Best Ceph Books

Tentacle Toast

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I finally had a chance to sit down & paruse my copy of Colin Dunlop & Nancy King's "Cephalopods: Octopuses and Cuttlefish for the Home Aquarium". I'm really glad I bought this book; there's a lot of information, as the name suggests, specific to my needs as a soon-to-be cephalopod adoptee that I'm happy to have on hand & in print. Beautiful pictures too...there's even a section entitled "photographing your cephalopod" with lots of pro-tips to help capture the memories. So now I've got to ask...are there any other ceph-centered books out there on par? I ordered through Amazon, so there was the standard "customers who bought this also ordered..." list of recommendations, but they seemed nowhere near as in-depth. I'm looking for the most scholarly texts available...
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If you're looking for a good scholarly book, I'd recommend Cephalopod Behaviour by Roger Hanlon and John Messenger. It's a little dated, but has lots of wonderful information that covers nearly all of their natural history. It's not very helpful for taking care of your octopus, but has lots of scientific info about natural history.

Amazon.com
 
Thank you, cephbirk, that's exactly what I'm in search of. As far as being dated is concerned, as long as the information is still relevant, I'm there. '98 wasn't THAT long ago...
 
Nice! I'm glad I checked back here before ordering. I was sort of hoping to have a little more of a list together before marching my fingers over to Amazon, but between this empty thread & a rather sparse Google search, I'm sensing that there isn't going to be much of a list to gather. Kind of shocking considering how fascinating these animals are, let alone their place in culture...
 
A dated favorite of anyone trying to id an octopus is Mark Norman's Cephlapods,a World Guide.Sadly, a reasonably priced copy is very hard to find.
 
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Sadly, a reasonably priced copy is very hard to find.

$245 is up there; I almost wish you DIDN'T tell me about that one (can I somehow rationalize that as necessary equipment???)! What's crazy is that book probably topped out around $50 bucks when it first came out. Years ago I kept geckos of the Rhacodactylus genus (I just HATE keeping my money), & being very rare in the pet trade at the time (late 90's), there was but mere mentions of them in any literature. So when a book by two of the most prominent gecko authorities was published, I jumped. Cost $40 at a reptile show in White Plains...fast-forward 12 years, I see copies (Rhacodactylus: Biology, Natural History,Thank you for the suggestion! & Husbandry)going for upwards of $460! On the plus side to books like these, the information contained will stay mostly relevant, & the books themselves will probably continue to appreciate...
 
A dated favorite of anyone trying to id an octopus is Mark Norman's Cephlapods,a World Guide.Sadly, a reasonably priced copy is very hard to find.


I LOVE this one. Its my ceph bible. I'm dieing to have an updated version .... :sly: or an online data base that has similar info :silenced:, because a few things have been changed and been discovered since Norman wrote it. i have about 100 stickies all through the octopus section with my personal notes and updated names and info and what not. Looks like its been through a few wars too. :roflmao:
 
That's the sign of a precious book!...your bible, eh? Must be priceless then, in the ceph world. (I'd bet THOSE stickies are worth more than their weight, too..)
 
Ha! Just noticed the edit, thank you. I see my finger slipped with the title of that book I mentioned too; the suggestion's thanks was intended for after the succession of periods (whose correct name evades me). The perils of posting on a "mobile device".:hmm:
 
The soft intelligence by Jacques Cousteau is a favorite. Note: it's dated and we learned a lot much more since then, but Cousteau and Diole have a fascinating way to describe his team's encounters with cephs. Cousteau starts by explaining how modern writers (Lovecract, Hugo's "Toilers of the sea") gave a bad reputation and more or less rendered the octopus as a nightmarish monster in the public's imagination. Then he describes his expeditions in the Mediterranean and Seattle that he saw that the monsters where actually shy, playful and probably highly intelligent. Cousteau's observations offer glimpses to their behavioral repertoire (I have another post in another thread on how octos probably don't sense 'extreme' heat levels) and he did simple tests on site. Again, the book is not a scientific approach to cephalopods, but it does contain a lot of the research that Brits were doing in Stazione back then. Cousteau used to say he's not a scientist, but an impresario of science.

Other books:
Henry Lee's Aquarium Notes: The Octopus Or the "Devil-Fish" of Fiction and of Fact
A Guide to Squid, Cuttlefish and Octopuses of Australasia
Cephalopod Neurobiology
Octopus: The Ocean's Intelligent Invertebrate
http://www.amazon.com/Brains-Lives-...d=1352435052&sr=8-2&keywords=cephalopod+brain
The Little Blue-Eyed Vampire from Hell
Kraken
 
Soft intelligence is also one of my favorites and one I usually think to recommend. As Starvos says, it is really dated but very much of it is still relevant and it gives a wonderful history of how we came about learning something about the octopus and began exploring the underwater environment. It is well translated and a great read. It is also something out of print but unlike our ID bible, it is easy to find used on eBay or Amazon and very inexpensive.

Also a big thumbs up to the Henry Lee pamphlet (more pamphlet than book). You may be able to find this in PDF form for free (I bought a copy after reading it on-line). Very interesting reading with a bit of flare and myth and well worth the read. I have not double checked its availability but the link is to my post while reading it in 2010
 
What's crazy is thaaround $50 bucks t book probably topped out when it first came out.
I think the price was closer to $65 so it was never cheap. It is full of photos and descriptions but has a physically poor binding. I wish he would redo it with just octopuses (I believe he did publish on for Aussie octos but have only seen one reference and never for sale). I kept an on-going Amazon search for it several years ago and finally got a great price (marked used but was new). We have found several for other members between $45 and $62 ish but lately it has not shown up anywhere but for the too steep price referenced.

I also added an on-going Amazon scan for the Hanlon/Messenger book (Cephalopod Behavior) and eventually purchased a new "used" copy at a decent price.
 

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