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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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Occam's Machete @eddiestats.bsky.social · 13h

deadly serotonin, is this toxic positivity

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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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Khashoggi's Ghost @urocklive1.bsky.social · 11h

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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Murder porn for the masses, brought to you by this militantly Christian administration.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 11h

"A couple quick follow ups, Mr. Secretary -- what the ever-loving fuck are you babbling about? When was the Pentagon recruiting soldiers with 'My Two Mommies'? And how fucking drunk are you right now?"

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Jonathan Howard @joho.bsky.social · 11h

Maybe, just maybe juvenile UCSF MAHA sycophants like this should by asked about cuts to Alzheimer’s research and nothing else. That’s what they were cheering for 2 years ago.

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Elizabeth Warren @warren.senate.gov · 14h

Wall Street and corporations have schemed for decades to stack the bench with judges who rule against consumers and workers. Result? Federal courts have distorted the law to further rig the economy—and you're paying the price. Democrats must be clear-eyed about this challenge.

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CalMatters @calmatters.org · 11h

Five days after signing a law formalizing a state apology for “harms and atrocities” against California’s Native peoples, Gov. Newsom vetoed two additional bills that California tribes had championed, one on water and the other on sacred sites. cal.news/4y50WGl 📸 Loren Elliott

An aerial view of Three mile Slough in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta near Rio Vista on May 19, 2024. The Delta is formed by the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers before their waters flow into San Francisco Bay. Photo by Loren Elliott for CalMatters

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 15h

Asimov's trying to grab all the rights to @donatoarts.bsky.social's work is egregious but it's not in isolation, either. Other publishers are attempting other rights grabs and restrictions that they weren't doing a couple of years ago. Why? Because fuck you, that's why. Remember the power of "no."

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Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social · 11h

when we published the following years ago, team trump vehemently denied our (accurate) reporting that trump had been privately saying he wanted partial videos of executions for like psa campaigns or some shit www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

rollingstone.com

Trump Plans to Bring Back Firing Squads, Group Executions if He Retakes White House

The former president wants to expand the use of the death penalty, and expand the federal government's options for carrying out death sentences.

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Johnathan Perkins @johnathanperk.bsky.social · 11h

They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 12h

this is so bleak, actually imagine being called a slur for a group you don't even belong to and instead of going "wow holy shit, no one should have to put up with that, we need to hold people to account," you go "no guys it's okay I hate them too!!!" and just hand the bully your lunch money

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Pride at the Pier 🏳️‍🌈🤝⚧️ he/she/they/xe @prideatthepier.bsky.social · 14h

CALL TO ACTION 🏳️‍⚧️ There’s an organized effort to attack the inclusion of the LGBTQ community in CA sport. Join Pride at the Pier at the Renaissance LAX Hotel on Oct 9 to show that CA supports ALL students athletes. Michael Gates and Sonja Shaw are promoting their attacks here - we have to speak up

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Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 11h

“One of the things [the report] found was executioners, on the eve of an execution, looking on Wikipedia to figure out how much of the drugs to inject.”

motherjones.com

Everything you've been told about lethal injection is a lie

Death by drugs is brutal—and designed for political optics. Christa Pike's failed execution pulled back the curtain.

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Aaron Black @aaronblack.bsky.social · 11h

The pattern is simple and it is everywhere now: donate to Trump or do business with his family, and the rules stop applying to you. Skip the donation, and the rules suddenly apply with a vengeance. #CostOfTrumpsCorruption

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Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social · 11h

And by "prescriptive" I mean: "You have these rights: [two hundred pages of detailed rights follow, and everyone fights over whether it should be 150 pages or 300 more]" Our Constitution is short and simple. That's good. /3x

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Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social · 11h

I'd rather have "you may NOT abridge speech" than an expansive constitution that says "here's all the possible rights you have about speech." Keep it simple, and limited: CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW... Period. Move to the left and you get prescriptive stuff that becomes a tangle. /2

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Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social · 11h

Liberal constitutionalism is about limits on state power and basic guarantees of rights. It is not (in America, anyway), a wishlist of expansive policies. It is mostly "thou shalt NOT" statements, which is, imo, a center-right position and a good one. /1

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Crucially, that means not only are we losing work, but it also means clients have less contact with the expertise we bring to the job. Less expertise means less good judgement, which in turn means that genAI slop becomes increasingly seen as acceptable quality – and that’s the spiral we’re in now.

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What’s happening now is an awful lot of the smaller jobs that artists build careers on – or use to fill gaps – have disappeared, filled by the technology developed using our work. It’s like dissolving the cement between the bricks in a wall. And in some cases, the bricks are dissolving too.

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That’s to be expected. We are hired for our expertise, after all, like any other specialist. And people have spared themselves the expense of that expertise for decades by using things like clip-art and stock images. Which is a pain for our profession, but y’know, fair enough.

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They just get most of the attention, particularly online. Actually, most freelance commercial artists make their living across a range of income sources, anything from one-off jobs for big brand companies to personal commissions. And many of the people who hire artists aren’t particularly art-savvy.

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