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Octopus hitchhiking on shark in Hauraki Gulf makes global headlines

International media and scientific organisations are lapping up footage of a real life 'Sharktopus' filmed in the Hauraki Gulf.

Marine biologist Professor Rochelle Constantine said the encounter in December 2023 was a tale to top them all.

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  • Thank you so much; I hadn't heard about that (out of the octopus loop). I can't find it now but I wonder if the instances I mentioned of wild octopuses learning were somehow related to those - if memory serves it was somewhere off the coast of California so some habitat overlap.

    Wow, the LPSO have a lot of evolutionary potential. If their environmental conditions are right who knows what will happen. I don't mean to sound disloyal to my species but if humans do succeed in dragging themselves back into the stone age it might be time for the octopusses to shine. An Octipodean Era!

    • I can't remember exactly where I learnt about the LPSO. Might have been a documentary. Hopefully climate change doesn't wipe them out.

      There is a book by Adrian Tchaikovsky about a planet taken over by genetically modified octopuses that started their own civilisation. They even had their own space ships. Children of Ruin is the title if anyone's interested.

      • Hopefully some of them survive. They sound so amazing.

        Thanks for the book rec - good timing! I only just read Children of Time a few weeks ago - didn't realise the sequel was going to be about octopuses, thought it was just going to be spiders in space! @[email protected] has Children of Time on reading list too.

        • Nice! I think the third one is about corvids. I haven't got around to it yet as I got sidetracked with other books.

          Out of interest what are you guys using to track books? I'm still using good reads. I know it's crap, but haven't looked into anything else.

        • Only an 8 week wait until I can get started!

          I've just put a hold on Children of Ruin too. A 4 week wait 😆

          • 😄Hmm does that say something about the books I wonder or is it more a reflection of how many people only read the first part of trilogies?

            • I think it's pretty normal for the wait time to be longest for the first book. Some number of people read the first one, then a smaller number are interested in the second, and an even smaller number are interested in the third. Almost no one reads the second book before the first so it's always front loaded like that.

              Luckily I can strip the DRM and read it in my own time 🙂.

              • That makes sense. Good, I am looking forward to this octopus book!

                Do you use Calibre as your ebook manager too? 🙂

                • Oh boy, you asked so here it comes. A summary:

                  • Borrow book on Libby
                  • Download adobe DRM formated book
                  • Use libgourou to remove DRM and create epub
                  • Import into Calibre then immediately export - just do this step for the consistent naming structure
                  • Copy to server
                  • Run Kavita on server for managing and reading the books

                  It seems there's a de-DRM plugin for Calibre but I wasn't aware of this. So I could simplify this process a bit but it works so I will probably just keep doing it 🤷

                  • I did not know about libgourou, that sounds like a good tool.

                    Not up to speed with the new format but as far as I know, the Calibre situation is very simple, it strips DRM automatically while a book is being imported.

                    I side load everything onto an old kindle (from 2012, back before they nagged you about the Amazon store) so Calibre is perfect for me.

                    I'm always intrigued by all your server stuff though.

                    • Now I think about it, I think the issue is that I cannot even obtain the DRMed eBook because I use Linux and so can't install whatever adobe software is needed. Not sure if calibre needs you to get the proper book file or not.

                      The server stuff is fun when it works 😅. Docker makes it low risk to just spin up a new service that looks cool, try it out, and delete it if it wasn't what you were looking for. I started on a raspberry pi, then moved to using an old laptop, and now use an old gaming PC for my personal self-hosting (mostly for the photo services, which can be resource heavy).

                      • Oh. Yeah if you're using library books, some of the e-platforms (but not all) insist that Adobe Digital Editions has to be present on your machine to let you download it in the first place. That's probably the hiccup.

                        That does sound like fun with Docker.

                        when it works

                        There's the rub! My problem (apart from resources) is no IT background so I lack a fundamental understanding. A blue screen of death takes me all afternoon to make a linux thumbdrive and boot in and fix everything very laboriously through trial and error and reading forums when it would probably take you 15 minutes tops. Between that and all the old tech it's like I'm in a cargo cult!

28 comments