Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

All about them and how to save them, their endangered.

 http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Cephalopod News

2009-03-21 Robot Octopus Will Go Where No Sub Has Gone Before (New Scientist)

The plan: build a robot with arms that work in the same way that octopuses tentacles do. Having no solid skeleton, it will be the world's first entirely soft robot, able to search the seabed with the same dexterity as the real eight-legged cephalopod. Accompanying video explains how the muscles in octopus arms work.

2009-03-18 Octopods from the Cretaceous! (Pharyngula)

Several new and spectacular cephalopod fossils from 95 million years ago have been found in Lebanon. Also: Cretaceous Octopus With Ink And Suckers -- The World's Least Likely Fossils?

2009-03-08 Giant Squid Expanding Their Dominance Of The Eastern Pacific (CBS)

Our one defence against this giant squid invasion may be to eat them as quickly as they are eating everything else.

Older news...

Cephaloblog

• 2009-03-25 More On Old World Tree Octopuses
• 2009-03-06 The Ara-Eaters: Tree Octopuses Of Polynesia
• 2009-02-27 The Tree Octopus - A Journey
• 2009-02-26 Tree Octopus Caught On Tape! (And A Poem)
• 2009-02-15 Human Enslave, Exploit Octopus!
• 2009-02-14 Book Review: The Procession of Mollusks
• More Cephaloblog posts...

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Greenpeas supports the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, please support Greenpeas.

Help Save The ENDANGERED

Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

From EXTINCTION!

• Information
• FAQs
• Sightings

About The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Rare photo of the elusive tree octopus

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus (Octopus paxarbolis) can be found in the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula on the west coast of North America. Their habitat lies on the Eastern side of the Olympic mountain range, adjacent to Hood Canal. These solitary cephalopods reach an average size (measured from arm-tip to mantle-tip,) of 30-33 cm. Unlike most other cephalopods, tree octopuses are amphibious, spending only their early life and the period of their mating season in their ancestral aquatic environment. Because of the moistness of the rainforests and specialized skin adaptations, they are able to keep from becoming desiccated for prolonged periods of time, but given the chance they would prefer resting in pooled water.

An intelligent and inquisitive being (it has the largest brain-to-body ratio for any mollusk), the tree octopus explores its arboreal world by both touch and sight. Adaptations its ancestors originally evolved in the three dimensional environment of the sea have been put to good use in the spatially complex maze of the coniferous Olympic rainforests. The challenges and richness of this environment (and the intimate way in which it interacts with it,) may account for the tree octopus's advanced behavioral development. (Some evolutionary theorists suppose that "arboreal adaptation" is what laid the groundwork in primates for the evolution of the human mind.)

Reaching out with one of her eight arms, each covered in sensitive suckers, a tree octopus might grab a branch to pull herself along in a form of locomotion called tentaculation; or she might be preparing to strike at an insect or small vertebrate, such as a frog or rodent, or steal an egg from a bird's nest; or she might even be examining some object that caught her fancy, instinctively desiring to manipulate it with her dexterous limbs (really deserving the title "sensory organs" more than mere "limbs",) in order to better know it.

Map of estimated tree octopus maximum range, including spawning waters.

Tree octopuses have eyesight comparable to humans. Besides allowing them to see their prey and environment, it helps them in inter-octopus relations. Although they are not social animals like us, they display to one-another their emotions through their ability to change the color of their skin: red indicates anger, white fear, while they normally maintain a mottled brown tone to blend in with the background.

The reproductive cycle of the tree octopus is still linked to its roots in the waters of the Puget Sound from where it is thought to have originated. Every year, in Spring, tree octopuses leave their homes in the Olympic National Forest and migrate towards the shore and, eventually, their spawning grounds in Hood Canal. There, they congregate (the only real social time in their lives,) and find mates. After the male has deposited his sperm, he returns to the forests, leaving the female to find an aquatic lair in which to attach her strands of egg-clusters. The female will guard and care for her eggs until they hatch, refusing even to eat, and usually dying from her selflessness. The young will spend the first month or so floating through Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, and as far as North Puget Sound before eventually moving out of the water and beginning their adult lives.

Why It's Endangered

Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch. What few that make it to the Canal are further hampered in their reproduction by the growing problem of pollution from farming and residential run-off. Unless immediate action is taken to protect this species and its habitat, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus will be but a memory.

Tree Octopus hat from 1923 (Click to enlarge.)

The possibility of Pacific Northwest tree octopus extinction is not an unwarranted fear. Other tree octopus species -- including the Douglas octopus and the red-ringed madrona sucker -- were once abundant throughout the Cascadia region, but have since gone extinct because of threats similar to those faced by paxarbolis, as well as overharvesting by the now-illegal tree octopus trade.

The history of the tree octopus trade is a sad one. Their voracious appetite for bird plumes having exhausted all the worthy species of that family, the fashionistas moved on to cephalopodic accoutrements during the early 20th Century. Tree octopuses became prized by the fashion industry as ornamental decorations for hats, leading greedy trappers to wipe out whole populations to feed the vanity of the fashionable rich. While fortunately this practice has been outlawed, its effects still reverberate today as these millinery deprivations brought tree octopus numbers below the critical point where even minor environmental change could cause disaster.

How You Can Help

Here are a few things that you can do to help save the Pacific Northwest tree octopus:

Posters motivate the citizenry to action! Post them!

• Write your representatives to let them know that you are concerned and that you feel the tree octopus should be included on the Endangered Species List and given special protection.
• Help build awareness of the tree octopus by telling your friends and co-workers.
• Place a tentacle ribbon on your website.
• Participate in tree octopus awareness marches. You can demonstrate their plight during the march by having your friends dress up as tree octopuses while you attack them in a lumber jack costume.
• Pamphlet your neighborhood. Tentacle ribbons make excellent doorknob hangers.
• Join and donate to an organization committed to conservation, such as Greenpeas.
• Boycott companies that use non-tree-octopus-safe wood harvesting practices.
• Sign an online petition! Nothing activates activity like an Internet petition.

Tree Octopus Research

Please see our Tree Octopus Sightings page for additional photos and behavioral research as they become available. [Updated 2009-03-12]

Frequently Asked Questions

Please see our Tree Octopus FAQs before you email us.

Tree Octopus In The Media

The plight of the tree octopus has moved people to speak out on its behalf in the media. Here are some noteworthy examples:

• The Tree Octopus - A Journey, a documentary following a trek into the Olympic National Forest in search of Tree Octopuses.

• The Procession of Mollusks, a novel by Eric E. Olson, touches on the native uses of Tree Octopuses. (Review)

• "Strange Tales of the Pacific Northwest. Episode 34: 20,000 Legs Under the Trees"

  

  A one-page graphic-novel drawn by Lukas Ketner and written by Ryan Brown about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus' origins and struggles with cougar predation. It appeared inside issue #25 of The Bear Deluxe Magazine published by Orlo, a nonprofit organization using the creative arts to explore environmental issues.

• Weird Washington, a book on Washington State oddities, has a Tree Octopus article.

• The YouTubes are filled with tree octopuses:

  • Watch an episode of the Carry Springer Show (like the Jerry Springer show, only in someone's living room) tackling the plight of the tree octopus.
  • Watch the short film Traci Bogart, PI: Hunt for the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (there's also a trailer and blooper reel).
  • Watch a lesson on "How to be a Tree Octopus".
  • Watch the video audition of a young Steve Irwan fan as he goes in search of tree octopuses and Sasquatch.
  • Watch the trailer for 8 Legs of Awesome.
  • Watch a Dutch animal documentary about the tiger, panda bear, and mysterious tree octopus.
  • Someone (not me) started a Save The Tree Octopus! channel that includes a touching tribute video, a homeless Tree Octopus created in Spore, and an actual video of an elusive Tree Octopus!

Links To A Better Tomorrow

More About Cephalopods:

• The Cephalopod Page - Scientific information about these wonderful mollusks.
• The Octopus News Magazine Online - An online magazine about anything and everything pertaining to octopuses, squids and cephalopods.
• Have a Gibbous Cephalopodmas!

Other Animals of Interest:

• Save The Mountain Walrus - Another endangered Northwest creature that needs our help. (Original site down, link is to Archive.org mirror. Also, see the Mountain Walrus Foundation for some photos.)
• Save The Manhattan Beach Mottled Roach - Save one roach today, that tomorrow we may save millions!
• Rock Nest Monster - Known only from its rocky nests and porcelain-like eggs, Cryptogorgo petronidus is so endangered that existential environmentalists wonder if it ever existed at all.
• Giant Palouse Earthworm (Driloleirus americanus) - This threatened earthworm is native to the Palouse prairies of Washington and Idaho. They can grow up to three feet in length, are pinkish-white, and smell of lilies.
• The Red Crabs of Christmas Island - Once every year, 120 million of these forest crabs migrate en masse from their inland burrows to the sea to spawn. Along the way, over a million are crushed by traffic and many die of dehydration crossing deforested land. The offspring of those that survive then have to contend with super-colonies of yellow crazy ants, introduced to the island by the thoughtless actions of Man.
• Mangrove Killifish - This unique fish spends several months out of the year living above water in the trees of mangrove swamps.
• Saber Tooth Salmon - The 3 meter (10 foot) long Smilodonichthys rastrosus once prowled the shores and rivers of Cascadia, attacking Cretaceous octopus swimming in the waters. Could escaping this menace have been the impetus for arboreal octopus evolution?

Conservation Organizations

• Greenpeas.org - Greenpeas is working to save the world from humans.
• World Conservation Union - An international organization whose mission is "To influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable."
• The Wildlife Fund - The WWF works to preserve genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity throughout the world.
• UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre - An office of the UN that provides information for policy and action to conserve the living world.
• People for the Ethical Treatment of Pumpkins - How many pumpkins must be sacrificed every year to decorate our houses and keep our bellies filled with pies before we realize the error of our ways? Too many, it seems!

• Information
• FAQs
• Sightings

This site is very important to people who would like to save these rare creatures from extinction, hope you can visit there website. -Shelly