The joy of being known for one’s interest in cephlapods is that one gets links to all sorts of interesting stories.
A friend who walks among us, cloaked as King Henry did among his men before battle, sent me a link to a weblog post with a link to a story about a giant octopus attacking a mini-submarine. This joins with other recent video showing us much of what was previously unseen in the depths of the ocean waters, such as the recent first recording of a live, giant squid. According to one marine biologist, the reason the octopus may have approached the mini-sub is that it was old and senile, and either thought the vehicle was food or a mate.
And you all thought we had little in common with the octopus.
The original story didn’t have video, and when I searched for it, I found a Slashdot thread on the story.
For all the 2.0ness of Digg, it will never match Slashdot when the Slashdotters are in their stride, and this thread demonstrates this. Almost immediately, one commenter provided links to the video. Others than built on the story, most humorously. My favorite is the following:
Look.
Do you know how fucking big a sperm whale is? It’s huge. HUGE. And giant squid eat them. Listen to your heart – no matter what the scientists tell you, 4th grade ecology has convinced us all that whales are intelligent loving animals. Did you see Star Trek 4 [imdb.com]. They’re the freakin’ saviours of humanity man.
And giant squid eat them
Eat them
Not beacause it’s easy. Oh no, not because a sperm whale is an easy catch. Big, remember? No. It’s because squid are evil incarnate
Do you know how long they’ve been down there? No one does. But my guess is the squid and it’s precurser have been down there in the depths for a lot longer than man has been knucklewalking. That’s old. And you know they think down there. Brood down there. Their tentacles floating like the limbs of children relaxing in the water, they brood and wonder how to conquer us from below.
Things that think and brood also dream. And things that dream begin to worship the stuff of dreams. Out of man’s insecurity we have sublimated a great father figure into the sky, according to Freud. What about the tentacled things in the watery darkness, whose females are larger than their males?
I’ll tell you what they worship
A great multilimbed mother of the dark watery brood. Deep down in the very molten cracks of the earth filling the sea with inky blackness. THAT’s what they worship. We killed men in the crusades. Men who looked the same as other men. What will the dark octupi and squid do to US who are mere flabby bloodsacks to rip apart and drink out fluids with their beaky maws? What in the name of their Dark Mother goddess will they do to us when they rise into our airy realm?
Think about it dudes
Us computer geeks are basically fucked.
