The official DOOM octopus thread

[El Dingo]

"Millenial Hentai" - (places in pocket for future band name)

[Drunk Monk]

I want to see Octlantis.  Or Octopolis.  Or any octocommunity.  

University of Illinois at Chicago

NATURE
Biologists Have Discovered an Underwater Octopus City And They're Calling It Octlantis

DAVID NIELD
10 JUN 2018
At the end of last year, scientists discovered a small octopus city – dubbed Octlantis – a find that suggests members of the gloomy octopus species (Octopus tetricus) are perhaps not the isolated and solitary creatures we thought they were.
Octlantis features dens made out of piles of sand and shells, and is home to up to 15 of the cephalopods, according to marine biologists. They recorded 10 hours of video footage of the site, which lies 10 to 15 metres (33 to 49 feet) under the water and measures 18 by 4 metres (59 by 13 feet).
The international team of researchers saw the gloomy octopuses meeting up, living together, communicating with each other, chasing unwelcome octopuses away, and even evicting each other from dens – so it seems Octlantis can be quite a rough place to live.
"These behaviours are the product of natural selection, and may be remarkably similar to vertebrate complex social behaviour," lead researcher David Scheel, from Alaska Pacific University, told Ephrat Livni at Quartz.
"This suggests that when the right conditions occur, evolution may produce very similar outcomes in diverse groups of organisms."
The new octopus city lies in Jervis Bay on the coastline of eastern Australia, and is close to another similar site discovered in 2009 called Octopolis – where we've seen a kind of Octopus Fight Club take place in the past.
To add to the sense of lawlessness, the researchers also discovered the discarded shells of eaten prey scattered around the city, and sometimes used to form dens.
Both these sites suggest that Octopus tetricus octopuses aren't quite the loners they've always been portrayed as, but what we don't know yet is whether these small octopus cities are particularly common, or exactly how they get started.
Octopolis seems to be centred on an unidentified human-made object about 30 cm (11.8 inches) in length, but there's no obvious comparable object in Octlantis that creatures appear to have settled around.
Instead it might be jutting rocks that first attracted the octopuses to the area, according to the researchers.
"At both sites there were features that we think may have made the congregation possible – namely several seafloor rock outcroppings dotting an otherwise flat and featureless area," says one of the team, Stephanie Chancellor from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Usually, octopuses only get together to mate before going their separate ways again, but more research needs to be done to understand why they might want to mix together in places such as Octlantis.
There's an abundance of food at the two sites but they're also attractive to predators, and from what the researchers have observed so far, Octlantis seems like a rather violent and aggressive place to live.
One possibility is that these types of octopus settlements have always been around, but we're only now getting the technology and tools to be able to monitor them.
What we do know is octopuses are some of the cutest and coolest creatures living underwater, and if they want to set up subterranean cities then that's fine with us.
"We still don't really know much about octopus behaviour," says Chancellor. "More research will be needed to determine what these actions might mean."
The research was published in Marine and Freshwater Behaviour and Physiology.

[Drunk Monk]

Naughty anime tentacles are on their way to Japanese capsule toy machines – in six cute colors!

• Casey Baseel14 hours ago
  

Manufacturer promises “many ways to play with them.”

When creating capsule toys, some companies go after the surreal entertainment value in faithfully recreating the mundane, like miniature rice cookers, or even tiny replica capsule toy vending machines. But on the other end of the spectrum, some manufacturers go as bizarre as they can in the design process.
For its latest endeavor, capsule toy maker Proof is clearly going with the latter option.

The upcoming release is called Tentacle Paradise, or technically “Tentacle☆Paradise,” with a fancy, playful star forcing its points way right into the center of the name. 400 yen (US$3.70) gets you a set of eight tentacles, about 10.8 centimeters (4.3 inches) in height reaching upwards from an included base. The lineup consists of six colors: pink, yellow-green, green, blue, and two flesh tones, as well as three different textures: classic suction cup, studded, or smooth with a pinch and bulge at the tip (and yes, the pinch-and-bulge design corresponds to the flesh-colored tentacles).
So what are you supposed to do with these things? Well, Proof proudly proclaims “There are many ways to play with them after you wrap them around your toy figures,” and demonstrates by entwining a cute, cuddly stuffed animal penguin in the pink version.
[/url]

PROOF-original@proof_original




PROOFオリジナル新商品！！
400円カプセル用商品

【触手☆パラダイス】

いろいろ絡めて楽しめる6種類の触手がゆめかわなパステルカラーで登場です
台座と8本の触手(1種)入り！！

ペンギンさんに見本になってもらいました。

2019年10月発売予定です
よろしくお願いいたします

[url=https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1141980410328604672]30.4K
1:05 AM - Jun 21, 2019

However, it seems pretty obvious that the wink-and-nod suggested (and suggestive) way to use these is to wrap them around an anime character figure, recreating scenes of animated naughty tentacle porn, or perhaps casting characters from less lascivious series into such situations for the first time.
Proof is giving everyone ample time to look forward to/dread the arrival of Tentacle Paradise, since the line doesn’t go on sale until October (although you can pre-order a bundle of six tentacles already online here through Rakuten). In the meantime, this is probably as good a time as any to remind everyone about an important thing to check for when buying used anime figures.
Source: Nijimen via Anime News Newtork/Lynzee Loveridge
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: Rakuten/A-TOYS 楽天市場店

[Drunk Monk]

More on octomdma...

When you give octopus MDMA they hug it out
Octopods are more social than they may seem.



By Alex Schwartz
November 18, 2019


MDMA, a psychoactive drug that binds to a protein that transports serotonin, boosts empathy in humans—and makes octopus more friendly. Pedro Piccinini


Gul Dolen, neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University // As told to Alex Schwartz

Octopuses seem nothing like us. Their brains are physiologically different. Yet they interact with one another and do complex tasks the way we do—they even solve puzzles.

One species we work with is typically ­reclusive. However, they become quite the party animals during their mating seasons. In humans, a neurotransmitter called sero­tonin promotes this kind of social functioning. But that molecule has been around far longer than we have—so it could be a driving force behind these behaviors in other species too, including octopuses.

To test out this idea, we gave two octopuses MDMA, a psychoactive drug that binds to a protein that transports serotonin. It’s known to boost empathy in humans. We dunked each creature in a tank of seawater laced with MDMA, and let the drug kick in and do its work.

Then we placed the cephalopods in a chamber with a playful toy on one side and another octopus on the other. With MDMA in their systems, the two creatures spent significantly more time on the side with their fellow drugged test subject. They even became more fluid in their movements—­literally doing backflips and dancing about. “This is the right dose,” I said.

That shifted interest from aloofness to socialization showed that octopuses have the same serotonin transporter protein as we do, which suggests it’s been influencing the way animals interact for millennia.

Sure, they call it 'science' but it's really just hentai prep.

[Drunk Monk]

Craftsman Makes Spectacular Stained Glass Octopus Chandeliers
written by Emporio Efikz 29 novembre 2019 18 comments 71241 views
SHARE
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Mason Parker of Mason’s Creations in Portland, Oregon has created a spectacular stained glass octopus chandelier.  This incredible chandelier measures about four feet across, and the body and arms can be lit separately or simultaneously.
 
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Oblong Headed Style
The artist created an other fantastic octopus chandelier in grey and white tones: Oblond Headed Style.
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More: Mason’s Creations 
Via: laughingsquid

[Drunk Monk]

Octopus Escapes Aquarium Through 160-Foot Drainpipe Into the Sea
DECEMBER 24, 2019 AT 10:12 PM



Octopus makes an unbelievable getaway from an aquarium back to the ocean
[img=0x0]https://returntonow.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/91872389-F205-454F-A764-3EC5F5F23A3B.jpeg[/img]




Determined to find his way to freedom, an octopus named Inky apparently broke out of his tank, slithered across an aquarium floor and slid through narrow drain pipe into to the ocean.
The amazing stunt took place in the middle of the night at New Zealand’s national aquarium, after an employee apparently left the lid to the octopus’ tank slightly ajar.
Staff believe Inky took the opportunity to climb up over the top of his glass enclosure, slide down the side of the tank and slither across 8 feet of flooring to a drainpipe that empties into the ocean.
[img=0x0]https://returntonow.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/A35F700C-CC82-4347-8051-FB38FCDCB372.jpeg[/img]
If true, the boneless cephalopod would have had to squeeze his soccer-ball-sized head through over 160 feet of pipeline less than 6 inches in diameter.
“Octopuses are fantastic escape artists,” Alix Harvey, an aquarist at the Marine Biological Association in England, told The New York Times.
“They are programmed to hunt prey at night and have a natural inclination to move around at night.”
“They have a complex brain, have excellent eyesight, and research suggests they have an ability to learn and form mental maps.”
Because of octopuses soft bodies they are able to fit into extremely small spaces, and have been filmed squeezing through gaps the size of coins.

Inky FTW!

[Greg]

I still find it odd we have an octopus thread.

Odder still, I have found a use for it.

Behold the Fucktopus

[Drunk Monk]

I still find it odd we have an octopus thread.

Odder still, I have found a use for it.

Behold the Fucktopus

that's awesome!  FTW!

nothing odd about octopus in DOOM.  many of us bonded over our tentacle fixations.

[Drunk Monk]

Japanese Artist Hand-Cuts Intricate Octopus From Single Sheet of Paper
By Emma Taggart on December 28, 2018


Paper cutting art requires tremendous patience and a steady hand, and Japanese artist Masayo Fukuda has mastered the craft. Known as Kirie in Japanese (translated as “cut picture”), the traditional art form involves cutting intricate forms from a single sheet of white paper and then contrasting it against a black background to reveal the design. Fukuda has been practicing Kirie for 25 years and has recently revealed what she believes to be her best work of 2018—an incredible life-sized paper octopus.
At first glance, the beautiful artwork looks as though it was rendered using fine-tipped pens, but Fukuda carefully cut every detail from one sheet of paper. The elaborate depiction details the majestic sea animal’s rounded body, bulging eyes, and 8 long arms. Various textured sections look like pieces of delicate patterned lace, such arm suckers that resemble ornamental doilies and decorative swirling patterns on the head. The mesmerizing artwork celebrates the beauty of the fascinating species, who are known to change their skin color and texture within seconds to match their surroundings.


You can see Fukuda’s stunning Kirie designs up-close at Miraie Gallery in Osaka from April 24 through April 30, 2019. If you can’t make it to Japan, you can check out more of the artist’s impressive creations on Instagram.
Japanese artist Masayo Fukuda hand-cuts an incredible life-sized paper octopus from one sheet of paper.


FEATURED VIDEO


The paper cutting art technique is known as Kirie in Japan.


The stunning design features various textured sections that look like pieces of delicate patterned lace.
Masayo Fukuda: Website | Instagram | Twitter
h/t: [Spoon & Tamago]

All images via Masayo Fukuda.

[Greg]

How many pieces of paper did she go through? And does one of those sheets have the accidental coffee ring?

[Drunk Monk]

Monster octopi with scores of extra tentacles

18 Jul 2008

In nature, it is quite rare to encounter octopi with extra tentacles (or "arms," for the purists), but a pair of aquariums in Japan's Mie prefecture have some extraordinary specimens on hand.
The permanent display at the Shima Marineland Aquarium in the town of Shima includes a 96-tentacled Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) that weighed 3.3 kilograms (about 7 lbs) and measured 90 centimeters (3 ft) long when it was captured in nearby Matoya Bay in December 1998. Before dying 5 months later, the creature laid eggs, making it the first known extra-tentacled octopus to do so in captivity. All the baby octopi hatched with the normal number of tentacles, but unfortunately they only survived a month. 

96-tentacled octopus laying eggs

The preserved octopus actually has the normal number of 8 appendages attached to its body, but each one branches out to form the multitude of extra tentacles. Apparently there is no theory that fully explains the surplus tentacles, but they are believed to be the result of abnormal regeneration that occurred after the octopus suffered some sort of injury. 

* * * * *

The Toba Aquarium in the nearby town of Toba also has a few extraordinary octopus specimens, although they no longer appear to be on permanent display. Every now and then, though, the aquarium pulls them out of storage for the world to see. 

85-tentacled octopus at Toba Aquarium

Their most well-known specimen is an 85-tentacled Common Octopus captured in 1957 at nearby Toshijima island. This remarkable creature -- which, like the Shima Marineland octopus, has 8 main arms that branch out to form scores of tentacles -- made quite a stir when it first went on display at Toba Aquarium a half-century ago. A few years later, the specimen was loaned to the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo, where it famously caught the attention of the Showa Emperor.
The renowned creature eventually returned to Toba and went on permanent display until the aquarium moved to a new location in 1985, at which time it was placed in storage. Twenty years later, in 2005, the specimen entered the spotlight again when it was put on temporary display. 
In the 50 years since the 85-tentacled octopus was captured, the Toba Aquarium has exhibited 6 other mutant octopi, most of them alive for a time, and each with between 9 and 56 tentacles

[cranefly]

Well, I was super-impressed by Masayo Fukuda's papercut.  Now not so much.  Clearly she's been dogging it.

She needs to show some ambition and tackle that 96-tentacler.

[Drunk Monk]

96-tentacler.

word of the day

[Drunk Monk]

The common octopus, O. vulgaris, is found around the world. As the popularity of eating octopus has grown, efforts to farm them commercially are raising questions about their welfare in captivity.


PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG LECOEUR, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

ANIMALSWILDLIFE WATCH
The world wants to eat more octopus. Is farming them ethical?
Both highly intelligent and a culinary delicacy, the animals are at the center of a controversy that pits the conservation of wild octopuses against the ethics of mass-breeding them.[/font][/size][/color]

8 MINUTE READ

BY ERIC SCIGLIANO

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PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 21, 2020

SISAL, YUCATÁN, MEXICO In a damp, darkened shoreside laboratory near the Yucatán hamlet of Sisal, Carlos Rosas Vázquez lifts one of the scores of small conch shells littering a black plastic tank. He coaxes its wary occupant out onto his hand. A mouse-size octopus with tentacles like knotted threads, ghostly pale save for big, black eyes, wriggles across his palm and twines around his fingers. Even Rosas, a biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who's worked for years to turn creatures like this into a profitable commodity, delights in its prehensile grace. “Maravilloso!” he murmurs.
Around the world, octopuses have long been objects of desire and wonder. Now they’re becoming an ethical flashpoint, as researchers like Rosas puzzle out ways to make commercial octopus farming feasible and, they claim, relieve growing pressure on wild populations. Not good, a new contingent of critics contends: Octopus aquaculture will further deplete marine ecosystems and needlessly torment these most sensitive and intelligent of invertebrates.
Long staples of Mediterranean and East Asian cuisines, octopus (pulpo in Spanish, tako in Japanese) is now a global delicacy, buoyed by the popularity of sushi, tapas, poke, and desire for high-quality protein. Demand and prices have surged in recent years, even as catches have fallen in traditional octopus meccas such as Spain and Japan and as warming, acidifying seas threaten further declines.
At a glance, therefore, these tasty tentacle bearers seem ripe for aquaculture. For many people, however, they mean much more than tasty tidbits. “People have this weird love affair with octopuses,” says biologist Rich Ross at the California Academy of Science, in San Francisco. “I know those who would never eat them but have no qualms about eating pigs, and there's abundant evidence that pigs are highly intelligent.”
Pigs, however, aren’t as graceful, mysterious, and charismatic as octopuses. Big brains, complex behavior, and precocious curiosity have made these improbable mollusks mediagenic poster creatures for animal rights and welfare—and the subject of an emerging battle over the ethics and potential environmental impacts of raising them for food. (Also read about the growing trend for pet octopuses.)
That debate caught fire last year when Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental studies at New York University, and several co-authors posted an essay, “The Case Against Octopus Farming,” that quickly went viral. It argues that the grim “ethical and environmental consequences” of industrial meat production “should lead us to ask whether we want to repeat mistakes already made with terrestrial animals with aquatic animals, especially octopus.”
Most wild octopus fisheries are still more artisanal than industrial, using small boats and traditional techniques. Thousands of fishermen in Mexico's Yucatán and Campeche states lure their prey by dangling crabs from long bamboo poles. But the global catch—420,000 metric tons a year, the FAO reports—goes largely to affluent consumers in South Korea, Japan, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and, lately, the United States. Pulpo a la gallega may be the national dish of Spain's Galicia region, but Galicia imports 20 times as much octopus as it catches.
“Today, I go to the sea and I get 10 or 20 kilograms of octopus,” one fisherman in nearby Portugal told a newspaper, “when in other years it was more than a hundred kilos [220 pounds].” He and his comrades urged a temporary fishery closure to help stocks recover.
“I hardly go out to fish anymore,” Yucatán fisherman Antonio Cob Reyes told me. “The sea is getting crowded—more fishermen, less octopus.” Morocco and Mauritania, two main producers, have limited catches to protect stocks.
Aquaculture advocates say that farming octopuses is the only way to ensure sustainability while satisfying demand. Some aspects of the octopus life cycle make them attractive aquaculture candidates. Like salmon, they're short-lived and fast-growing; most common species live one to two years, a few jumbo varieties three to five. They can add 5 percent of body weight in a day. But that life cycle presents one big hurdle: sustaining delicate planktonic octopus hatchlings, called paralarvae, until they can begin this rocketing growth.
The baby octopus conundrum
In 2015, an Australian firm reported remarkable success at battery-farming the common Sydney octopus. But it failed at raising paralarvae and reverted to ranching—growing wild-caught octopuses to market size in aquatic pens, a system also used in Spain.
The only octoculture effort in the U.S., Kanaloa Octopus Farms, on Hawaii's Big Island, has hit the same “bottleneck,” as founder Jake Conroy calls it. Kanaloa is now working on growing zooplankton to make a feed that will sustain the paralarvae. It pays the bills by charging visitors to see, touch, and feed the grown animals. Conroy, a biologist who turned to aquaculture to escape the research-funding rat race, admits that such close encounters don’t encourage more consumption. “Nine times out of ten we wind up convincing people not to eat octopus,” he says. “We’re fine with that.”
In 2017 the Japanese fishing giant Nisui announced that it had “closed the life cycle”—raising successive cultured generations, which frees aquaculture from dependence on wild captures—and anticipated commercial production in 2020. Contacted in January, Nisui would say only, “Unfortunately we are still in research and development stage.”
Today, the multinational, Galicia-based fishing and seafood firm Grupo Nueva Pescanova, building on work by the Spanish Oceanographic Institute, is doing what may be the most advanced octoculture research, though it doesn't anticipate commercial production until 2023. Ricardo Tur Estrada, Pescanova’s research chief and a veteran of the institute, says it has not only raised successive generations of Octopus vulgaris, the Atlantic common octopus, but also delayed the kill switch on octopus lifespan.




This young Atlantic common octopus was photographed at Pescanova Biomarine Center, the research and development lab of Pescanova, a Spain-based multinational seafood company developing octopus aquaculture.
PHOTOGRAPH BY RICARDO TUR

In the wild, octopuses breed once, then cease hunting and waste away; the females spend their last weeks tending their eggs. (Nautiluses are the only members of the cephalopod family, which also includes squid and cuttlefish, known to breed repeatedly.) Now, with careful feeding and “ideal conditions,” Tur says, “we save the life of the female, which has never been documented before.” This summer they plan to try re-breeding one resuscitated female, herself captive-bred. She will then be two years old, about twice the average O. vulgaris lifespan.
Furthermore, Tur says, “we have eliminated the competition and cannibalism” that are octopus hallmarks, and have identified a previously unreported fourth stage in the common octopus’s life cycle—transparent alevin, a transitional stage between paralarvae and fully formed juveniles. He thinks this stage, when the animals learn to use their arms and develop their remarkable color-changing pigmentation, will provide key biological insights. It “could also be the perfect stage to isolate stem cells” in order to understand, and perhaps mimic, octopuses’ ability to regenerate lost limbs.
Across the Atlantic, Carlos Rosas has an easier time with the octopus life cycle. Octopus maya, the species he works with, is one of several that skip the paralarval stage and hatch as fully formed mini-octopuses.
But he faces another challenge: shoestring budgets, typical of Mexican research. His response has been to enlist local women—wives of octopus fishermen—to clean and maintain his lab's dozens of tanks in exchange for all the marketable octopus produced. These conscientious lab assistants, who have formed a small cooperative, remove newly laid eggs, kill and butcher the mothers, and raise the new generations for study and harvest. “The data is for us, the octopuses for you!” Rosas says, joking with two co-op members. Impressed at the results, their husbands and sons have begun joining the co-op.




This young Mexican four-eyed octopus, O. maya, is from biologist Carlos Rosas Vázquez's co-op in Sisal, Mexico.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CARLOS ROSAS

The operation is artisanal. For feeding, the keepers pack shrimp paste and fish-waste meal into hundreds of small clam shells, which mimic wild prey and reduce food waste. Their product commands a premium price, about $12 a pound; they can sell the tender undersize octopuses that chefs favor but fishing rules protect, and supply octopus during the six months when fishing is forbidden. Rosas and the Yucatán government hope this experiment will seed more octopus farms, providing jobs for struggling communities and a buffer as warming reduces wild catches.
‘Particularly ill-suited to a life in captivity’
In “The Case Against Octopus Farming,” Jennifer Jacquet and her co-authors—Becca Franks, of New York University, animal activist Walter Sanchez-Suarez, and Australian science philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith—cite the general ills of industrial husbandry and aquaculture. They point to the stress and monotony of confinement; the “high mortality rates and increased aggression, parasitic infection [and] digestive tract issues” associated with intensive farming; the wasteful “feeding fish with fish” that humans could eat themselves, depleting the seas.
Octopuses, they argue, are “particularly ill-suited to a life in captivity and mass-production, for reasons both ethical and ecological.” Confinement is especially cruel for animals with such “sophisticated nervous systems and large brains” that are capable of mimicry, play, sophisticated navigation and hunting strategies, and what Jacquet calls “meaningful lives.” Aquaculture boosters “don't take into account how rich the intertidal zone is,” referring to the profusely varied habitat where common octopus species forage. “They can't reproduce that.”
Rosas concedes the importance of humane conditions and enrichment (such as conch shells for them to hide in) and says his lab tries to provide those. “We're working to reduce the octopuses' sensitivity to pain when we sacrifice them,” he adds—numbing them with cold water, then cutting quickly through their brains. “We'll join a project with the Cephalopod Laboratory in Naples to determine how best to kill them humanely.”

Rosas and Tur (both avowed octophiles whose offices teem with octopus toys) use scraps and discards from local fish processors for octopus feed. Kanaloa Octopus's Jake Conroy has had less success with fishery waste but contemplates using invasive fish such as pink groupers as feed.
Such sustainable sourcing may be more feasible for experimental and artisanal projects like theirs than for the marine factory farms Jacquet warns against. Nevertheless, Tur vehemently disputes her contention that it takes at least three pounds of food to grow one pound of octopus. He claims a two-to-one conversion ratio.
“That's not sustainable, that's less unsustainable,” replies Jacquet, adding that even if researchers “reduce other ecological impacts, farming octopus would still be unethical.” It is after all a luxury product, unneeded for food security; banning octoculture would “mean only that affluent consumers will pay more for increasingly scarce, wild octopus.”
That, Conroy says, is why octopus should be farmed: to relieve wild stocks. “Aquaculture is kind of plan B,” he says. “In a perfect world, we would all be in agreement, but it's very difficult to convince people to go vegetarian. If we take the purist view, and the wild population gets threatened or damaged beyond repair, where will we be?”
Rosas and Tur invoke other justifications for farming octopuses: community development and basic research. Tur, who like Conroy turned to aquaculture because research funding was scarce, believes studying octopuses will yield big dividends in antibiotics (from their protective mucous coating), neuron and tissue regeneration, and robotics. Already, robot designers have copied their color-changing elastic skin, and mimicked their sensitive suckered tentacles for gripping and surgical navigation. An Italian lab has even invented an octobot that can explore underwater crannies.
Octoculture advocates and opponents do agree on one thing: the remarkable capacities of these marvelous mollusks. So far they haven't spoken directly with each other. “It's not that I would be opposed to being in dialogue,” Jacquet says, “but I don't want to be too persuaded by the personalities of individuals in the industry.” So their debate continues at second hand, even as the orders for tako sashimi and pulpo a la gallega roll in.

Eric Scigliano is the author or co-author of Love, War and Circuses, Michelangelo’s Mountain; Flotsametrics and the Floating World; The Big Thaw: Ancient Carbon, Modern Science, and A Race to Save the World. Follow him on Twitter.

[Drunk Monk]

Octopus Taxidermy Workshop
$265 per person
3 hours
Up to 15 people
San Francisco, California
See Dates




View all photos

See Dates
$265 per person
3 hours Up to 15 people San Francisco, California
$265 per person
San Francisco, California See Dates

What We’ll Do
Discover the extraordinary art of octopus taxidermy. At the start of this expert-led workshop, you'll receive a collectible lab coat that's yours to keep. Then we'll dive into the fantastic world of octopuses. The goal is to design and prepare your cephalopod for final preservation and mounting. But along the way, we'll also learn about the anatomy of these amazing soft-bodied creatures.
I’ll show you how to clean, process, and prepare a specimen of your very own. After customizing your masterpiece, it will be cryo-preserved for transport back to the lab. There, final touches will immortalize what you created. Your finished art piece will be available for pickup in the days after the workshop. If you're not local, we can ship it to you at no cost.
Note: All participants will be required to sign a waiver the day of the workshop in order to participate.
Where We’ll Be
We’ll conduct our workshop in Paxton Gate's classroom space, just steps away from the Valencia Street store. Paxton Gate is an eclectic cross between a gardening store, taxidermy shop, entomological treasure trove, art book retailer, and natural history boutique that offers “treasures and oddities inspired by the garden and the natural sciences.”

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Mikayla



Hi. I'm Mikayla, a member of the Atlas Obscura community.
I have an educational background in mortuary science. I received training in the fields of anatomy and chemistry at a renowned natural history gallery in Berkeley, California, before branching out to launch my own company, ScientificWoman. I believe the most effective way to appreciate the mechanical nature of life is through examining the remarkable nature of death. In order to cultivate this exploration, I developed an art style and preservation process for specimens uncommonly found in taxidermy form. My techniques are unique to the industry and I continue to innovate and create never-before-seen taxidermy art pieces.
For questions about this experience, please contact me directly through Airbnb. 


What Else You Should Know
-No prior taxidermy experience is required! All specimens are ethically and sustainably sourced. 
-Students must arrive 20 minutes prior to the start time. 
-Attendees will meet at Paxton Gate at 824 Valencia. The workshop will be held in a nearby space within walking distance.

Dates and Availability
View On Airbnb[/url] 

• Sat, Mar 28, 2020
  11:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
  $265
  Few Spots Left 
  [url=https://www.airbnb.com/experiences/1522928/book?scheduled_id=24164166&source=booking_widget]Book on Airbnb  
  

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What We’ll Provide
Equipment
Lab coat 
Specimen 
Dissection Tools 
Gloves 
Workbook

Additional Information

Cancellation Policy
Any experience can be canceled and fully refunded within 24 hours of purchase. See cancellation policy.

Group Size
There are 15 spots available on this experience.

Who Can Come
Guests ages 18 and up can attend.