This is one of the most watched vids on Google right now. There is something extremely creepy about this. It’s an octopus changing color. It could be all CG and a fake too. Experts please chime in.
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It’s fake, pretty obvious. Go check the nature programs on TV, octopuses can change color and texture but this particular one just apears from nothing. Anyone willing to be bother check it frame by frame.
Wow. Such fuss. I never said anything at all that, because I can’t grasp something, it must be fake. In fact, I gave exactly what pieces of this clip suggest it IS fake. Why is it so threatening to the believers that this MIGHT be fake? I honestly don’t care too much, but it sure has sparked some empty conflict. In the end, I still don’t buy that this animal can change (or would) to the degree this one does. The smooth surface magically grows spiney branch-like bumps and the lines (smooth, going across the branches of the plant) somehow become broken and vanish between the branches of the plant…oh yeah, and those gaps magically fade in as the thing changes colour. In the end, stranger things have been true, but this one seems less likely to be real than not…to me anyway.
Someone up there also noted the camera work. It is pretty clear that the octopus let the camera man know exactly what was going to happen ahead of time.
It is real.
There is another story about a large aquarium put some small sharks in a tank. (very large tank) Some of the sharks kept dissapearing and they couldn’t figure out how. One night they took a video and saw a great pacific octopus capture and eat the small shark.
FAKE, FAKE, FAKE
Watch the eye.
Does it close? Or does it change color?
It seems to be an actual eye, not
an eye spot.
Incredible.
“-”
ps-thanks for the picture show, dvorak. Can we call you D V de Mille?
I think everyone else had moved on, Alex.
Also reasonable, and discoverable through a quick google search, is that people LOVE to augment things and to “touch up” things. I can’t find any good motivation for making this, except as an exercise, so there is some value in the simple explanation being that this is not fake. But, the idea that someone MIGHT make a video or picture on the internet that has been altered isn’t really much a stretch…I’d argue that there is more reason to distrust such things than not….at least to verify them. Hey! That’s probably why Dvorak covered himself in, where was it?, oh, yeah…the very top of the post.
But, moving along…
Well, it’s true footage! I’ve seen similar stuff filmed here in my backwards country (Portugal – lots of octopus fishing and such).
It’s absolutely amazing what these guys can do, the only thing that comes to mind is that they seem like they came from another planet. Couple that to the *fact* that they are one of the most intelligent animals on Earth…
Think about it… Once the big meteor strikes – the one we’re not going to care about avoiding since it costs so much money 😛 – and we become extinct, the descendants of these guys may come to rule the planet…
Its real folks. I’ve seen this with my own two eyes when SCUBA diving with these critters. They can change texture and color at whim. Very cool! They’re quite smart too. It’s just too bad they don’t live very long.
No need for special effects to get this shot.
There is an article about this very video in the current issue of Discover magazine )print edition — for those that still read off of dead paper) along with an explanation of how this works and other neat tricks that these creatures can do.
If you must do your reading on screen you can find more here….
http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-06/departments/cephalopod-morphing/
Just in response to the question about whether SCUBA divers can accelerate. The answer is yes, they can. SCUBA divers wear a special kind of footwear called flippers or fins in Australia (I’m sure they have a proper name but whatever). These fins allow for quite high acceleration through water. Watch the film again, and notice how much the camera jerks as the diver accelerates through the water. You might even notice that the jerking is regular – left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. The diver is trying to keep up with the octopus while simultaneously trying to keep the camera steady.
Not that I’m going to get into a fight about it, but I have to say that I personally see nothing fake about this film. I can confirm that it was used in a documentary on national television. The context was a studio being used by researchers studying film of various cephalopods and whatnot doing interesting things (including the checkerboard experiment with a cuttlefish). I’m not saying that this proves anything, but at least it’s better than just some film floating randomly around the web.
This video was shot in the Caribbean by Roger T. Hanlon, Professor and Chief of the Division of Biology and Marine Resources at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts (www.mbl.edu).
Roger T. Hanlon
Senior Scientist
MRC 314
7 MBL Street
Woods Hole, MA 02543
508-289-7710
rhanlon@mbl.edu
Links that show the video presented above:
http://www.mbl.edu/mrc/hanlon/index.html
http://www.mbl.edu/mrc/hanlon/video.html
Well, Jon, david, and Rick? Is this an elaborate hoax, or do you need to be a bit more analytical and a lot less strident?
This is no fake, this species of cephalopod can change the pigments of their skin to and morph at free will, in fact there is an article about this thing in Discover Science Magazine.
http://www.discover.com/educators-guide/apr-06/guide1/
I know this is an old topic, but I stumbled across it by mistake when looking for a cool picture of a flounder placed against a checkerboard I saw on the History channel.
If you watch the video during the slow-motion reverse part, and keep clicking at the 37 second mark, you’ll see the evidence at around 40 seconds, that the video is definitely doctored. Watch it over and over again; just keep clicking the 37 sec mark on the bar.
Still not convinced? Use your hand and cover the octopus completely, and just look anywhere else in the background. See the click?
I’m not saying octopuses, or octopi, or polyoctopus or whatever aren’t capable of changing there textures or colors so quickly, just that this one clearly did not.
As for the 2nd part, where the diver accelerates so quickly away, this looks real to me. I think the tremendous rate of acceleration is just an optical illusion created from the camera being zoomed in so closely.
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