"My Octopus Teacher" on Netflix

Aquaman2

Michael Peterson status
Apr 17, 2008
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fineartamerica.com
This is a wonderful Netflix documentary. I watched it twice. You should see it. Did anyone else see it yet?

"My Octopus Teacher is a 2020 Netflix Original documentary film directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed which documents a year spent by filmmaker Craig Foster forging a relationship with a wild common octopus in a South African kelp forest.

"The film shows how, in 2010, Foster began free-diving in a cold underwater kelp forest at a remote location in False Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa.[2][3] The location was near Simon's Town on the Cape Peninsula,[4] which is exposed to the cold Benguela current of the Atlantic Ocean.[5] He started to document his experiences and, in time, met a curious young octopus that captured his attention. He decided to keep visiting her den and tracking her movements every day for a year to win the animal’s trust. The two form a bond where she plays with Foster and allows him into her world to see how she sleeps, lives, and eats. In the film, Foster describes the impact on his life of his relationship with the octopus."

My Octopus Teacher - Wikipedia
 
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JLW

Billy Hamilton status
Jul 7, 2004
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Kinda surprised by the cynicism here. I thought it was a great story. He only dove for like an hour or so everyday so it's not like it completely consumed his life or anything. It's possible that the octopus didn't give a damn about him (the story was presented in a way that seemed like the opposite). That part is unlikely but I wouldn't totally rule it out. What I found more interesting was the octopus' incredible intelligence. The part where the shark is chasing the octopus and it does all sorts of crazy stuff to evade it is some next level sh!t.
 

RayG

Nep status
Dec 3, 2002
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"Octopus: Making Contact" was a much better show. It is on PBS. I guess Netflix saw that one and decided, Hey let's find some nut who can "befriend" an Octopus and film it. But make people think it was the Octopus'ses'es idea.
 

Clayster

Miki Dora status
Oct 26, 2005
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That he and his son could skin dive in water that cold without wetsuits is remarkable

But back to this point, because I was very interested in that watching the flick. They had head and feet rubber and nothing else, and seemingly swam for hours in cold water. I know that you lose a lot of heat through your head and your feet. My German grandmother always made us wear socks and a beanie at night to keep warm. Maybe the torso is not as important as the head and extremities in heat loss? I dunno. I just found that very curious in that video.
 

freeride76

Michael Peterson status
Dec 31, 2009
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Lennox Head.
evolution is weird, was my takeaway.

intelligence is expensive, intelligent animals usually have long lives because of this.

dumb animals live short lives, reproduce and die.

But octopuses are smart and only live for a year. Why?
 

enframed

Tom Curren status
Apr 11, 2006
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Del Boca Vista, Phase III
evolution is weird, was my takeaway.

intelligence is expensive, intelligent animals usually have long lives because of this.

dumb animals live short lives, reproduce and die.

But octopuses are smart and only live for a year. Why?
Proof that God loves the absurd more than anything and is such a self-centered asshole he'll spend eternity entertaining himself.
 
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ghostshaper

Phil Edwards status
Jan 22, 2005
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evolution is weird, was my takeaway.

intelligence is expensive, intelligent animals usually have long lives because of this.

dumb animals live short lives, reproduce and die.

But octopuses are smart and only live for a year. Why?
Mice/rats?

Octopuses are semelparous, so they're one and done. Every other intelligent animal has a brain. Cephalopods just have a unique evolutionary branch. Imaging forming eyes, independently evolved from the vertebrate eye, also.
 

afoaf

Duke status
Jun 25, 2008
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holy fkn internet....3 minutes later this shows up on my feed:

"A strange phenomenon coined carcinization has seen crustaceans evolving into crabs at least five times independently. It seems, if you’re a crustacean, that the crab is peak performance. It’s the result of convergent evolution. Which is when animals evolve a similar trait despite not being closely related. A good example is echolocation which has evolved in both whales and bats.
Yep, like tech bros repeatedly trying to invent a new type of transport and accidentally reinventing the bus, evolution seems to keep spitting out animals that look like crabs. First coined as a term in 1916, carcinization was originally defined as "one of the many attempts of nature to evolve a crab".
A lot of things you might reasonably call crabs (because they look and act like, well, crabs) aren't actually crabs, they just evolved into something that looked like crabs through a process known as convergent evolution.
During the cretaceous period creatures that looked more lobster-like in shape became more squashed, and their smaller back legs became longer and more crablike. The advantage seems to be that the crab shape allows them to walk and burrow more efficiently, with some crabs that can even climb trees thanks to the shape.

Image credit: KYTan/Shutterstock.com"



fkn Zooks!
 
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