Yay! "Squid Says: What's For Dinner?" made it into the finalists^*. To celebrate, here is one of my all-time favorite cephalopod pix.

I know, I know, it's a not a squid! But isn't it the cutest? The picture is by James Wood, who was the first to ever witness mating and hatching in this species--a deep-sea octopus named Bathypolypus arcticus. This pleasantly informative Latin name translates to "Arctic deep-water octopus."

Polypus means "many feet" instead of the more precise "eight feet" of octopus; apparently some ancient Greeks couldn't be bothered to count. For many years both polypus (eventually shortened to polyp) and octopus were commonly used to refer to the same animals. But today calling any cephalopod a polyp would sound seriously anachronistic; the term persists only in the occasional Latin name.

Curiously, somewhere along the line, polyp started to be used for sea anemones as well, and in this context it is still in use today. The sessile form of any cnidarian (anemone, hydra, or coral) is referred to as a polyp.


* If you don't know about the contest already, go check it out. You can vote every day!