#cephalomania

When you realize you're on camera, so you casually turn to your good side 😉📸

This midwater octopus, Japetella diaphana, looks more like a deep-sea squid than an octopus. Unlike other octopuses, Japetella lives exclusively in the midwater at depths of a few hundred to over 1,000 meters (about 500 to 3,000 feet).

The Crystal Palace Aquarium

After moving in 1854 to its (supposedly) permanent home on Penge Common, the Crystal Palace experienced the first of many fires in 1866, which led to the destruction of its northern end. The site was left desolate for a few years, until a plan was made to construct a marine aquarium, which opened in 1871.

It was briefly the largest of its kind in the world, holding (at least) 100,000 gallons of seawater. This was brought in by train from Brighton, and most was stored in great reservoirs below the floor level. Steam engines constantly pumped the seawater from the reservoirs below to the tanks above – 60 in all, with 38 for public display and 22 for research and storage. The display tanks varied from 40 to 4000 gallons in volume, containing (according to The Illustrated London News) “a large and varied collection of living marine animals, from very small ones to those of considerable size.” The most popular creature was an octopus, which delighted and terrified Victorians in equal measure, and contributed to the craze of cephalomania (said to have been started by the publication of Victor Hugo's novel Toilers of the Sea five years earlier, which featured a giant octopus).

Despite its wonderous displays, the aquarium was not a financial success. In the 1890s, the tanks were drained, and the marine creatures replaced with monkeys. The fire of 1936 that destroyed most of the Crystal Palace left the aquarium mostly untouched, but the demolition by dynamite of its neighbouring water tower in 1941 and construction of the transmitting station would leave only a small section remaining.

Signing off of Cephalopod Week with our favorite hot-tub-loving girl gang.

These savvy cephalopods (Muusoctopus robustus) gather at deep-sea thermal springs where warm water seeping from the seafloor accelerates the development of their embryos and increases the odds that their offspring will survive to hatch.

It's the most wonderful time of the year! No, we're not there yet—we're talking about Cephalopod Week!⁠

Happy World Octopus Day!

This cephalopod cutie, Opisthoteuthis sp., is a cirrate octopus. A small pair of fins on their mantle and webbed arms allow them to either drift or pulse like a jellyfish just above the seafloor. Scientists believe the finger-like cirri lining each arm are used to detect and capture small prey such as crustaceans, polychaetes, and mollusks living in the mud.⁠

#tfw you get aggressively booped by a Humboldt squid 😳⁠ ⁠

Growing up to two meters (nearly seven feet) long, Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) are formidable predators that hunt krill and a variety of fishes. These scrappy squid hunt in large numbers along the coasts of both North and South America, from Chile to Baja California. ⁠ ⁠

Say hello to a cephalopod you should know—the corkscrew squid, Planctoteuthis danae. 👋🏼🦑

We're kicking off Cephalopod Week, aka our favorite week of the year, with this extraordinary denizen of the deep. MBARI's remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) have encountered the relatively rare deep-sea squid Planctoteuthis oligobessa fewer than 20 times in over 30 years.

This species' long, decorative tail remained unknown until MBARI ROVs captured the first images of the animal out in the wild. In trawl nets, many delicate deep-sea animals are damaged, so we often don't get the whole picture until we can take ROVs equipped with cameras into their environment. ⁠

⁠Other squids in the family Chiroteuthidae also have ornate tails that they use for various reasons, like imitating siphonophores.

Gracefully gliding through the week with a fantastic flapjack. 😍🥰