OMG, baby octopodes!

National Geographic's Enric Sala took this photo during an expedition in Gabon. He and another researcher were using a remote operated vehicle to explore the ocean off the coast of that country's Loango National Park.

When we picked up the shell from the ROV’s arm, to our surprise, a small octopus came out of the shell. It was a female that laid her eggs inside the shell. We put shell and octopus in a tank with seawater, and after one minute thousands of octopus larvae started to stream out of the shell. The octopus eggs were hatching! That was the first time we had observed such a magnificent show. The larvae were changing coloration from transparent with dark spots to brown, and swimming like squid – although on a millimeter scale.

Read the rest of Sala's posts from Gabon

Via Miriam Goldstein

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: babies • kawaii • octopodes • Science • zomgwant

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eyetropy

It is a tad disappointing that there is no video… cute photo though

This is what I could dig up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-2tZMhoq0nI#t=207s
- bobcorrigan
  
  Here’s another one, a wee bairn of a critter it is: http://eol.org/data_objects/11576231
Leto_Atreides

Why are they swimming in what looks like milk?
- Awkes
  
  Clear water with a white background, I presume.
- Boundegar
  
  Because they are delicious cereal, I presume.
beemoh

All I’m seeing here are many baby Cthulhus.
MrBillWest

Per Websters, I believe it is octopuses (couild not resist sorry)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk
Thanks for the reminder of this video!
- kansas
  
  χταπόδια
- lafave
  
  octopuses is preferred, although octopodes is ‘grammatical’ .Fowler also calls octopodes “rightly rejected” and “pedantic”
  - Ipo
    
    Fowler strongly disliked the use of foreign words and phrases so I wouldn’t ask him for his opinion on American Internet English.
    It’s a tradition to correct the plural of octopus. Whichever valid form is used.
    Octopendantry.
    - lafave
      
      well, usage is king, which is why ‘octopi’ should be considered good english, but ‘octopodes’, unless one is being jocular, well – you just sound like a douche.
      
      I think that’s a good summary of the OED entry on octopus pluralization.
      - Ipo
        
        OED? Is that some British publication? =]
        If usage is king, there are more native English speakers in the U.S. than in the rest of the world together.
        
        Everybody knows they are only called ‘octopi’ when there are roughly 3.141 59265 of them.
      - Wreckrob8
        
        Absolutely. Where would we be without television? Proculvision, teleblepsia? Really?
    - GawainLavers
      
      It’s like they say, “If you can’t handle the pedantry, get out of the Boing Boing!”
- semiotix
  
  EXCUSE ME, you FECKLESS MORONS, who are doing the entire LANGUAGE WRONG, but the REAL and ONLY CORRECT way of pluralizing that word is to say “an octopus and also another octopus.”
  
  You’re WELCOME. JEEZ.
- http://twitter.com/ChemicalOli Oli Newsham
  
  I’ve just dug out the exact same video!
- cdh1971
  
  These terms all work I guess, but the actual, correct term is ‘octopussies’. The term for the mother octopus is ‘octomo……
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61304364 Neeral B Atlas

I thought this was a picture of some peanuts in milk. Tomorrow can we have a picture of a bunch of peanuts in milk?