In a new monthly, frightfully fractious animal complaints column,Elliot Connor delves arm in arm into why octopi are suckers
Dear Anthia,
Why is it that octopuses are always the bad guys in films? For some reason, they seem to freak most people out which must be bad for their PR. Oh… and what is the plural of octopus (octopus, octopuses, octopi or octopodes)? That question seems to really bug the grammar Nazis.
LOL- Dr Achtbeine
Hello, Dr Arschgeig,
Time, like toilet paper, is a precious thing. Some hoard it, waste it even; others recognise its value and so expend it wisely, frugally, in moderation. Writing to newspaper columns about octopus oppression places you firmly in the former category, as a bane to society. So with that poo-pooing complete, let me address your absurd remarks…
Famous for its guile, its gangly arms and its grudge with grammarians, the octopus has captured the hearts and souls of generations — which is probably why it now has three hearts itself. It graced the stage in the worst ever Spider-Man film, as a Bach-playing organ fanatic in the pirate movie nobody can spell, and just last year starred in the Oscar-winning documentary Octosox about how our eight-legged friends propped up the sock industry during its slump in the pandemic when everyone had zip-tied their purse strings. All of which goes to show that there’s one lie to every two truths told.
The same applies to your letter — yes, octopuses make excellent evil geniuses; yes, they piss off people trying to pluralise them; but by no means is weirding people out bad for PR. Just look at America’s last president.
First things first —why do nasty octopi get cast? Well, let me rather ask you a question. Do you fear waterslides, mops and drive-through carwashes? Of course, you do! And all these things have clear traits in common: they’re wet and they’re tentacle-y. Ergo ipso facto quid pro quo et cetera, octopi give people the creeps.
It goes beyond that, however. ‘Octopus’ rhymes with hippopotamus — a creature notorious for killing people, tallying 500 human fatalities each year. It also rhymes with hopeless, ignoramus, and autobus — all words with bad associations. Come to think of it, ‘octopus’ is only a few letters off Oedipus, the Greek 'hero' who killed his father and married his mother. So the creature’s clearly fallen in with the wrong crowd.
Other traits probably don’t help either. Octopuses have blue blood, just like spiders, scorpions, vampires and the Queen. No popularity points there. The very name, ‘octopus,’ is an anagram of itself (switch the ‘o’s) which surely is evidence of witchcraft. And some scientists believe that they’re aliens, or rather squids mutated by DNA carried on an ancient meteorite. Pretty tenta-cool if you ask me.
But time and tide wait for no man, so whilst we’ve delved into octopuses’ villain credentials and discovered what makes them queer as quaggas, one important question remains answered- to pluralise or not to pluralise? To be or not to bees? Octopus, octopuses, octopodes or octopi?
All of these forms are considered right by different dictionaries and warring grammar gangs. I disagree. Octopus cannot be both singular and plural because chaos would ensue. Heaven knows we have enough problems already with plurals — ‘woman’ and ‘women’ is especially cruel, besides which some words outright refuse to exist in the singular form. You can have a pair of scissors, but one sciss? I don’t think so. No, the ‘one octopus, two octopus’ formulation is simply asking for trouble, like the nerdy kid walking into class on his first day with big spectacles labelled ‘fragile: do not break.’
As for octopi, if such a word existed it would mean approximately 25.1327412 (eight times pi, and an utterly useless value all-round). Or perhaps it would be some sort of experimental, mixed cuisine. Either way, it is NOT a group of octopuses because octopus is a word derived from Greek so using the Latin pluralisation ‘octopi’ makes you less intelligent than Caesar AND HE’S DEAD.
That leaves us with just two forms, from which you’re free to pick and choose. If perchance you are a pretentious nitwit, then octopodes would be the correct Greek plural and if you’d rather not have your head flushed down a toilet then octopuses is the safer option. Better yet, steer clear of the subject altogether. Octopodes are solitary animals after all, so whoever started the whole futile debate was as sadistic and manipulative as the inventor of English grammar.
So where does that leave us? On the first count, the octopus (or octopus for Dutch-speakers) has long been held as the villain of legend. From the infamous Kraken to the sea monster of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Ursula in The Little Mermaid and countless other fictitious beasts, octopuses frighten folks. Even beyond the tales, few creatures can fell 26 people within minutes, just from being held. Australia’s blue-ringed octopus can and does (though not often 26 in a session unless the victims are stood like dominoes).
On the other hand, octopuses are weird enough to be noteworthy without being badass. I mean, they look like mop heads that have just finished mopping up marshmallows, so you can see why they evolved active camouflage. We’ve all heard of a headless chicken, but octopuses have a ‘brain’ in each arm, allowing them to pick their nose after being decapitated (assuming they still had a nose, or rather that they had a nose in the first place… OK, bad example).
They’ve been known to rob fishermen, juggle hermit crabs, intentionally flood aquariums and engineer electrical outages, alongside solving Rubik’s cubes faster than any human could. One octopus in a UK aquarium learnt to break out of its tank at night and snack on fish from a nearby tank before returning innocently in time for the keeper’s morning arrival. And who could forget Paul, the German octopus, who correctly predicted the results of all seven of Germany’s games and the final of the 2010 FIFA World Cup?
In the end, our world is filled with ignorant people who call octopuses octopi, who think they have six or 10 legs and serve them up on fish menus alongside cuttlefish, starfish, crayfish, jellyfish and shellfish, none of which belong to that elite class. Octopuses are smarter than we are, so they become the de facto bad guys to heal our wounded self-esteem. In the age-old words of Harry Wormwood, “I’m smart, you’re dumb; I’m big, you’re little; I’m right, you’re wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
The End.
(The author is a wildlife carer, naturalist, researcher, writer, scientist, host of the Animalsense podcast and a TEDx speaker.)