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Studios. Wake

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up, new squid species just dropped.

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What's most remarkable about it is the

1:50

size of the eggs that this mother

1:53

squid was carrying in her arms.

1:55

It's Thursday, June 27th, and

1:58

you're listening to Science Friday.

2:00

I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Buxbaum.

2:03

We're concluding our celebration of

2:06

Cephalopod Week with two stories,

2:08

both about new discoveries in

2:10

the cephalopod family. This first

2:12

one takes place over 30 years

2:14

ago. The large Pacific

2:17

striped octopus, the LPSO for

2:19

short, is an incredibly

2:22

social animal. They live in pairs,

2:24

mate by kissing beak to beak,

2:27

and even take care of several

2:29

eggs they lay. But these traits

2:31

aren't normal for octopuses, and for

2:34

a while scientists didn't even think

2:36

this type of octopus even existed.

2:38

But one person did, Arcadio Rodonice,

2:41

a diver and artist who lived

2:43

in Panama. Here's

2:45

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis with

2:47

more. Here to

2:49

tell us about Arcadio's work

2:51

and his fight for the

2:54

LPSO's recognition is Kenna Hughes-Castleberry,

2:56

freelance writer and science communicator

2:58

at JILA at the University

3:00

of Colorado Boulder, who recently

3:02

wrote an article for sciencefriday.com

3:04

about the unique octopus's story.

3:06

Kenna, welcome to Science Friday.

3:09

Thank you so much, Kathleen, for having me on. So

3:12

before we get into this, can you tell

3:14

us about what makes this octopus unique? Absolutely.

3:17

So most octopuses

3:19

are known as being solitary creatures.

3:22

They live in dens by themselves. They

3:24

only interact when they mate, and even

3:26

then when they mate, they often mate

3:29

at a distance. So usually

3:32

the male may fling an arm

3:34

full of sperm at a female.

3:37

Very romantic. Absolutely. Or

3:40

sometimes they stretch an arm

3:42

that has the sperm packet

3:44

at the female, you know,

3:46

again, from that safe distance

3:48

because cannibalism and maiming

3:50

has happened before. So

3:53

with these octopuses, they're

3:55

super different from that, right? Because,

3:58

as you mentioned, they're, they're... you

6:00

don't get the sense that he doesn't

6:03

have like an academic background in cephalopod

6:05

research. Most of the articles that we

6:07

have about him mention him in

6:09

only one paragraph and they only say that

6:11

he's an octopus researcher, so most people think

6:14

he had like a PhD and whatnot and

6:16

he didn't. He was just

6:18

a really passionate diver and

6:20

found a colony of these octopuses

6:22

with a very famous cephalopod researcher

6:25

named Martin Moynihan in the 70s

6:27

and he thought this

6:29

is so strange and so odd the fact that

6:31

these octopuses live together and they

6:33

do all sorts of weird behaviors I have

6:35

to learn more and so he actually

6:38

was able to capture some of

6:40

these specimens and keep them

6:42

in labs at the Smithsonian

6:44

Tropical Research Institute in Naus off

6:46

of Panama City Panama and studied

6:49

them and saw more of these behaviors

6:52

and tried to write up everything and

6:54

he presented his findings at the 1990

6:56

Woods Hole Symposium

6:59

in Massachusetts and no

7:01

one believed him because the octopuses

7:04

were so weird he didn't

7:06

really have any pictures like we

7:08

don't have any photos of

7:10

these octopuses for a long time until

7:12

2016 and so he just had

7:15

mainly his drawings that he showed and then also

7:17

again he wasn't like a research academic so people

7:19

didn't really see him as being like a source

7:21

of expertise and so they just

7:23

kind of laughed him out of the conference and

7:26

he was really disgruntled and dejected and

7:29

so he still wanted to try to

7:31

make a stand though for these octopuses and

7:33

get them classified and so he wrote up

7:36

everything in a paper and he

7:38

tried to publish it and it was really

7:41

severely rejected there's only one copy

7:43

of this paper in existence and

7:45

I have not seen it but

7:47

it has all of the reviewers comments on it

7:49

and from what I know

7:51

they're pretty they're pretty bad and

7:53

so he didn't go into research

7:56

after that you know he just kind

7:58

of retired and worked on rebuilding a

8:00

submarine and worked on his art. And

8:03

then in 2016, a team of

8:05

researchers at UC Berkeley, headed

8:07

by Roy Caldwell, who had actually seen

8:09

Arcadio do the initial studies with the

8:11

LPSOs back in the 80s, reached

8:15

out and said, we were able to

8:17

get live specimens of your octopus. Wow.

8:20

We see that they are doing everything

8:22

you originally said, could you be

8:24

an author on this paper with us? And

8:27

yeah, they were able to validate it. So

8:29

one of the scientists that you spoke to

8:31

said that it was a shame to the

8:33

scientific community that his research wasn't

8:36

recognized for 30 years. I

8:38

mean, that seems like a pretty important

8:40

statement to make. What do you make of that? Yeah,

8:43

I think it's one where

8:46

it's a really good example of showing

8:48

that there is elitism

8:51

in science, unfortunately. And

8:53

that even if you have a really good idea,

8:56

sometimes if you just don't have the degrees, you

8:59

can't push forward, no matter how

9:01

hard you try, or no matter how much evidence

9:03

you have. I think,

9:05

thankfully, the cephalopod community seems to

9:07

be opening more doors

9:09

to citizen scientists like Arcadio, especially

9:12

in the case of finding new species

9:14

or exploring areas that just aren't accessible.

9:17

This is because most research academics in

9:19

this field don't live in

9:22

areas where octopuses naturally are, or they might

9:24

only visit for a few weeks at a

9:26

time to do field work. And

9:28

so if they can pair with citizen scientists

9:30

like local fishermen, divers, underwater

9:33

photographers, they can be able

9:35

to track these animals more

9:37

thoroughly, understand how they survive

9:39

in the wild. So at least with

9:41

the LPSOs, we actually have never seen them in the

9:43

wild. We don't know what they're like in the wild.

9:45

All of the experiments we have are only with home,

9:48

aquaria, or in tanks. Wow.

9:51

And so it'd be very interesting, at least in

9:53

this case, to try to pair with people down

9:55

in Panama to see what actually

9:57

is going on. So

9:59

why? Why is it that the large

10:01

Pacific striped octopus was so hard to

10:03

find? I mean, what makes it so

10:05

elusive? Yeah, that's a really good question.

10:08

So I think one thing is a lack

10:10

of information, right? We only have our CAUTIOS

10:13

paper and really the 2016 paper

10:16

that Caldwell and his team did that

10:18

validated our CAUTIOS findings on this

10:20

animal. Those are kind of the only two pieces of

10:23

scientific literature out there right now.

10:26

And it's really a lack of going down and seeing these

10:28

animals in the wild. That would give us a lot more

10:30

data and a lot more information. But

10:33

as the researchers will also tell you, there's

10:35

also been a lack of live samples.

10:37

So it's been hard for people these

10:40

days to actually obtain these animals and

10:42

study them even further. The

10:44

only reason Caldwell and his team were able to

10:46

is because one of the live animal

10:48

traders was able to obtain some samples from

10:50

local fishermen and said, hey, I have this

10:52

weird octopus that you keep asking

10:54

about. I was finally able to get it. And

10:58

so hopefully in the future, if people

11:00

get grants or if

11:02

they're able to obtain more samples, we'll be able to find more out

11:05

about these animals. What

11:07

is the state of research right now

11:09

on the LPSO? Yeah,

11:11

so it's kind of stalled

11:13

a little bit, again, due to lack

11:15

of funding, lack of just

11:18

information. But there is

11:20

a team headed by Goldolan at UC

11:23

Berkeley that is trying to

11:25

actually genetically name this species. And

11:27

by genetically name, I mean genetically analyze and then

11:29

give it a scientific name. So

11:32

the large Pacific striped octopus does not have a

11:34

scientific name. It's only known as the LPSO, which

11:36

is its common name. It has

11:38

a cousin known as the lesser Pacific

11:40

striped octopus, also LPSO. But

11:43

its scientific name is Octopus churchii. And

11:46

so Dolan's team is currently genetically

11:48

analyzing Octopus churchii because it would make

11:50

for a good model organism for

11:52

research. Like the

11:55

LPSO cousin produces multiple clutches

11:57

of eggs. It's pretty small.

11:59

It's easy to make. It'd

12:01

just be a good model organism for

12:03

research. But once they do that, they'd

12:05

like to analyze the larger Pacific striped

12:08

octopus to see if it's genetically distinct

12:10

enough. And if it is, give

12:12

it a scientific name. And according to Dolan,

12:14

she'd like to name it after Arcadia rhamice.

12:18

That's really special. So after

12:20

you've spent all this time, no pun

12:22

intended, diving into the story of the

12:24

large Pacific striped

12:27

octopus, what are your own takeaways? Yeah,

12:29

I think it's one for me where,

12:31

again, I'm still kind of surprised that

12:33

nobody has covered this story

12:35

before. It's just such

12:37

a underdog story and it's such a comeback

12:39

story. And it's really a good kind

12:42

of showcase for citizen

12:44

science, for perseverance and

12:47

for scientific dedication. It's

12:49

also one where I think it just breaks

12:51

the norm in so many ways about what

12:53

we already know about octopuses and the fact

12:55

that there are other species out there that

12:57

could be really social and really critical for

13:00

just learning more about animal behavior. And

13:02

so I really hope more people kind of get

13:04

inspired by his story and pursue this further. Well,

13:07

thank you so much for taking the time to tell us

13:09

all about it. Thank you so much, Kathleen.

13:12

Kenna Hughes, Castleberry, freelance writer.

13:15

You can read her

13:17

article about the LPSO

13:19

at sciencefriday.com/Octopus. Support

13:22

for Science Friday comes from the Rita Allen

13:24

Foundation. More at ritaallen.org. To

13:31

finish up our celebration of cephalopod week,

13:33

we wanted to share a bit of

13:35

breaking squid news. A group

13:38

of researchers recently identified a new

13:40

squid species in the family gonotidae.

13:43

Scientists took a closer look at some video footage captured

13:45

back in 2015 and they found a

13:48

deep water squid who was cradling

13:51

some rather large eggs, not

13:53

in line with other squid of the same species.

13:55

Hmm. So joining me now to tell us more

13:57

about this squid discovery.