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Cephalopod (Squid; Octopus) Sex

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Anonymous

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A team of scientists from New Zealand is hoping to use sex to record the first ever images of a live giant squid.

Marine biologist Dr Steve O'Shea is leading the group hoping to lure the huge cephalopod into view by taking advantage of what he believes is an annual migration of the animals to a particular area in New Zealand waters.

He thinks the female giant squid - like its cousin the cuttlefish - may secrete a sexual scent to attract a mate.

"We want to have several cameras suspended in the water column - maybe triggered by some sort of acoustic signal - such that when any animal comes into the range of the camera, the camera turns on," Dr O'Shea told BBC World Service's Discovery programme.

X-rated

"Because the animals are migrating into New Zealand waters to breed, they are very randy," the Auckland University of Technology researcher said.

"The freezer bag at home - to my wife's disgust - is actually full of giant squid gonad samples. We're going to grind all of this up, and we're going to have this puree coming out from the camera, squirting into the water.

"Hopefully the male giant squid, absolutely driven into a frenzy, is going to come up and try to mate with the camera.

"This is the dream - we're going to get this sensational footage of the giant squid trying to do obscene things with the camera."

Story continues here
 
More squid porn

And lifted from the front page:

Get your tentacles off her

By Milanda Rout
October 21, 2003


A FIGHT has erupted between art lovers and moralists over a painting depicting a woman and an octopus engaged in a sexual act.

Pedestrians were taking in the controversial picture yesterday in Melbourne.

The painting, worth ,500, is in full public view in the window of an Armadale gallery.

Police and the gallery directors have received dozens of calls complaining the work is pornographic and offensive.

Entitled The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, the work is by Victorian artist David Laity.

The work, an adaptation of an 1814 Japanese woodcut print, is seen by hundreds of people passing the High St gallery every day. A government-funded regional gallery is negotiating to buy it.

Metro 5 Gallery director Brian Kino said more than 50 threatening phone calls had been received about the work.

"People have rung up and said they will throw rocks at the work," he said. "Someone even said they will bomb the place."

Police have visited the gallery after complaints, but have decided not to take any action.

Australian Family Association national vice-president Bill Muehlenberg said the picture should be removed.

"They should keep it in the confines of the private art gallery," he said, "and not inflict it on the unsuspecting public."

But artist David Laity defended his work, saying it was not offensive.

"I don't think it's controversial or is going to have any effect on anyone," he said.

"I can't see hundreds of women jumping off St Kilda pier in search of octopus as a result."

Mr Kino also said the controversy was ridiculous. "My view is one of amazement," he said.

"How can human beings be shocked by an image identical to one that is almost 200 years old? Haven't we advanced at all from 1814 to 2003?"

Mr Kino said almost all of Laity's exhibition had sold, including the piece in question.

Herald Sun
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http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7618761%5E26462,00.html

[edit: Same news report but a better picture here:

http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,7618760%5E2862,00.html

Actually who is the author? This would suggest it is japanese:

The second, The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, drawn by Hokusai around 1820, depicts a lady in startlingly intimate congress with two octopuses. The British Sunday Times Colour Magazine fully intended to reproduce this on its book review page but developed cold feet at the very last moment and cravenly pulped the lot.
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http://www.paragonbook.com/html/newsinfo/bookreviews/fullreview.cfm?ItemID=1885

It does appear to be by Hokusai (unless it is a different picture) see it in large form:

WARNING: As if you needed telling but the image is of an adult nature.

http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~alia/Gallery/Ukiyo_e/Hokusai/Fisherman_Wife_Dream.jpg

and I think a lot of people will recognise some of his other work like Kanagawa Wave:

http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~alia/Gallery/Ukiyo_e/Hokusai/Kanagawa_Wave.jpg

and his picture of Mount Fuji:

http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~alia/Gallery/Ukiyo_e/Hokusai/Fuji.jpg

So who is David Laity? ]

[edit2: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I see - the short report in the Guardian is clearer (although a quick reading of the main report would have revealed the answer):

Melbourne row over art 'porn'

David Fickling in Sydney
Wednesday October 22, 2003
The Guardian

Police in Australia have investigated pornography claims against an art gallery which exhibited a painting drawn from a 19th-century woodcut by the Japanese artist Hokusai.

The painting, The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, is by an Australian, David Laity, and is valued at £5,400. It is being shown in a Melbourne gallery. Like the 1814 original, it depicts a woman copulating with an octopus.

Mr Laity said: "It's a really lovely wild image. It's meant to be a dream image."

The gallery's director, Brian Kino, said: "Haven't people progressed in 200 years that they're still shocked by this sort of thing?"

After taking legal advice, the police agreed that the painting could be shown.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1067918,00.html

so anyone actuall found a full version of Laity's work?

Ok I now have its here (similar warning as a bove - its interesting that he has removed the second octopus and the pubic hair - a dirty great big octpus being rude with a woman is OK but pubes aren't??:

http://www.metro5gallery.com.au/David Laity/Dream of.htm]
 
Along similarish lines (cephalopod conjugals?):

Octopuses get erections

Inflatable organ may aid camouflage.

25 September 2003

JOHN WHITFIELD


Octopuses can get erections, US researchers have discovered. They are the first soft-bodied animal found to have erectile tissue.

The inflatable organ, called the ligula, lies at the tip of a male octopus' mating arm. When it's not aroused, the two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculatus) "has an exceptionally tiny ligula that's very hard to see", says Janet Voight of the University of Chicago1.

But Voight glimpsed a rather different ligula while watching a failed mating. "It was quite prominent," she recalls.

Its structure is remarkably similar to mammal penises and clitorises, Voight and her colleague Joseph Thompson found. It has cavities that fill with blood held together by collagen.

Male octopuses produce a packet of sperm and insert it into their mate using this specialized arm. When all goes according to plan, the ligula is deployed inside the female, obscuring its function and size. It might help to transfer sperm, or it might scrub out the sperm of previous mates.

The organ is bright white, lacking the colour-changing cells that camouflage the rest of the octopus. In the two-spot, which hunts by day, this might be a beacon to predators. Shrinking it away might minimize this risk.

"For defensive purposes, you want a tiny copulatory organ, but you also want to transfer large quantities of sperm," says Voight. In most octopuses, which are nocturnal or live in the deep sea, the ligula is muscular, like a continuation of the arm, and comes in just one size.

References
Thompson, J. T. & Voight, J. R. Erectile tissue in an invertebrate animal: the Octopus copulatory organ. Journal of Zoology, 261, 101 - 108 (2003).|Article|
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http://www.nature.com/nsu/030922/030922-11.html

See also:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/06/1068013324484.html

Emps
 
When it's not aroused, the two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculatus) "has an exceptionally tiny ligula that's very hard to see"

Especially in cold water.
 
And some giant octopus nookie:

Aging octopus finds love at last

Thursday, May 13, 2004 Posted: 1746 GMT (0146 HKT)



ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- It looks like J-1 is in love.

After meeting the very fetching and slightly younger Aurora, he changed color and his eight arms became intertwined with hers. Then, the two retreated to a secluded corner to get to know each other better.

We're talking about giant Pacific octopuses here.

Aquarists at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward introduced the two Tuesday, and evidently they hit it off: Spermatophores were seen hanging from J-1's siphon.

"We really were not sure he had it in him," SeaLife Center aquarium curator Richard Hocking said Wednesday.

Love almost passed J-1 by. At 5 years of age and 52 pounds (23.4 kilograms), he's reaching the end of the line for his species, the largest octopus in the world. J-1 is in a period of decline that occurs before an octopus dies. His skin is eroding. His suckers have divots.

"He's not as strong as he used to be," said aquarist Deanna Trobaugh.

With so little time left, J-1, who was collected on a beach near Seldovia in 1999 when he was about the size of a coin, wasn't going to let the sweet Aurora slip through his eight arms.

Aurora sank to the bottom when aquarium staff put her into J-1's 3,600-gallon (13,627 -liter) exhibit tank and promptly made the first move, reaching out to touch J-1 before retreating to her corner. But J-1 was soon in hot pursuit.

"They both were gripping the back wall of the tank. He just about covered her completely," Hocking said.

The two remained intertwined for about eight hours. It's possible that during that time he passed his sperm packet to her, Hocking said. When they separated, J-1 flashed some colors, turning almost white and then dark red.

"It looks like instinct took over during that encounter and they did what they were supposed to do," Hocking said.

If Aurora did accept J-1's spermatophores, she will produce 60,000 to 100,000 eggs. If with many, many children, Aurora -- who was about the size of a grapefruit when she was found in 2002 living inside an old tire in front of the SeaLife Center -- will stop eating while she tends her eggs. She will then weaken and die -- a fate that J-1 also seems soon to meet.

"The goal for this was to let him lead a full life," Hocking said.
Click to expand...

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/05/13/octopus.love.ap/index.html
 
And posted in the Giant Squid thread:

Giant squid leaves sexcapades to chance

May 04 2004 at 06:12PM

Stralsund - The giant squid is not especially choosy when it comes to sex and will mate blind without checking if the object of its affection is male or female, a German researcher said on Tuesday.
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http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=380395#post380395
Link is obsolete. The current link is:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/giant-squid-architeuthis.2754/post-380395

Emps
 
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octo

of course from TONMO we know the GPO is no longer the world's biggest octopus.. the giant gelatinous octopus, haliphron atlanticus, is slightly bigger.
 
Oh!
Those giant squid, they really put it about. Don't go to any cephalopod bars any time soon...
;)

Big old Squiggly things

Is the giant squid the swinger of the deep seas? Although scientists know less about these fabled creatures than they do about dinosaurs, they have new clues to at least one intriguing aspect of squid life. Squid love, it turns out, starts with a 5-foot-long penis and may include homosexuality, cannibalism, even group sex. Ahem.

The blue planet

Man has long been taken with Architeuthis dux, an invertebrate as long as a city bus. Legend has it that squids can capsize tall ships. But reality may be frightening enough: The male squid's penis is tipped with a cartilage-like plug it uses to cut the female's arms and deposit packets of sperm. In the confusion of mating, experts believe, the female may bite off some of the male's other appendages.

Trauma. Interestingly, sperm has been found all over the bodies of both male and female squid. "Homosexuality in squid happens all the time," says Steve O'Shea of the Auckland University of Technology. But Clyde Roper of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History disagrees, saying that males caught in nets may simply ejaculate in response to the trauma.

Of course, no one knows for sure because it is widely believed that a mature Architeuthis has never been seen alive. Not that scientists haven't tried. Failed schemes to photograph squid include attaching cameras to whales, who eat them, and dispatching submersibles to look for the beasts.

For a while, O'Shea caught baby Architeuthis and tried to raise them in captivity. They all died. So now he's branching out. "In the freezer, we have 40 to 50 kilograms of squid gonad*," he says. "We're going to squirt out a soup of male and female gonads, and hopefully one will be attracted . . . and come up to the camera." The squid could attempt to mate with the camera, he says. Or, one hopes, with another squid. -Caroline Hsu

From USNews.com

*What a load of balls!

Alright! I'll get my lab coat...
 
Octopus vid nasty probe

By NICK PARKER

SEVEN workers were suspended after being caught ogling sick internet images of a naked woman with an octopus.

And dozens more could be sacked after bosses at Ford's Dagenham plant in East London pledged a top-level probe.

Both production line and office staff are among those suspended for misuse of company computers.

A worker said last night: "The video is vile but a lot of the lads thought it was a scream.

"They gathered round computer screens and roared with laughter.

"But management didn’t see the funny side."

Ford stopped making cars at Dagenham three years ago but still has more than 5,000 workers making diesel engines for its range of family cars.

A company spokesman said: "We view this seriously as we have clear rules about use of company computers.

"Dismissal is among disciplinary options available to us."
Click to expand...

Source
Link is dead. The MIA webpage (quoted in its entirety above) can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050611084243/http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005230416,00.html
 
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