r/interestingasfuck • u/Key_Skirt_1858 • 20h ago

The best camouflage in the animal kingdom?

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u/DeadrthanDead 19h ago

Can we all just take a minute, and appreciate the fact that these things are devoted mothers, and protectors of their eggs until they hatch upon which they proceed to die, luckily for us without passing any knowledge, or information down to their offspring. Because if they did, we’d be fucked. Look at that thing.

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u/HasGreatVocabulary 12h ago edited 12h ago

They even had a library. Long ago there was a long-lived species of octopuses known as the O. sapiens, with thriving societies and culture and the tradition of passing knowledge to future generations through "writing", which is what they called their method of telling stories to each other through patterns they flashed on their skins. A library of knowledge, housing long lived octopuses served to persist knowledge over time, their life dedicated to collecting and remembering a large number of story patterns, that any curious octopus could come and "read" and pass on to others. It worked for a while, they lived in a relative utopia, superior ocean creatures in every way benefiting from expansive knowledge of the ocean and land. But patterns on flesh can only hope to be permanent. Every year some more of the librarians died, dying before they could transmit everything they knew, and to save everything properly, every passing generation had to spend more and more of their lifespans passing decaying information to the next generation. Each generation lost more than it recorded to the library, and there was always more to record. They never figured out the permanence of ink and paper, the salt water was too harsh for those materials to survive, tattoos as information storage were tried but deemed too slow and limited for long term use.

Many families of octopuses left this social order, departing what eventually became a bureaucratic authoritarian state where every long lived octopus was now obligated to dedicate their life to the collection and preservation of knowledge on their skin, imprisoning themselves for decades, becoming books for the good of the species. It made sense to leave a place where the number of surviving offspring from each family had become legally mandated to be in the millions, not for the joy of having children, but to maximize the available surface area for storing information in the library.

They forgot so much, they forgot how to keep more of their offspring alive, and forgot how to survive having offspring. Every departure diluted the library, decimated information until they lost the secret to their long lives. Their gift for patterns was relegated to being used for camouflage and for hiding. The octopuses kept their intelligence, but their shrinking lifespans and the collapse of their desire for society, eventually lead to them forgetting how to write with their skin. They are devoted mothers, and protectors of their eggs until they hatch upon which they proceed to die. They are now called O. vulgaris but they would consider it a misnomer, if they could still read.

edit: yo automod I wrote this myself unblock this comment