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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday December 30 2017, @11:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the hiding-in-plain-sight dept.

The "frilled giant Pacific octopus" is being recognized as a distinct species:

What scientists are now calling the "frilled giant Pacific octopus" has been right under our noses the whole time - mistaken for the giant Pacific octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini. It's just that we didn't have enough evidence for a separate species, until now.

It doesn't have a scientific name, and it hasn't been fully described yet, but the frilled giant Pacific octopus has been confirmed using genetics.

[...] [Researchers] Nate Hollenbeck and David Scheel from Alaska Pacific University set out looking for that visual confirmation - for an octopus that was similar to, but nevertheless morphologically different from, Enteroctopus dofleini. [...] [They] retrieved 21 octopuses [from shrimp traps] - a full seven of which could be visually identified as distinct from the giant Pacific octopus.

The new octopus was defined by a frill of merged papillae - raised fleshy bumps on its skin - running the length of its body and two white spots on its head, where the great pacific octopus only has one spot. They all also had one long, thin, major papillae over each eye, a trait that occurs only rarely in the giant Pacific octopus. Some also had three smaller raised papillae under the eyes, like eyelashes; compound major papillae over the eye; or long, branched, antler-like papillae over the eyes. All of the new octopuses had at least one of these traits; none of the giant Pacific octopuses did.

Body Patterns of the Frilled Giant Pacific Octopus, a New Species of Octopus from Prince William Sound, AK (DOI: 10.4003/006.035.0206) (DX)

Use of Swabs for Sampling Epithelial Cells for Molecular Genetics Analyses in Enteroctopus (DOI: 10.4003/006.035.0207) (DX)

Nuclear and mitochondrial markers reveal evidence for genetically segregated cryptic speciation in giant Pacific octopuses from Prince William Sound, Alaska (DOI: 10.1007/s10592-012-0392-4) (DX)


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @09:54AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @09:54AM (#616109)

    you are mistaking it for the jihadi moslem octopus

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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @12:58PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @12:58PM (#616130)

    ... paid for and trained by the jewish zionist israeli rats and 'murricans.

    The mistake that happened in human development over the millennia is jews (the children of satan) happened.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @04:35PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @04:35PM (#616154)

      Didn't jesus save us or was that some other cephalopod?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @06:09PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @06:09PM (#616172)

        You need to stop taking religious dogma literally. Put down the holy book* and restart your brain.

        * this does not apply to jews, who worship baphomet and are the creation of satan himself.