[News]: Love in the octopus' garden - Reuters UK

[mucktopus]

I don't know the author, and to be honest it doesn't bother me. When you study animal sex and sperm you set yourself up for a whole slew of jokes. After years of being teased (always in good fun of course) for making octoporn I'm immune to it by now. This article is so over the top and obviously untrue that any colleague reading it would know it is not an accurate representation of our work, or us as researchers. The website name says it all, and the other posted articles are warped too. To me this link shows that we've reached a fringe crowd that may not normally think about science, and that in itself is a good thing.

 

[Neogonodactylus]

I like a good joke as much as the next person and certainly have been the object of my share, so this sort of thing doesn't bother me either. The only thing that offended me was that the writing was so horrid. Where have all the good comedy writers gone?

I've been through several of these press release feeding frenzies before and the one thing that always impresses me - besides that sex sells - is how starved the media is for content. The web, radio and television, and print markets are creating an insatiable appetite for "interesting" material. It is too bad that a little story like ours gets picked up by dozens of markets. As biologists I wish we could provide enough material to promote a bit more diversity.

Roy

 

[monty]

Well, I'm glad you two are both thick-skinned. I agree that the horrible writing is by far the worst of it. It's actually a fine topic for parody, but it was done in such a tacky way. But if it doesn't bug either of you, I suppose there's no reason to remove the link, just not recommend it to anyone except connoisseurs of bad satire.

 

[octobot]

[News]: The Octopus Dating Game - Popular Science


[SIZE=-2]Popular Science[/SIZE]
The Octopus Dating Game
[SIZE=-1]Popular Science, NY - Apr 3, 2008[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]By Gregory Mone Posted 04.03.2008 at 9:42 am 0 Comments UC Berkeley scientists have found a species of octopus whose members flirt, hold "hands", ...[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]One Crustacean: Many Powers [SIZE=-1]Science Friday[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]all 2 news articles[/SIZE]


More...

 

[tonmo]

Hey guys -- I'm just catching up with what Mr. Octobot pulled in a few days ago. I'm sorry the crude article made its way on here, the link has been removed.

Every so often that site will produce some really lame article about a giant squid or octopus, and it gets picked up by octobot. As others here have said, most of those articles are not funny. Kind of a waste of cybertext.

Thanks for alerting me, and sorry for missing it... falling a bit behind!