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Fascinating stuff. Biological gearing ratios!

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Octopus Pulling A Crab Camouflage Queen

This lets the soft-bodied octopus crunch on its armored prey without getting pinched or bitten in return. To be clear, octopuses are invertebrates & also use octopamine as a neurotransmitter. In addition, they use it to enhance their paralyzing arthropod venom. Crab for dinner! 🦀😋🐙

static.klipy.com

Alt: Octopus Pulling A Crab Camouflage Queen: it's a close-up of a rocky crag with a red shelled crab getting dragged into the depths of the rock by purple tentacles.

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news.feinberg.northwestern.edu

More recently, we've found it made in trace amounts in mammals, including humans, where it may have a role in neurodegeneration. So why is an octopus making it in saliva? When injected as part of a venom cocktail, it overwhelms the nervous system of a crab or worm, paralyzing it.

Understanding the Role of Octopamine in Neurodegeneration - News Center

Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered how octopamine, the major “fight-or-flight" neurotransmitter in invertebrates, communicates with other cells to prevent cell death in mammalian brains,...

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Behavioral Functions of Octopamine in Adult Insects under Stressful Conditions - Biology Bulletin Reviews

He determined it was a biogenic amine, so he called it "octop-amine". Over the next few decades, it would be found to be a critical neurotransmitter in virtually all arthropods. It's a primary "fight-or-flight" neurohormone, neuromodulator & neurotransmitter in invertebrates: "bug adrenaline"

link.springer.com

Abstract Octopamine (OA) functions as a neurotransmitter, neuromodulator, and neurohormone in the body of insects. Octopaminergic neurons were found in the nervous system of all studied insect species...

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The Discovery of Serotonin and its Role in Neuroscience - Neuropsychopharmacology

...Italian pharmacologist Vittorio Erspamer, who did the foundational work on serotonin, was studying posterior salivary glands in the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). He identified a chemical with "intense adrenaline-like actions" on blood pressure & organ function.

nature.com

Neuropsychopharmacology - The Discovery of Serotonin and its Role in Neuroscience

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One more octopus thread for World Octopus Day.🐙 All octopus species are venomous, even this little flapjack octopus. Most make neurotoxins specific to arthropods, called 'cephalotoxins'. Let's learn about another component: OCTOPAMINE! Our story starts in 1948... (📷: Schmidt Ocean Institute)

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No! There's no end to their fascinating differences! 🐙❤️

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My Glass Octopus (4K) - Video by Schmidt Ocean Institute, soundtrack by Tatiana A. Gordeeva

You may prefer this much more high resolution version. The original video was captured by ROV pilots working in collaboration with the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and they shared it on their socials.

youtube.com

YouTube video by Tatiana A. Gordeeva

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Scuba Diver Interacts with Playful Octopus

I'll discuss their blood in a future thread. They're amazing critters, intelligent but too short-lived. I find them fascinating because of the contrast between how strange & alien their biology is, but how their behavior reminds me of more familiar animals like cats. Alien hardware, cat software.

static.klipy.com

Alt: Scuba Diver Interacts with Playful Octopus

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Blood Flow and Pressure Changes in Exercising Octopuses (Octopus Vulgaris)

Octopuses evolved from shelled ancestors (ancient mollusks like modern nautiluses). When they ditched their heavy, protective shells in favor of speed & agility, they experienced major evolutionary trade-offs, including a heart that has to shut down during jetting movement.

journals.biologists.com

ABSTRACT. Pressure and flow were recorded from the dorsal aorta of freely moving Octopus vulgaris at rest and in exercise. Mean blood pressure, the amplitude of pressure pulses and flow all double as ...

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Unoxygenated blood continues to be moved to the gills at this time, so that when the main heart resumes pumping, it's pushing well-oxygenated blood out. This limits the swimming of the octopus to short bursts. It also explains why it prefers to walk along the bottom, or drift in currents.

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To swim, an octopus inhales water into its mantle cavity & forcefully squeezes its muscular body wall to blast that water out of its siphon (jet propulsion). Because it has no hard structures, this produces a spike in body pressure that would overwhelm blood flow. So, instead, it shuts down.

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All animals in order Octopoda have three hearts: - 2 gill hearts ('branchial') that move unoxygenated blood from tissues to the gills - 1 systemic heart ("main") that moves oxygenated blood from gills to the tissues. When they're swimming, they shut down or dramatically slow their main heart.

A diagram by Raja Lockey of a red octopus with the gills and hearts shown both as superimposed on the anatomy and inset in a green circle. There are red and blue, representing oxygenated and deoxygenated blood.

Taken from a BBC article "How many hearts does an octopus have?"

CREDIT: Raja Lockey via BBC

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National Geographic: Swimming Octopuses101

For World Octopus Day🐙, let's learn a weird fact about the three hearts of our eight-legged friend. The SYSTEMIC HEART of an octopus STOPS BEATING while they swim / jet. Seems like a design flaw, doesn't it? Let's talk about it.

static.klipy.com

Alt: National Geographic: Swimming Octopuses101: it's a red-tinted octopus on a short loop moving slightly to the viewer's right as it turns to face the camera.

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(PDF) Identification and diagnosis of Anoura fistulata with remarks on its presumed presence in Bolivia

I can show actual anatomic diagrams from primary sources, but they're a bit too 'gory' for my type of thread. Head to this link and look at Fig 3. The glossal tube attaches just above the sternohyoid muscle to the xiphoid process. Agreed, it's less "coiling" & more "thickened".

researchgate.net

PDF | Anoura fistulata is the most specialized nectarivorous bat of the genus Anoura. Its relationships with other species of the genus are uncertain... | Find, read and cite all the research you need...

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Reposted by c0nc0rdance

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 18h

October 8th is World Octopus Day! Octopuses are a subject I regularly return to. Enjoy these octopus linocuts, woodcut and screen print. 🧪🐡🐙 This is my hand-carved and hand-pulled Lino block print of a charming Grimpoteuthis octopus, one of a genus of pelagic cirrate (finned) octopods

As described this is my hand-carved and hand-pulled Lino block print of a charming Grimpoteuthis octopus, one of a genus of pelagic cirrate (finned) octopods known as the dumbo octopuses. The water looks black and the octopus has its brown tentacles curled in to its indigo body with reddish fins. Each print is 9.25” by 12.5” on delicate Japanese washi paper.

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😉 Actual abstract: "During nectar feeding, blood vessels within the tongue tip become engorged with blood and the papillae become erect. Tumescence and papilla erection persist throughout tongue retraction, and nectar, trapped between the rows of erect papillae, is carried into the mouth."

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Bea Leiderman @bealeiderman.bsky.social · 18h

Wonderful stuff. The human host photos are lovely/horrifying, but the larval photos are just phenomenal.

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Reposted by c0nc0rdance

My mom has a hummingbird feeder outside her window. Every day at sunset the bats come and mop up whatever the hummingbirds left behind. It’s really fun to watch them so close to the glass. I have some slow motion videos of them from a few years ago.

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Like one of those Family Circus cartoons with the little dotted line showing where the kid traveled on the way home.

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So now you know something about nectivorous bat tongues! They fall into two long-tongued groups: the 'hemodynamic moppers' and the 'groove-tonguers'. These little guys are amazing to watch & a great example of convergent evolution by comparison to hummingbirds. HUMMINGBATS!

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This orange nectar bat (Lonchophylla robusta) represents this alternative strategy. The tongue is smooth (no papillae) & appears to transport nectar upwards by capillary action along long grooves all over it. All the bat does is *hover* & the liquid is transported to its mouth. Mlem!

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This active blood-driven 'mopping' effect makes it possible to meet the high energy demands of a bat that lives like a hummingbird, increasing the amount of fluid delivered from the nectar cup to the bat's tummy. Super-mlem! But there's another strategy: the CONVEYOR BELT.

From "Specialized bat tongue is a hemodynamic nectar mop" PNAS (2013) Cally J. Harper, Sharon M. Swartz & Elizabeth L. Brainerd

Fig. 3. Blood ﬂow and papilla erection in actively feeding G. soricina. (Upper) Frames from a color high-speed movie. (Lower) Line tracings of the rostrum,tongue, and nectar. The bat hovered in front of an acrylic feeder ﬁlled with sugar water and only the tip of the rostrum and dorsal surface of the tongue arein the camera’s ﬁeld of view. In the line tracings, the tongue is shown in pink, the vascular sinuses and papillary veins in red, and the sugar water in light gray.

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Look, try not to make this weird.😠 When the tongue tip of the Pallas's long-tongued bat (Glossophaga soricina) enters a flower, it becomes 'engorged' & 'turgid'. This causes an 'erection'... of tiny hairs called papillae... that vastly increase surface area to carry more fluid. A hemodynamic mop!

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The tongue actually retracts into the chest next to the heart. MLEM! So now you have a long tongue, but how do you get the nectar into your mouth? Bats lack the suction needed to use them as straws, so there are two strategies for slurping sugar syrup. First, we have the hemodynamic MOP.

Disclaimer: I can't rule out AI use in this image from "wildlenschronicleswlc" on IG

Original caption:
"The Tube-lipped Nectar Bat Has a Tongue Longer Than Its Entire Body. The Tongue Is Too Long to Fit in Its Mouth — It Is Stored Coiled in the Bat's Chest Cavity Near Its Heart When Not in Use.

It stores its tongue in its chest. This is confirmed. This is real.

Anoura fistulata — the Tube-lipped Nectar Bat of Ecuador — was described by Muchhala (2006, Nature) after a discovery that stopped the bat biology community: its tongue, at 8.5 cm, is 150% of its body length (body length approximately 5.5 cm). No other mammal has a tongue proportionally this long relative to its body.

The tongue is too long to retract into the mouth cavity — when not in use, it is kept coiled in the bat's chest cavity, extending past the thorax, where its base is anchored near the sternum between the heart and lungs.

The function: the bat feeds on the nectar of Centropogon nigricans — a flower with a corolla tube so deep that no other pollinator can reach the nectar at its base. The Tube-lipped Nectar Bat and Centropogon nigricans are each other's exclusive mutualist: the bat is the only animal that can access the flower's nectar; the flower is one of the bat's primary food sources.

This extreme co-evolutionary specialisation — a plant with an impractically deep flower and an animal with an impractically long tongue — is called pollination syndrome. Both species have been driven to extremes by their mutual dependency.

The discovery revised what was known about maximum tongue/body ratios in mammals. Nathan Muchhala, the researcher who described it, found the bat by accident while conducting general bat surveys in Ecuador.

A bat whose tongue lives in its chest. A flower that only it can reach. A relationship that drove both to the biological extreme."

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Extreme Tongue: Bat excels at saying 'Aah'

Like their avian-dinosaur counterparts the hummingbirds, flying mammals that survive on nectar-based diets have challenges to overcome. The first is reaching the nectar. So, almost all nectivorous bats have enormously long tongues. The tube-lipped nectar bat's is 1.5X the length of its body.

sciencenews.org

The new champion among mammals at sticking out its tongue is a small bat from Ecuador.

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