Hi everyone!!! Just wanted to know if I was the only one, extremley upset with this weeks episode of amazing race where they had to eat live octopuses!!!!! :shock: They were chopping up the little guys as they were trying to escape AWFUL, so so distrubed by this!!!! I had to switch it off, I was so upset. Now they would never do this to a cat or dog so why is it different with an octpus??? Do they not deserve the same respect????????

Ug, thankfully I missed that, sounds pretty awful.

That said, I don't consider myself an "octopus activist" or anything, I just think they're very interesting creatures. But yeah, cutting them up alive and eating them alive seems to not treat them with the... well, yeah, respect, that they probably deserve as an intelligent beast.

:yuck:

I consider myself as a animal activist, and this sort of treatment is just terrible. Its the same as when they throw them onto the ice in hockey!! What a waste of a beautiful life! So unfair, that some people don't respect the other creatures that share this planet with us.

Awww......so sad. I would be just as disturbed if i had seen that. They would probably be arrested if they had chopped up dogs or cats while they still lived, just to put it into a different perspective.

A friend of mine heard how much I love octopuses and felt compelled to tell me of his mother's octopus, cooked in it's own ink. Ugh!

It unfortunately boils down to the fact that everyone loves the cute and fuzzy mammals and can't stand to see them suffer. But what they label to be strange and alien creatures are assumed to be without intelligence or feeling. More should be said to people to this effect. I hung out for a long time in an aquarium next to the giant pacific octopus (so great to watch!) and was amazed by how little the rest of the visitors knew about them.

Oh my how did your friends octopus cook in his tank?? so sad! :cry:
I completly agree with what you said, where do humans get off determining what creatures are "important" and which ones aren't. If you get arrested for treating cats and dogs like that, then the same should apply for all creatures, really!!?? What is the difference. :x
and who made up the rules????

:oops: ooops read the post wrong, cooked in his own ink???? Yuck :goofysca:

That episode has just aired here in NZ (I only saw the shorts......it was enough!) Not sure if they'd get away with that behaviour here, at least not now!

At the lab/aquarium where I work we've just spent months sorting out animal ethics approval, you know.... what do we keep, how do we keep them, what do we do with them and what sort of medical provisions have we made for them etc etc etc. Anyhow it's all tied in with animal legislation and as of last year any cephalopod is now defined under the terms of the animals protection act to be an "animal"!!!!! They are specifically mentioned. Not sure what they were before last year! An animal-like rock maybe, or a figment of a deranged imagination :bugout: whatever! at least they are protected now!

J

actually someone else mentioned the chopping of live octos in another thread, as has the cooking in ink.... both arent my cup of tea but im sure the people must have their reasons.... as for the detroit hockey games, the octo is in a fish market anyway (probably dead, since live octos might not be too cooperative when it comes to throwing) so i dont think it makes a difference whether it ends up in my belly or on the ice...(if it were me itd be eaten since im not a big fan of throwing $ away)

(probably dead, since live octos might not be too cooperative when it comes to throwing) so i dont think it makes a difference whether it ends up in my belly or on the ice...(if it were me itd be eaten since im not a big fan of throwing $ away)

Perhaps it does'nt matter much to the Octi (I'm sure you're right & it's dead, having had to wrestle a relunctant large octi bank into it's tank :) ) but I think chucking any sort of animal (dead or alive) anywhere, sets up the mental atitude that it's OK to treat animals in such a fashion and for some types it's not to big a step up to mistreating live animals. That's my :grad: for today!!

J

I also heard of this segment. I'm glad I didn't see it. Knowing how inteligent these animals are, it makes me sick to think of them being chopped up alive. Hope these creatures become protected here, like Jean was talking about.

Carol

Though ( and luckily) I didn't watch the show, the thought or a moving tentacle with blue bood or ink isn't my cup of tea.

There's obviously discrimination here, just because of tales of Giant octo's ( most or if not all of which are not true )killing people etc... they are called monsters. Big cats too kill a few people yearly but cats are not hated or eaten alive as people keep them and understand and appreciate them

Same goes for octi's if you know more about them you wouldn't want to kill them.

i was recently at an animal sanctuary open day... they look after all sorts of animals that are hurt and orphaned... the girl who was taking us round at that point was explaining all this while she was swatting flies and killing them absent mindedly........

Where do you draw the line?

There just shouldn't be a line. Respect all

I think you might be a little to activistic.

Maybe I am, however having no line to draw is easier to remember then to try and define one. If you live by those rules within reason, (meaning not trying to step on any bugs while you walk down the street might be a bit much!! :P ) but at least not going out of your way to disrespect. Every single creature plays an important role in our environment no matter how small it may seem and therefore in my books deserves respect.

here here! i agree

Yes! reason is needed.

For instance I feel no mercy for the fleas and ticks that plague my dog!

LOL :lol: ok ok yeah me too!!!! I have 4 cats and a dog and can sympathize :bugout:

Good points all, this thread's a keeper!

Don't forget the mosquitos

unfortunately, the mosquitoes help feed the bats.... what about cockroaches and palmetto bugs?

The cockroaches are a very important detritivore in their environments... so we better not harm them either!

I think your view may be a little over romantic and unpractical Octapush... its a by-product of humans being the most successful animal this time around.

I think all spiders should be squashed underfoot, or preferably with a long-handled spider-splattering device!

Fire Ants !!!!

Hey wait a sec!

Fire ants! thats just crossing the line!

I love to thruogh them on my victims!

Muhahahaha!



Jesse

Actually, I am all for the eradication of horses, rabbits, cats and small yappy type dogs... I am sure I can alter the Spider-splattering device to deal with all of them!

Save the cockroach.... squash the horses!

Yeah but theres nothing like cockroach cereal!

.... and torch those tree octopuses too

... and rattlebacks and karrakillars and all the other nonsence that was on the future is wild (crap) LOL

..been thinking about this project we have here, and i would also like to add fancy oranda goldfish to my 'needs extincted' list

I think that our Great Lord Cthulhu would add Homo sapiens to the planned extinction list

Although I am quite fond of most insects (mosquitos being a VERY strong exception) my brother is not so and actually invented a long handled spider squishing device which anyone can make in their own home!

It consists of a broomstick from which the broom has been removed, then take an old sock or two and wrap them around the tip, sort of balling them up so they extend beyond the tip a bit. Secure these on with a rubber band. Then, when you need to squish a spider, put a paper towel over the sock part, also with a rubber band, squish your spider, then throw away the paper towel.

When he and I shared a home back when we were younger, he would put the microwave timer on 60 seconds and this was how long I had to get the spider outside before he would squish it. It made for some dramatic moments, but I never lost one! :heee:

Is there a reason for fleas???? Most insects have some reason or are food for something. But fleas?????

I can't think of one thing that eats these!

As to killing the spiders...... How sad!!! :(

Carol

I rescued an itty bitty lizard from a spider's web today. He was so pretty and shone copper in the sun. Poor little guy almost got eaten. I find i'm able to conquer the irrational fear of spiders when there's a good reason. The spider was probably a little annoyed, but he'll get over it. heh

I have to admit I hate spiders!!!! soooooo scared of them for no reason what so ever!!! :shock:

hopefully he fared better than the dove i took away from the cat...the baby rattlesnake under the bush got him...

hheheh like the question Carol!!! that had me laughing as i thought about applying it to the other animals i listed :)

What's the reason for horses and cats? hehehe

Octapush... i have spiders at home including a tarantula as big as my hand that I have had for about 7 years and I like her as much as my octopuses... and at least she can live for 30 years rather than 10 months for the standard octopus! Maybe she cant open a jam jar but she does hunt to thrill the audience LOL there are species of tarantula that need protected too.

Don't let me anywhere near that filthy, hairy, eight-legged, multi-eyed vermin-fanged beast Col - I'd plant my foot, yours and anyone else's up its jacksy so fast it wouldn't know what hit it.

All spiders should be instantly extinguished with Raid or Bug Bomb (whatever brand you have available) - doused continuously in spray until they drown or their little air tubes clog, then smeared into the very earth from which they were spawned with that modified spider-splattering device.

Spiders are EVIL. I'd sooner swim with Mesonychoteuthis than handle one of those .... and yes, I did have a hairy brute crawl up my arm at the Field Museum in Chicago (the big T, Tarantula rex) ... and it did nothing to quell my arachnophobia.

Spiders and needles .... the stuff of nightmares

Needles?

Well.....

I guess the majority would never visit my house!! I have a hatchling tarantula living in my greenhouse window. Infact he's outgrowing his test tube and getting rather testy about cramped living quarters! So..... do I relocate and leave next Saturday, for the Keys for a week and risk a fate he may get out of his new quarters and terrorize my spouse and daughtor while I'm gone and end up on the end of a Spider Splattering device????? I think not....... Sure, I squish one here and there, but the majority I try to save.

There was a tiny wolf spider at work running around on the wall, jumping from my daughtors artwork to artwork. I watched this little guy for about a week. One day, (I work with 10 other women, who are anti animal) one came up, with a tissue with a squashed little wolf spider ...... :(

Carol

Last year I was driving on NM-14, also known as the Turquoise trail, a pretty drive without much traffic and only intermittent evidence of humanity. I saw something in the road up ahead, it looked like a kitten, so I swerved to avoid it and as I passed it I got a quick look and realized it was a
TARANTULA!

I would like to be able to keep more bugs (have just the millepede presently) but have been relocating so much lately (3 times already this year and looking at at least one more) that I don't feel comfortable adding to my collection, but there is a chilean rose-hair at the pet stop I've got my eye on....

obviously this was coming...... :twisted:

Dear Doc'O... please print this out and post it on the wall for your maximum enjoyment :)

i think its great we have a movie star on the site..... :popcorn: :)

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Very good!

Argghhhhhhhhh; those things eat birds I hear! Don't miss the sequel "Tweety fights back"

AAAAHH I agree spiders are awful and they simply give me the creeps :bugout:
Colin I have no idea how you could love one of those things more then a cute kitty!!!??? Now if I EVER saw one the size of a kitten and it was him or I..... I'm sorry but I look at it like its my survival !!LOL

I was really laughing at your post Steve about how much you hate spiders!!! I thought you were the guy who loves all creatures??? I mean aren't you guy I watch on animal planet???? :lol: Of course I agreed with what you said haha

LOL i thought YOU were the one who loved all animals Octapush!!! LOL

Anyway i feed kittens to the tarantula! Just making sure i do my bit for eradication of the Felis genus!

All right Colin, you got me :wink: So there is one creature I can't stand, but that doesn't mean my opinion is justified :lol: I can admit it hehe

So you feed your spider cute kitties eh??? I think you are trying to push my buttons LOL!!!

So that's what happened to the other 3 kittens........

:mrgreen:

yes I'm at it!

I may not be so keen on some of these animals but I dont do them any harm... well i should tell that the crickets i do feed to the spider and frogs etc :)

there is a scene in seven years in tibet where the monks are relocating (by hand) a worm colony they accidently unearthed during construction of a movie house for his holiness the dali lama. :notworth: made me :cry: how can you disregard any life w/o effect to your own when everthing is connected? :yinyang:
humans are the only truely mean creatures on the planet, and thusly, are the only creatures deserving of mean treatment. (not that i advocate violence - but my sentiments are influenced by the horror I feel when i read about the mindless/spiritless activities of the least evolved species on this planet. i include myself in that generalization. :roll:

Well, I'd like to chime in here to support Colin -- I love spiders, and have made it clear to the Big Calamari and the Squidling that I do not want them killed in our home. (Two exceptions would be black widows and brown recluses, both of which are seriously venomous.) I see spiders as totems of creativity, and have no problem holding them unless they are dangerously venomous (all spiders, like all Octos, have venom, but not all are dangerous to humans) and/or aggressive (or as Croc Hunter would put it, "bitey"). Plus they kill other, less desirable "visitors" such as cockroaches.

That being said.... I loathe centipedes. They are the only creepy-crawlies in whose extinction I would willingly participate. (Well, maybe scorpions too, but there aren't too many of those in my part of the US.) Why? I don't know. They kill other vermin, just like spiders do. I was never bitten by a centipede either. There's just something about those segments and those legs.... Then again, I don't mind millipedes. Go figure!

Regarding Prism's comment about His Holiness the Dalai Lama -- for whom, BTW, I have the deepest reverence and admiration: Are you aware of the fact that all Tibetan Buddhists, including HHTDL, eat meat, including mammals and poultry? The reason for this is that the land of Tibet, being at a high altitude and very cold, is inimical to most crops with the exception of barley (which is made into sticky cakes called tsampa). So traditionally, Tibetan Buddhists would supplement their diet with meat from either yaks or other mammals killed by a fall (not uncommon in such a mountainous region), or from Muslim butchers (who, in the Buddhists' eyes, would reap the bad karma from killing the animals, thereby absolving themselves). This may seem hypocritical to us, but to Tibetans it was a matter of life and death.

Later, when a large percentage of Tibetans -- including His Holiness and other Lamas, Monks, and Nuns -- were driven out of their land by the Chinese Communists, these diaspora Buddhists continued to consume meat (including meat from commercial sources) even though they lived in countries like India and the US where vegetarian food was easily accessible. So while Tibetan Buddhists will try at all costs to spare the lives of all beings, they make the exception of beings killed for food. In this, they differ from all other Buddhist sects.

BTW, many years ago I had a friend named Ulka who was a Gujarati Jain, with whom I hung out while our kids played together (she and her family later moved away from here). Jains are strict lacto-vegetarians who are not even permitted to eat free-range eggs lest they contain a viable embryo. The idea of trying not to step on bugs -- which may seem ridiculous even to some vegetarians here -- was a very real issue to Jains. In India, many of the most devout ones carry soft brooms to sweep the ground before them when they walk, so as to avoid stepping on insects in their path. Before they boil water, they strain it through cloth so that no small living things in it will be boiled to death (considering what the water is like in many parts of India, it's probably a good idea anyway).

I was at Ulka's apartment here a couple of times, and it was scrupulously clean except for the fact that there were several cockroaches running around! I assume they were either foraging for stored food or escaping from nearby apartments that had been fumigated for bugs. In any event, Ulka made no attempt to kill them or even call an exterminator. Cockroaches in a Noo Yawk apartment are no surprise -- we've dealt with them ourselves -- but refusing to kill them was something I'd never seen before. However, I am not a Jain so I cannot pass judgment on their customs. (In case you're wondering, yes, I did have lunch at her place and it was very delicious, very fresh, and cockroach-free.)

So ultimately I think the idea of what is or is not acceptable to eat, is purely subjective. I personally would draw the line at eating any animal alive -- but then again, I've eaten clams and oysters on the half-shell, and how "dead" are they, really, after just being shucked? (On the other hand, how sentient is a bivalve, even a live one?) I don't know about Octopus in ink. However, as for the Cuban dish calamares en su tinta (Squid in their own ink), I've had this and found it delicious. As far as I know, the Squid is dead and on ice long before cooking, and the ink bladder is removed from the dead Squid during cleaning and gutting. I no longer eat Cephs simply because I regard them as a sort of personal totem, but if there were nothing else to eat I would consider them a legitimate food source.

I assume all of us would draw the line at cannibalism. But what if -- like a South American soccer team whose plane went down in the Andes many years ago -- there was nothing to eat except the bodies of your already-dead fellow travelers? As long as you didn't have to kill anyone, would you sacrifice your own life by wasting protein that would be eaten by worms anyway? (Even if one believes in a soul, which I do, doesn't the cast-off mortal body become part of the earth after death, like a butterfly's chrysalis?) And what about heart, liver, and (some) kidney recipients -- in a sense, don't they "consume" the bodies of the dead donors, so that they themselves might live?

Difficult questions, to which IMHO there are no set answers. A very good thread for philosophical, ethical, and environmental discussion!

Pax et bonum,
Tani

That being said.... I loathe centipedes. They are the only creepy-crawlies in whose extinction I would willingly participate. (Well, maybe scorpions too, but there aren't too many of those in my part of the US.) Why? I don't know. They kill other vermin, just like spiders do. I was never bitten by a centipede either. There's just something about those segments and those legs.... Then again, I don't mind millipedes. Go figure!
Some of you have seen this... this is an article I put up on my Website a few years before TONMO.com was The Octopus News Magazine Online! :)

Foreward:
What follows is a well-received article that I once posted on my personal homepage regarding what I thought were "silverfish" which had infested the apartment I was living in at the time. Enjoy!

-- Tony

Silverfish, or...?
Apparently silverfish have been around for more than 400 million years, making them one of earth's most primitive existing insect orders. They are carrot-shaped and are about one-fourth to one-half of an inch long. They are nocturnal and hang out in humid areas. They can jump and move very fast. They eat starch and paper products, imparting damage on books and wallpaper. They lay about 50 eggs per hatch and have a life span of up to 2 1/2 years.

Are these ancient pests the same ones who have been crawling on my feet, scurrying across my walls and generally mocking me for the past two years? My research indicates NO. Although our scampering pets of Satan may have traits that resemble silverfish, it turns out that the creepy-crawlies in our apartment are simply a class of centipede. So let's set the mighty silverfish aside and investigate the true source of our hauntings.

First, a word about centipedes in general. They're actually pretty interesting, and can range from one to nine inches in length. If I ever ran into a nine-inch centipede I'd be permanently damaged. Also interesting to note is that there are some dangerously venemous centipedes in existence. Finally, it's worth it to mention that I was the best Centipede arcade game-player I knew in the early 80's.

Enough about bugs that don't live with my wife and I. The purpose of this report is to provide detailed info on our horrible housemates. They torment us not only with their presence, but with their lingering presence in our memory, and their potential to make themselves present at any time by way of their alarming and sickening entrances.

The bugs we live with are commonly referred to as "house centipedes". How fascinating. But more interestingly, their scientific name is Scutigera coleoptrata and they are native to Mexico. They are greyish in color and have 15 pairs of long legs. The head has two long antennae and they are 1 to 1.75 inches in length overall.

The Scutigera coleoptrata eat other bugs (such as spiders) and capture them with their poisonous jaws, located just below their heads on their underside. If captured by an enemy, they can quickly detach their legs (I've been on cramped car rides where such an ability would come in handy).

There have been a few documented instances in which they have actually bitten man, causing localized pain resembling a bee sting. That's all I need - a centipede bite.

House centipedes move very quickly and often stop short and remain motionless for long periods of time, then get going again. The best thing about these critters is that they DIE when smacked with a shoe or rolled up newspaper, and generally don't cause clogging when their broken bodies are flushed down the toilet.

In conclusion, our Scutigera coleoptrata are not silverfish, but I'll probably continue to call them that anyway. Somehow it's cooler to be freaked out by a "silverfish" than a "house centipede". Regardless, it's been about a month since we've spotted one; but as I've said, their presence lingers. To my knowledge, it has not been proven that these guys cannot read human thoughts, so please do kill them if you find them.

there is a scene in seven years in tibet where the monks are relocating (by hand) a worm colony they accidently unearthed during construction of a movie house for his holiness the dali lama. :notworth: made me :cry: how can you disregard any life w/o effect to your own when everthing is connected? :yinyang:
humans are the only truely mean creatures on the planet, and thusly, are the only creatures deserving of mean treatment. (not that i advocate violence - but my sentiments are influenced by the horror I feel when i read about the mindless/spiritless activities of the least evolved species on this planet. i include myself in that generalization. :roll:

How did we get on to 'slaughter and torture for sport'??????????

And i'm sure there must be better places for examples than a brad Pitt film?