8 ms·
Octopi are remarkably intelligent creatures, as any good aquarium owner will tell you.
by james-redwood 5y ago
Octopi are remarkably intelligent creatures, as any good aquarium owner will tell you.
- jjtheblunt 5y ago(waiting for the recurring comments, that 2 x octopus -> octopodes or octopuses but not octopi since it's not latin 2nd declension, but rather misspelled greek)
- amelius 5y agoOctopus is already wrong in itself.
- colechristensen 5y agoLet’s not encourage the unnecessary language pedantry.
- totalZero 5y agoPedantry is no felony when discussing an eight-armed genius. I personally settle for nothing less than "octopodes," with the accent on the second of its four syllables.
- OJFord 5y agoI think 'octopodes' should be considered incorrect on the basis that the vast majority of even the people using it are probably not pronouncing it correctly.
- mc32 5y agoEh, as long as it rhymes with ‘tetrapods’, it’s accepted and current pronunciation.
- dragonwriter 5y agoDoesn't it actually come into English from Latin (in its later academic/international use, rather than the classical language)? But in any case, it's English, not Latin or misspelled Greek, and octopi seems to at least be the oldest evident English plural of octopus, AFAIK, though octopuses seems to be experiencing current popularity, and octopodes is just...no, though the suggestion once made that English ought to adopt octopods, wasn't bad, but never caught on.
- datameta 5y agoAn even better aquarium owner wouldn't have them at all. My Octopus Teacher is a fantastic look into the life of an octopus, their intellectual capacity, and their propensity to interact with humans.
- suifbwish 5y agoWhy would that be better to not have them? It sounds a bit presumptive of a universal morality rather than a logical statement.
- gorgabal 5y agoIt sounds like a moral statement because it is a moral statement. Nothing wrong with that IMHO .
- procinct 5y agoOctopuses are known to not live very long in captivity.
- girvo 5y agoThough they also don’t live long in the wild either. Fascinating creatures.
- ceejayoz 5y agoIt's not an insane idea that octopuses might not enjoy being stuffed into what amounts to a studio apartment for their entire life.
- DoingIsLearning 5y agoThey are also notorious for finding increasingly cleverer ways of escaping aquariums. Which again adds to the case that an aquarium is not a suitable environment.
- 5y ago