octopus
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8 Reasons Why Octopuses Are the Smartest, Pettiest Animals
Consider the octopus. With eight arms, elliptical pupils, colour- and texture-changing skin, and a scary beak, it is a creature that seems conjured from the most Boschian of realities.
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Harvard’s Robotic Tentacle Gripper Is Pure Nightmare Fuel
Part of the versatility of the human hand’s ability to pick up almost anything comes from being able to apply a gentle touch for frail or oddly-shaped objects. That’s something robots struggle with, particularly when functioning autonomously, and unfortunately the solution could lie with an unorthodox gripper design that looks straight out of a horror…
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Researchers Name Fossilised Vampire Squid After Joe Biden
A team of paleontologists has announced the discovery of a 328-million-year-old cephalopod with 10 arms. It’s an ancestor of modern octopuses and vampire squids and offers exciting insights into when and how these marine invertebrates diversified.
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Octopuses Dream in ‘GIFs,’ New Experiment Suggests
Two years ago, a PBS documentary video showed an octopus named Heidi in what appeared to be an active dream state. Her arms twitched as she slumbered, and her skin flipped wildly through all sorts of alien textures. Most dramatically, however, the cephalopod changed colours, flashing in greens and reds like a malfunctioning billboard.