wrote:
| Let's not forget the ice worms:
|
| _Ice Worms and Their Habitats on North Cascade Glaciers_
|
| https://glaciers.nichols.edu/iceworm/
|
| and the Australian Drop Bear
|
| https://australian.museum/learn/animals/mammals/drop-bear/
| worik wrote:
| > and the Australian Drop Bear
|
| Urban legend I was told (In Auckland - not Australia)
|
| In the war the US army moved vast reserves into North Australia
| for quite obvious reasons.
|
| Tanks on exercises in the Australian desert got very hot, so
| naturally kept their hatches open whenever they could.
|
| Massed tanks on manoeuvres in the desert will from time to time
| run into trees.
|
| Koala spend 90% of their time asleep in trees.
|
| Completing the picture a tank blunders into a tree and koala
| are dislodged and rain down.
|
| Through open tank hatches.
|
| The "Great Australian Drop Bear" is a recently woken angry
| Koala in fight mode in a crowded tank.....
| corndoge wrote:
| Devilish
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_worm
| 6D794163636F756 wrote:
| Aren't iceworms real though?
| carabiner wrote:
| Ya if you spend time on Cascade glaciers you'll see them
| wiggling. Pretty common.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Yeah, but How Fucking Cool would it be it if was a real thing.
|
| I think it is begging for B movie treatment... OK Down vote me as
| being Reddit-esque... But come on, it's Sunday afternoon, have a
| little fun...
|
| Tree Octopus's on a Plane.. Tree Octopus- nado Suction cups...
| We're gonna need a bigger backpack.
|
| Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
|
| I love this PNW Myth, deserves love right up there with Sasquatch
| and DB Cooper.
| notorandit wrote:
| For a moment...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octop...
| user6723 wrote:
| They're out of the water now? Once they learn how to use fire we
| are all doomed, we're DONE. Sell all your stocks but HODL your
| BTC.
| hinkley wrote:
| What if he's got a pointed stick?
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Or a board with a nail in it.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Crazy link timing! I just got my mug in the mail last week:
|
| https://postimg.cc/gallery/YY7f3x3
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| Fetch me a sky hook, I need to capture a tree octopus!
| tspike wrote:
| My uncles spent a summer working tours near Aspen in the 80s.
| They worked tirelessly to educate the tourist population about
| the dangers of the Rocky Mountain Alpine Shark.
| aerodog wrote:
| I asked ChatGPT if octopuses exist in trees, and to my surprise,
| ChatGPT 'got it'
| chowells wrote:
| Why is that a surprise? Every single text on the subject
| explains the joke eventually. It's the exact sort of high
| correlation GPT is good at finding.
| voz_ wrote:
| This kind of thing is malicious. It was maybe cute in the
| 90s/00s, but now? Too much fake news abound.
| waynecochran wrote:
| Blaming Sasquatch is hilarious!
| Borrible wrote:
| Early ancestors of the Squibbon.
| krupan wrote:
| Terry Pratchett added these wonderful animals to the world in
| which his book Nation takes place (one of his very best books, if
| you ask me). He undoubtedly was inspired by this website
| cmehdy wrote:
| Sir Pterry was inspired by just about everything, which in
| itself is an inspiration to always digest what this world
| throws at us and turn it into all sorts of fantastic things.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I was reminded of the initiative for Cascadian secession...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_movement
|
| which, when I first read about it, I questioned as a potential
| hoax. But - no, if you're not from the US, you should know that
| it's a very real thing, and apparently, a full third (!) of
| people 18-34 years old support it, according to relatively recent
| polling mentioned at the link.
| blamazon wrote:
| I don't mean to spoil the fun, downvote me if this is not in the
| spirit, but it took me way too long to figure this out and others
| may be as slow as me and save some time by reading this comment:
|
| > The Pacific Northwest tree octopus is an Internet hoax created
| in 1998 by a humor writer under the pseudonym Lyle Zapato. Since
| its creation, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus website has been
| commonly referenced in Internet literacy classes in schools and
| has been used in multiple studies demonstrating children's
| gullibility regarding online sources of information. [1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octopus
| 01100011 wrote:
| It was obvious when the page mentioned rainforests, which are
| on the western flank of the Olympics, but had a map showing
| only the eastern flank.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Well I for one appreciate it. I was drawn in after a couple of
| paragraphs, and then started to doubt and figured I'd check the
| comments for exactly this kind of thing before I run off and
| tell my child about an amazing animal I just heard about. Thank
| you.
|
| After reading about parasites that turn ants into zombies to do
| their bidding, I'm pretty much all out of "that's just a
| nonsense story" when it comes to nature's variety. I'll be
| skeptical, but I tend not to outright dismiss immediately.
| bantou_41 wrote:
| I think part of the purpose of sharing this website without
| saying anything about it might be to show that, in the age of
| the internet and AI, we don't really verify information before
| consuming it. It's not just children who are gullible. A lot of
| what we read on the internet is second hand information, facts
| with subjective interpretations, opinions, or straight up false
| information.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > in the age of the internet and AI, we don't really verify
| information before consuming it
|
| As if this had ever been different. I would even argue that,
| because it is simply much easier to do, people are more
| incentivized to fact-check imformation, than 100 years ago.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > has been used in multiple studies demonstrating children's
| gullibility
|
| And not to make _everything_ about this, but in light of this,
| interpret various currently fashionable and harmful
| pseudoscientific ideologies being peddled in schools and backed
| by the force of the regime.
|
| Children are very gullible. That's one major reason why they
| need parents, to protect them from predation and to guide them
| toward the minimum of adulthood. Worse still when parents
| themselves buy into these ideologies.
| beej71 wrote:
| It was good! I got to the end thinking, "I don't know if I've
| been had or not."
|
| The WP article is a great read--recommend.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| It's the Washington Oregon version of the Dropbear.
| stephenr wrote:
| Droptopus?
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| The poster at the bottom kind of gives away the parody. Pretty
| fun though, I wish there was a tree octopus now.
| ortusdux wrote:
| To be fair, tree octopuses sound about as outlandish as land
| crabs, which I still have trouble believing are real.
|
| https://arthropoda.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/coconut-crab....
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Not to mention the land shark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Land_Shark_(Saturday_Night_Liv...
|
| and the prairie squid:
| https://subgenius.fandom.com/wiki/Prairie_squid
| MarkMarine wrote:
| And drop bears
| petre wrote:
| I've always liked this one better:
|
| https://zapatopi.net/belgium/
|
| _"Tourists, business travelers, and other visitors are allowed
| to "come" to the "country" in order to "witness" its
| "existence." In reality, these people are waylaid at the common
| borders of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and
| taken to NWO branch facilities where they have false memories
| of vast sprout fields and chocolate factory tours implanted."_
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Had it not been for your comment it would've definitely taken
| me longer to figure out, and I would've most likely made a fool
| out of myself by telling people about it.
|
| I was extremely susceptible to this story, because I absolutely
| love octopuses, and everything related to them. However I'm not
| an expert and it would not surprise me at all (given how
| surprising octopuses are generally) that there was a octopus
| group that could adapt to an extremely high humidity area, so
| it seems plausible!
|
| I like getting fooled like this occasionally cause it keeps you
| on your toes and shows you how vulnerable and easily fooled we
| all are.
| jmckib wrote:
| I immediately thought this looked too absurd to be real, but
| I wonder if my lack of octopus knowledge helped me out here.
| I know octopi are pretty smart, but I don't think of them as
| being too surprising in their capabilities.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| > I don't mean to spoil the fun, downvote me if this is not in
| the spirit, but it took me way too long to figure this out and
| others may be as slow as me and save some time by reading this
| comment:
|
| I believed it too. The thing is, this is something no one is
| really incentivized to lie about. If some website says
| "politician did X", then your lie detector turns on, because
| it's worth it for lots of websites to lie or mislead about
| that. It would be very hard to go through life questioning the
| veracity of every inconsequential bit of information that no
| one has an incentive to lie about. I don't think it
| demonstrates much that students believed it. And I especially
| don't think it means anything about gullibility about
| information found online. Almost certainly, if it were printed
| in a book, they'd be even more likely to believe it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The thing is, this is something no one is really
| incentivized to lie about. If some website says "politician
| did X", then your lie detector turns on, because it's worth
| it for lots of websites to lie or mislead about that.
|
| The purpose of misleading about "politician did X" is to sell
| a call to action. Any time there is a call to action
| supported by a claim, there is an obvious motivation for
| misrepresentation (the very same one present when "politicia
| did X" is the claim.) This contains a call to action, ergo,
| it has an obvious motivation for misrepresentation.
|
| > I don't think it demonstrates much that students believed
| it.
|
| I think it demonstrates a lot that half of 13-year-old
| students in the US study believed a page which referenced a
| _fictitious nation-state in the Pacific Northwest_ was
| reliable, leaving aside the other indicia of deception.
| Though whether what it says is about internet literacy or
| complete failure of education on geography perhaps less
| clear.
| godelski wrote:
| > I think it demonstrates a lot that half of 13-year-old
| students in the US study believed a page which referenced a
| fictitious nation-state in the Pacific Northwest was
| reliable, leaving aside the other indicia of deception.
|
| I'm just going to leave this here
|
| >> Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on
| the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be
| added since its numbers are at a critically low level for
| its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation
| include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban
| encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the
| water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign
| species such as house cats; and booming populations of its
| natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch.
| simondw wrote:
| > fictitious nation-state
|
| Are you referring to Cascadia? That's a perfectly non-
| fictional name for the region
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest).
|
| Or maybe I missed another reference?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Add in that the animal world is full of wacky creatures that
| don't fit heuristic models for plausibility.
|
| People thought the Platypus was a hoax was it was initially
| discovered. It is real.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Add in that the animal world is full of wacky creatures
| that don't fit heuristic models for plausibility.
|
| The animal involved not meeting heuristic models for
| plausibility may be something that should trigger
| skepticism, but its not the thing that should tell you this
| is a lie.
| mc32 wrote:
| Add the propensity to colloquially grant newly discovered
| things names that borrow from existing things: sea cow,
| catfish, etc. so why couldn't there be something called a
| tree octopus?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Add the propensity to colloquially grant newly
| discovered things names that borrow from existing things:
| sea cow, catfish, etc. so why couldn't there be something
| called a tree octopus?
|
| There could be. The name of the animal isn't what gives
| the lie away.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Today I learned that a tree crab is a thing. I knew a
| tree lobster was a thing. There is something that could
| plausibly be called a tree clam.
| stephenr wrote:
| People _still_ call the dropbear a hoax.
| buildbot wrote:
| Is it not? The Wikipedia article literally has in the
| tagline: famous hoax...
| rpeden wrote:
| That's certainly what the dropbears _want_ you to
| believe.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| And haggis hunting: https://darachcroft.com/news/haggis-
| hunting-season-tips-and-...
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Pablo Picasso once said "Art is the lie that reveals the
| truth." Except that he didn't really say that. What he said
| was "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the
| truth that is given us to understand." (The Arts: An
| Illustrated Monthly Magazine Covering All Phases of Ancient
| and Modern Art, NYC, 1923)
|
| Is there a subtle truth to your friend's lie? It need not be
| related to scallions. We perceive the world through
| narrative. Perhaps your friend was introducing a fundamental
| truth through the revelation of scallions growing in a
| bathroom. Or at least that's how we would interpret it on my
| home planet of Zeta Reticulii IV. Of course the "fact" that
| I'm from Zeta Reticulii IV is a lie. I grew up in Texas. You
| can make your own decisions regarding the relative adherence
| to consensual reality between Texas and Zeta Reticulii IV.
|
| Perhaps the story of growing scallions in the bathroom is
| nothing other than the creation of a shared history. Does it
| matter that history is counter-factual? We're social beings.
| We do things like that.
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| > The thing is, this is something no one is really
| incentivized to lie about
|
| I don't think it's lying in the sense of trying to make
| someone else actually believe it. It's just a form of
| creative fiction writing. It can be a lot of fun to write in
| this mode; when well done it's a pleasant kind of erudite
| humor because to produce it (and get it) you have to be
| somewhat knowledgeable in the topic. Mockumentaries might be
| the film/TV equivalent. Unfortunately (especially for certain
| subjects) it also confuses and causes strife if readers take
| it too seriously.
| replygirl wrote:
| i know enough about octopuses and forests that i don't have
| to care about the author's motives--i just have to skim the
| text or look at the photoshop. thinking a tree octopus is
| real because you saw a lot of words and can't relate them to
| a nexus of disinformation is a perfect example of gullibility
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| There are large crabs that climb trees and eat coconuts.
|
| There are fish that can survive on dry(-ish) land for
| extended periods of time.
|
| And don't get me started on the utterly bizarre slime mold.
|
| The number of species that defy our expectations is
| countless.
|
| Bluntly, there's a lot of arrogance in the claim that
| anyone should be able to easily and automatically rule out
| the existence of some species based on their personal
| knowledge, and that anyone who fails to do so is
| "gullible".
| Scarblac wrote:
| And the first time I read about those crabs, I checked
| Wikipedia to see if they were real too. Too many hoaxes
| on the Internet, but most of them are trivial to find out
| if they're real.
| replygirl wrote:
| > there's a lot of arrogance in the claim that anyone
| should be able to easily and automatically rule out the
| existence of some species based on their personal
| knowledge
|
| some, certainly yes.
|
| i don't think anyone would disagree that some claims are
| more plainly ridiculous than others. i'm replying to
| someone who let themselves be convinced the tree octopus
| was real by a page picturing an octopus climbing a tree.
| let's not abdicate our regard for common sense.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I think you'll find your idea of "common sense" is
| perhaps not so universal as you think.
|
| For example, why is a tree octopus any less likely than
| the platypus, a venomous aquatic mammal that has a beak,
| lays eggs, and detects prey by sensing electric fields
| like a shark?
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| The reason the tree octopus as described by that page
| seems obviously, totally fake to me is the absolutely
| janky "photo". Let's count the issues:
|
| 1) obviously photoshopped -- a real octopus on a tree
| branch would look totally different, it would sag in some
| places, it would affect the pine bristles underneath, it
| wouldn't have a shadow that makes it look like it's
| hovering an inch above the branch, etc. Also, that
| octopus image looks totally out of proportion, but I
| can't pin down why -- I _think_ it's because the level of
| detail is higher than for the branches.
|
| 2) It looks exactly like a regular octopus. Not only
| should an animal the size of a small bird have different
| proportions from a regular octopus (compare e.g. bats and
| fruit bats, or cats and tigers), but it should also look
| only distantly related to a regular octopus because it's
| adapted to a totally different biome.
|
| All that leads me to the following conclusion: Common
| sense, in the sense of broadly understanding how the
| world works, really is what prevents you from getting
| fooled, and the more things you understand, the less
| likely you are to get fooled. Also, the more information
| a hoax has, the more likely it is to get exposed, because
| just one sufficiently glaring inconsistency can sink it.
| hoosieree wrote:
| Platypus seriously? If you're going to make up an animal,
| at least try to give it a realistic sounding name.
| saltcured wrote:
| See, if they had said the tree octopus is found in some
| remote corner of Australia and has a pouch to raise its
| young, more of us would buy it...
| [deleted]
| replygirl wrote:
| call me arrogant but i won't stoop to the level i have to
| be at to take your question seriously.
|
| do i think i'm as intelligent as anyone, or that everyone
| is as intelligent as me? of course not. but i do think
| your standard for gullibility is too high if you don't
| think believing the linked article satisfies it.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Stoop? I challenge you with a perfectly valid example of
| an unlikely animal, and your response is to claim I'm
| somehow, what, failing to argue at your level?
|
| I suppose that's enough to make my point for me.
| replygirl wrote:
| you asked me how i would ascertain that an animal
| documented to exist is more likely to be real than a
| hypothetical animal depicted with _a photoshop of a
| different animal climbing a tree_, as if there is no
| reasonable expectation of intelligence or intuition for
| an abled, functioning adult
|
| the difference between people who initially believed this
| and those who didn't is gullibility, and this is a great
| example of gullibility because of how outlandish the
| claim is and appears to be. that's all i'm arguing. the
| counteraguments i see boil down to "but if someone is
| gullible enough, they'll think it's actually not
| outlandish and accept it on face value" which is not
| contrary to what i'm saying.
|
| if you were one of the gullible ones, sorry! sucks to be
| more deficient than others in some way, but we all have
| deficiencies.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| I think the point is that it seems highly unimaginative
| (or perhaps just highly unempathetic, if there's a
| difference in this situation) to not see how a casual
| reader could just take it at face value and go on with
| their day. This seems especially plausible to me if I
| think of someone who knows little of the natural world
| beyond the odd thing they've come across on the internet,
| doubly so if not from America. _At face value_ it seems
| as plausible as anything else, _with just a bit of
| scrutiny_ it clearly doesn 't hold up.
|
| But I suppose you have your deficiencies too, same as
| those who thought it to be real (however briefly).
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Which of the following are real?
|
| - Tree lobster - Tree crab - Tree clam - Tree fish
| replygirl wrote:
| you're presenting an entirely different scenario from the
| OP. try again with photos, maps, propaganda posters, and
| a few thousand words on each, and replace your question
| with an assertion. in absence of that i do a quick search
| and find out three are real and one is not but may be a
| colloquial term referring to a sporadic phenomenon
| megmogandog wrote:
| It reminds me of a friend in high school who convinced me
| that he grew scallions in his bathroom. It seemed weird but
| he described it in some detail, how the humidity from the
| shower is good for them, etc. Then when I believed him he
| said of course I don't do that, how could you think something
| so ridiculous. I don't and didn't feel like believing him in
| this context made me gullible for the same kinds of reasons
| you outline, why doubt something so inconsequential,
| communicated 'sincerely'?
| tchaffee wrote:
| He may have gotten this from real story from a distant
| relative or family friend as this is a real hobby and the
| humidity is a key factor. At almost $16 for a small bottle
| of XO sauce[1] with the main ingredient being dried
| scallops, it's a highly profitable home hobby.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XO_sauce
| hooverd wrote:
| Green onions, not shellfish. Close!
| jimmydddd wrote:
| Agreed. I think the fact that it was just "scalions" adds
| to the credibility.
| topato wrote:
| I could easily imagine an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer
| grows scallions in his bathroom
| markdown wrote:
| They'd be destroyed by the elephant showerhead.
| Natsu wrote:
| Then they get you on the flip side when somebody does
| something way out there that's almost unbelievable. It took
| a couple of decades for Epstein to be shut down, after
| catching him once and him getting away with a slap on the
| wrist.
| awwaiid wrote:
| Best response / revenge is to actually grow scallions in
| your bathroom.
|
| Or at least pretend to.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Best response would be to sneak into _your friend 's
| bathroom_ and leave baby scallions.
| Teever wrote:
| > this is something no one is really incentivized to lie
| about.
|
| 'Click here to donate to my gofund me to save the amphibious
| octopus.'
| tshaddox wrote:
| If no one is incentivized to lie about it, is anyone
| incentivized to tell the truth about it?
| meesles wrote:
| > And I especially don't think it means anything about
| gullibility about information found online
|
| You really think it means absolutely _nothing_ about this
| topic? It's literally an example of people believing what
| they read online! I think you're having an overly defensive
| reaction to probably falling for it.
|
| > It would be very hard to go through life questioning the
| veracity of every inconsequential bit of information that no
| one has an incentive to lie about
|
| The issue is you may not understand or fathom the reasons
| someone may lie about something. Imagine the strange
| traditions that leaders have maintained throughout history to
| help control their subjects. To those subjects, I'm sure they
| weren't even imagining that these things they thought were
| spiritual were just fictions.
|
| As for my point - yes you should try go through life with a
| certain level of curiosity and apprehension when people tell
| you things. I feel like a lot of our societal issues are a
| result of things continuing for no good reason, just because
| we've done it in the past. It's become fairly easy to fact-
| check, and while not popular at parties, it's important if
| you're actually trying to learn and build an accurate mental
| model.
|
| If people were more comfortable questioning all aspects of
| our society (and if society was receptive to the criticism),
| I feel like we would be better off.
| molticrystal wrote:
| Well there are mudskippers [0] [1] which can end up crawling
| up to and resting on branches and trees growing out of the
| water. So while it seems untrue, it wouldn't be far fetched
| for a species of octopus adapted to end up doing so,
| especially if the out of water circumstances are narrow
| enough(very temporary, trunks & branches very close to water,
| etc).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudskippers
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNCYSCHipvw
| Peritract wrote:
| > others may be as slow as me and save some time by reading
| this comment
|
| But then they wouldn't learn anything about reading critically.
| morelisp wrote:
| Unfortunately the campaign was unsuccessful and octopus
| paxarboli went extinct not long after the page first was
| published, before internet access was common and before
| smartphones could easily take pictures of it etc. Just because
| there's minimal evidence of something from before the internet,
| on the internet, doesn't make it a hoax.
| civilitty wrote:
| Not to mention that 100% of all octopus fossils have been
| found on land.
|
| We have zero evidence of octopus fossils in the ocean.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Unfortunately the campaign was unsuccessful and octopus
| paxarboli went extinct not long after the page first was
| published,
|
| Largely, the campaign failed because of the joint US/Canadian
| invasion of the Republic of Cascadia based on (ironically,
| false) claims of Weapons of Media Deception (WMD) being
| deployed with imminent plans for use against North American
| civilian targets.
| parentheses wrote:
| I scanned it and thought. HN post. Must be legit. Good reminder
| to RTFx.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Meh. You have a parochial opinion of facts.
| cratermoon wrote:
| It's revealing that a substantial part of that wikipedia
| article is about Internet literacy studies.
| greggsy wrote:
| The article lists as bald eagles and Sasquatch as natural
| predators...
| 99_00 wrote:
| In the past, if you believed something just because it was on the
| internet you were seen as foolish.
| easeout wrote:
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tree-octopus/
| wood_spirit wrote:
| The context of this showing up on HN made me kinda assumed it was
| a chatgpt generated thing.
|
| A quick google shows it seems to be a well known classic hoax
| from the late 90s.
|
| But there really are crabs and lobsters that live in trees and
| things, as do lots of type of mollusc (eg slugs and snails). So
| it isn't completely silly.
|
| So it's not like a tree octopus is any more ridiculous than the
| coconut crab?
|
| It seems there is no good way to know the truth anymore, as
| searching the internet might just find collaborating lies and
| conjecture...
| yosito wrote:
| I asked midjourney for photos of the Pacific Northwest Tree
| Octopus and the results were impressive. Time to update the
| sightings page of the website.
| furyofantares wrote:
| > The context of this showing up on HN made me kinda assumed it
| was a chatgpt generated thing.
|
| It's very likely OP discovered it through the link on this HN
| post that was at the top yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36739920
| JayPalm wrote:
| Yeah, this occurred to me too. Guess we'll likely be
| inundated with 90's websites for a few days.
| furyofantares wrote:
| I hope so
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > So it's not like a tree octopus is any more ridiculous than
| the coconut crab?
|
| It is a lot more ridiculous though because land crabs are a
| well known thing (e.g. hermit crabs) whereas land octopuses
| don't exist. Octopuses are very much a water-only type of
| organism.
|
| It just requires a little prior knowledge about the broad
| strokes of animalian orders.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| Octopuses are molluscs, and there are lots of land living
| molluscs, right?
| dvt wrote:
| To make things even more murky, some octopuses can actually
| breathe air out of water (which I knew prior to seeing the
| page), so I was actually semi-fooled by the article as
| well. An arboreal octopus is actually not that far-fetched.
| brendev wrote:
| I used to teach a computer science class to elementary-middle
| school kids.
|
| I always did a week on internet literacy, and would open the
| lesson with a worksheet that included this fella, along with a
| number of other fake animals, and some that look fake, but
| aren't.
|
| Each kid was supposed to come up with a summary of what the
| animal was, where they live, what they eat, etc.
|
| It was a lot of fun, but I've got to say... Parents: please take
| some time to teach your kids how to critically evaluate
| information that they read online.
| wlonkly wrote:
| Wow, that brings back memories. I had a link to this in my Usenet
| sig.. well, back in the era where one had a Usenet sig.
| LanternLight83 wrote:
| Somewhat relatedly, there's the marshmello farming mockumentery:
| https://youtu.be/yflTu150QZw
| rikroots wrote:
| But marsh mallow plants are real! I grew up with them
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althaea_officinalis
| wzy wrote:
| Reminds me of the endangered "Australian Drop bear".
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Our librarian used this site in a class about media literacy,
| with the lesson being that you can't believe everything you read
| on the internet. I guess it was a good lesson because I still
| remember it.
| calibas wrote:
| > Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the
| Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since
| its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs.
| The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of
| habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads
| that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning;
| predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming
| populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle
| and sasquatch.
| sparcpile wrote:
| There was a Discovery Channel special about future evolution that
| took this idea and ran with it. They had an idea of octopi being
| more land dwelling and becoming the dominant species.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Yep. Inoculating the idea that science is something not to be
| trusted is a lot of hard work. Very funny, ha ha...
| qwertox wrote:
| This makes me sad. I once saw my nephew looking at a dino book
| and I joined him, and for some reason he ended up telling me that
| they exist in some part of the world. Stupid me laughed at him
| and told him that they no longer exist, and this has haunted me
| for years.
|
| I say this, because there was a photo of blue teddy-octopi's legs
| hanging from a tree on the site, and I started imagining a dad
| telling his kid how this is something real, that he/she should
| watch for them to see if he/she can spot them occasionally.
|
| Hurts my heart, but the site is nice, like a cherished thought
| which someone wanted to keep alive.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| Didn't know it was a hoax. This is the Wiki:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octopus
| darkclouds wrote:
| Its a two hour drive from Microsoft headquarters, the perfect
| location to search for gullible Microsoft employees looking for
| this octopus, as they would become useful assets for the
| intelligence community. Think like a spook!
| chmod600 wrote:
| I am not quite sure what tipped me off, but I suspected something
| was off in the first paragraph or two and went to Wikipedia.
|
| I think it just seemed out of place, like someone bringing up a
| topic in a forced way. Kind of "trying too hard".
| rootsudo wrote:
| I didn't believe it and was widely thinking it is fake, and then
| I come to the comments and there we are.
|
| First the scientific name, obscura just sold it out as fake - but
| as someone who lived in the area - it would've been much more
| obvious and probably involved in tons of actual campaigns and
| protests.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I randomly come across a link to this every ten years or so. It
| is put together splendidly well.
|
| I must admit however that I'm a tad disappointed that the list of
| factors contributing to the critical endangerment of this
| wonderful specimen _still_ has not been updated to include
| mention of the extinction of its once-primary source of
| nutrition, the harvest of the spaghetti tree [0].
|
| Perhaps in ten more years this oversight will have been
| corrected!
|
| [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/04/that-time-the-bbc-
| foo...
| brador wrote:
| It's fake.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octopus
| Daunk wrote:
| I wasn't until I read that the sasquatch was its natural predator
| that I started to question things...
| yalogin wrote:
| Without the reference to the Sasquatch I wouldn't have figured
| out this is made up. Well done
| woahitsraj wrote:
| Classic! I remember convincing friends and family members that
| this was real when I was young. There was something incredibly
| fun and powerful being a child and able to fool adults who would
| believe anything they read on the internet. It's amazing how
| websites like this inoculated myself and many other young people
| from obvious misinformation on the internet in a fun and mostly
| harmless way
| fultonb wrote:
| It's always crazy running in to one hiking up there
| Stratoscope wrote:
| People often ask why the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus has such
| a successful ecological niche that alternates between the
| rainforest and under the water.
|
| The reason is that unlike humans and other land creatures, they
| are completely immune to the toxic effects of Dihydrogen Monoxide
| (DHMO). In fact, they require regular immersion in it.
|
| This also explains why the octopuses don't migrate farther south.
| When on the land, they still require ongoing contact with DHMO,
| which on the Olympic Peninsula is found in abundance in the very
| air!
|
| https://dhmo.org/
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-07-16 23:00 UTC)