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Alien octopus?

The New Neo Posted on by

Don’t really think so.

But the other day some commenter brought it up for discussion, and here’s the idea:

A paper published in the journal ‘Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology’ looked into the origins of life here on our planet. A team of no less than 33 researchers explored several theories. The one that catches the eye is that cephalopods, namely squid, octopus and cuttlefish, may have originated from somewhere other than Earth.

Well, they are surpassingly odd.

When I was a child I was a big aficionado of Classics Illustrated, and my brother and I had – among other comics of the genre – a well-thumbed copy of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Remember the Martians?:

The Martians are described as octopus-like creatures: the “body” consisting of a disembodied head nearly 4 ft across, having two eyes; a V-shaped, beak-like mouth; and two branches each of eight ‘almost whip-like’ tentacles, grouped around the mouth, referred to as the ‘hands’. They reproduce asexually, by “budding” off from a parent. Internally, the Martians consist of a brain, lungs, heart, and blood vessels; they have no organs for digestion, and therefore sustain themselves on Earth by mechanically transfusing blood via pipettes from other animals, notably humans…The Martians’ arrival on Earth is aboard large, cylindrical spacecraft launched from some kind of immense cannon on Mars. Their chief weapon of war is the ‘Heat-Ray’, a directed-energy weapon capable of incinerating any organism it strikes. This is mounted on an articulated arm attached to the front of the tall tripod, called a ‘fighting-machine’ in Wells’ novel, which travels across the landscape destroying humans and their habitat. A secondary weapon, the “Black Smoke,” is a toxic gas released from canisters launched at a distance from Bazooka-like tubes, referred to in the novel as a “gun,” which kills humans and animals alike; it is rendered harmless by Martian high-pressure steam jets and water.

Apparently there’s something about the octopus that seems otherworldly. From that first link:

“The genome of the Octopus shows a staggering level of complexity with 33 000 protein-coding genes more than is present in Homo sapiens.”

And here’s the pièce de résistance: “The transformative genes leading from the consensus ancestral Nautilus […] to the common Cuttlefish […] to Squid […] to the common Octopus […] are not easily to be found in any pre-existing life form – it is plausible then to suggest they seem to be borrowed from a far distant ‘future’ in terms of terrestrial evolution, or more realistically from the cosmos at large.”

They offer the possibility that today’s octopuses are the descendants of creatures that arrived on Earth frozen in an icy comet. Why the octopus in particular? “Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch colour and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene.” This terrestrial evolution occurred thanks to “cryopreserved squid and/or octopus eggs” crashing into the ocean on comets “several hundred million years ago.”

The researchers also give another explanation. An extraterrestrial virus infected a population of early squid, causing them to evolve rapidly into the octopuses we know today.

Other scientists say this doesn’t hold up. H. G. Wells could not be reached for comment.

Comments

Alien octopus? — 41 Comments

  1. Here’s a theory for you…

    “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
    And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.”

  2. As strange as they are, I believe that Cephalopods are most certainly from Earth given all the genetic markers. The Cambrian explosion of around 538 million years ago yielded a truly bizarre collection of creatures, many of which there’s nothing remotely like in the contemporaneous record.

    Perhaps the wierdest creature found in the fossile record is the so called “Tully Monster”. It’s so odd that it has defied classification, causing all sorts of debate about whether it’s even a vertibrate or not.

  3. Regarding the comment, itself; I read it when posted and followed the link and read a bit more about Francis Crick’s adherence to the idea, which lead me to do a bit more research (neo’s site does this for me often!).

    There are two things that have always made me highly skeptical of alien introduction theories.

    1. It just kicks the can further down the road. There is no possible way humans (or in this case octopi) could have evolved or developed some feature or ability so it had to be introduced extraterrestrially. Well, O.K. Then how did the extraterrestrials evolve or develop the trait? What is it about their home planet that allowed it to occur that is missing on Earth?

    It’s simply a deus ex machina, but since many of the advocates for these theories don’t believe in a deus they substitute aliens; alien ex machina.

    2. What are the odds DNA evolved on another planet that allows successful mating with Earth species? This fact made it especially disappointing to me to learn that Francis Crick, one of the co-discoverers of DNA, was a proponent. Octopus can’t even mate with squid, yet some space rock transporting DNA from the Andromeda galaxy carries sperm or an ova compatible with Earth life?

    Or, is the theory it was a whole, fertilized egg that survived interstellar flight at nearly zero Kelvin then survived the intense heat of entry into Earth’s atmosphere and then happily took to developing to maturity once splashing into the Atlantic ocean at the force of an atomic bomb? Bravo. Then whom did it mate with once reaching sexual maturity?

    I didn’t research it, doubt it would be easily found, but I’m sure Octopus and Squid share 90% or more of their DNA with other cephalopods: https://www.reed.edu/biology/courses/BIO342/2011_syllabus/2011_websites/CWEFEL_cephalopods/phylogeny.html

    So did molluscs come from space too? Jellyfish?

  4. My research on the comment did open my eyes to one thing. I had heard about the intelligence of octopus for many years and I believe it’s true, but part of what convinced me was the size of their “heads.” I could see how large their brains are!

    Well, in my research following the comment neo is referencing a site I encountered had a diagram of octopus anatomy. That big ball above their arms isn’t their head. It’s their head AND torso. Their brains aren’t actually that large but that big ball thing that is their head and torso looks kind-of brainy.

    So, I feel pretty dumb. For years I thought octopus brains were about 70 times bigger than they actually are. And now that I know the truth it is so obvious. Where else would their other internal organs be?

    Sometimes my ignorance astounds even me!

  5. Rufus T Firefly:

    Great comments, as usual.

    Is that a saying? “He’s so smart he has squid for brains!” Or “He has the brains of an octopus!”

  6. The off-the-clocks antics of various octupi–escape tanks, make stock picks(probably not true), wander around, unlock stuff, return and so forth as reported are enough to make you wonder.

    The exoplanetary origin has been around for some time. Basing blood on copper rather than iron makes sense in some of their environments, but first you have to have it happen for it to be so useful as to be selected for. That would be a heck of a lot of mutations, happening in the right order and not being counterproductive prior to kicking in as a going concern.

  7. So did molluscs come from space too? Jellyfish?

    Rufus T. Firefly:

    No … spiders.

    Any right-thinking terrestrial creature hates spiders.

    Spiders aren’t from here. We all know it.

  8. What Nonapod said. The Cambrian explosion is one of those incredible and largely unexplained eras. I also read that big mass extinctions occurred after that explosion, and yet for some unexplained reason another explosion and its extreme diversity of new phyla never reoccurred. Some evolutionary/genetic arrow of time perhaps?
    _______

    Neo’s excerpt reminds me of George Pal’s version of War of the Worlds (1953). Great movie and fairly consistent with that excerpt. I’ve seen it many times, but it was only in the last viewing that it struck me how very religious the ending is.

  10. There was some footage of a guy freeing an octupus caught in something in very shallow water. The critter came over to him and put an arm on his boot as if to show gratitude. Some other answer?
    Yeah, facebook has footage of wild critters occasionally doing the same when receiving a rescue of some sort. But mammals are supposedly smarter than other pnyla.

  11. They got this from watching Ninja Turtles. “Shredder, give me a booooooody!” So octupi come from Dimension X and their worst enemies are far out space elves called Neutrinos who drive flying Cadillacs.

  12. But, [I] LIKE the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TV cartoon! [ That’s in spite of how unscientific, they may be.]

    Did any strange animals come from the, “Tales From the Crypt”, TV-cartoon show? 😀 😀

  14. 2. What are the odds DNA evolved on another planet that allows successful mating with Earth species?

    Rufus T. Firefly:

    What are the odds DNA evolved on another planet at all?

    DNA is the specific genetic programming language which we have on Earth. We presume it evolved here.

    If so, assuming the genetic language from another planet could be compatible with our DNA is as unlikely as assuming that raw binary code from a Windows computer could run on a Macintosh.

    I enjoy speculating that the octopus could be a transplant or hybrid from another planet, but I don’t see how it could work, unless our DNA came from a more universal source, i.e. some form of panspermia.

    Even so, getting some scrap of alien DNA to integrate into Earth DNA seems like a longshot.

  15. The alien octopus theory is just a replacement or ‘foot in the door’ for ID which itself is no more than a fabrication from incredulity about evolution.

  16. There was some footage of a guy freeing an octupus caught in something in very shallow water. The critter came over to him and put an arm on his boot as if to show gratitude.

    –Richard Aubrey

    I hate spiders but I love octopi. I remember this story:

    –“Releasing a stranded octopus and it thanked me”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqAmR1lEN0I

    I got interested in octopi when I ran into this fun story back in 2009 about an octopus in the Santa Monica aquarium that was fooling around with the recycling unit in its tank and inadvertently disassembled the recycler!

    Two hundred gallons of water spilled out onto the floor. The octopus was OK, but …

    Bad octopus!

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/curious-octopus-floods-aquarium

    There’s something going on with our eight-armed cephalopod friends.

  17. The alien octopus theory is just a replacement or ‘foot in the door’ for ID which itself is no more than a fabrication from incredulity about evolution.

    Oligonicella:

    I guess some ID people could go that way, but my bet is most octopus theory people aren’t thinking it through.

    However, count me among those incredulous about Darwinist and Neo-Darwinist theories of evolution.

    Speaking as a programmer trying to understand Neo-Darwinism as evolution based on the mutation of raw programming code, I don’t buy it. Some kind of evolution is clearly happening, but the conventional story is inadequate.

  18. huxley:

    Point acknowledged. I was thinking more along the lines of the latching onto fantasy.

    We’ve watched evolution happen. There is no debate. Italian wall lizard for one.

    Programming code that you’re used to does not evolve at all, it’s written. DNA evolves through replication and there are many known and witnessed changes done to DNA during such (reversal of genes, duplication, elimination, etc).

    Perhaps you could explain how you believe it to be inadequate.

  19. I’m telling you, they got it backwards – the cuttlefish will be the next species to develop space travel.

  20. Radical biologists can’t say what constitutes a “woman” yet others are watching evolution happen? Oh well, political science marches on. It all started with smectites; clay genes …… and
    vast ammounts of time, or so the story goes?

  21. My older son was a volunteer at the New England Aquarium when he was in high school. One Saturday he took me behind the scenes to see what he did. The star of the show and favorite of the staff was the octopus. It would snake an arm out of its tank and shake with its keeper. They are quite intelligent and good at solving puzzles to get at food. They’re probably up there with crows for smarts.

  22. huxley @ 7:09pm,

    Exactly. Sorry if my obtuse writing didn’t make that clear. That was my point about Crick himself being one of the proponents of the theory. Who better than him to understand the unlikelihood of DNA forming identically on two different planets.

  24. Hemocyanin (as opposed to hemoglobin) is common to molluscs and arthropods, so unless you’re categorizing them all as xenofauna it’s not a point towards putting octopi in that category.

    The obvious answer isn’t that ‘hemocyanin evolved from hemoglobin’ but that ‘hemocyanin and hemoglobin both evolved from earlier, common proteins.’ Evolution is a drunkard’s walk through a minefield, and there is often more than one path that isn’t fatal.

  26. If you are at all interested in alien octopuses, or extraterrestrial viruses causing rapid evolution, read Children of Time and Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

  27. Oligonicella:

    I don’t doubt some form of evolution occurs — as I said.

    And there is no disagreement that DNA is a kind of programming code which builds new cells. Change the code and you get new cells. Change the cells and you get new bodies.

    OK.

    There is the standard sexual shuffle of the DNA, so the child is some variation of the parents. The child might have brown eyes or blue eyes depending on DNA and Mendelian genetics. However, that child will not have three eyes or no eyes.

    The heavy lifting of evolution theory is carried out by mutation, which is where my skepticism lies:
    ______________________________

    In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA.[1] Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mitosis, or meiosis or other types of damage to DNA (such as pyrimidine dimers caused by exposure to ultraviolet radiation), which then may undergo error-prone repair (especially microhomology-mediated end joining),[2] cause an error during other forms of repair,[3][4] or cause an error during replication (translesion synthesis). Mutations may also result from insertion or deletion of segments of DNA due to mobile genetic elements.[5][6][7]

    Mutations may or may not produce detectable changes in the observable characteristics (phenotype) of an organism. Mutations play a part in both normal and abnormal biological processes including: evolution, cancer, and the development of the immune system, including junctional diversity. Mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, providing the raw material on which evolutionary forces such as natural selection can act.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation
    ______________________________

    Evolutionists concede that most mutations are neutral or unfavorable, and it’s a rare occasion that a mutation is favorable and circumstances allow that mutation to be “naturally selected.” Nonetheless, the world is big, time is long, and organisms are sufficiently numerous that it happens.

    However, as a programmer this strikes me as a terrible bet — like replacing, deleting or adding random bytes in the Microsoft Word binary code then expecting to add a new feature to the program.

    If one had an infinite number of monkeys typing genetic code over an infinite length of time, sure, but on earth we’ve had nowhere near that number of monkeys nor that much time.

    Here’s an article which put flesh on the bones of my gut feeling. The arguments are longish for excerpting, but here’s a key Gelertner conclusion after a technical discussion of building useful proteins from amino acids:
    ______________________

    [Darwin’s] idea is still perfectly reasonable in the abstract. But concretely, he is overwhelmed by numbers he couldn’t possibly have foreseen: the ridiculously large number of amino-acid chains relative to number of useful proteins. Those numbers transcend the details of any particular set of estimates. The obvious fact is that genes, in storing blueprints for the proteins that form the basis of cellular life, encode an awe-inspiring amount of information. You don’t turn up a useful protein merely by doodling on the back of an envelope, any more than you write a Mozart aria by assembling three sheets of staff paper and scattering notes around. Profound biochemical knowledge is somehow, in some sense, captured in every description of a working protein. Where on earth did it all come from?

    Neo-Darwinianism says that nature simply rolls the dice, and if something useful emerges, great. Otherwise, try again. But useful sequences are so gigantically rare that this answer simply won’t work. Studies of the sort Meyer discusses show that Neo-Darwinism is the quintessence of a bad bet.

    –David Gelertner, “Giving Up Darwin”
    https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/giving-up-darwin/
    ______________________

    David Gelertner is a professor of computer science at Yale.

  28. Sorry if my obtuse writing didn’t make that clear.

    Rufus:

    ‘Salright. Afterwards I realized I was probably reading you obtusely.

  30. Some squid are inedible unless you are a Great White Whale and some octopi are incredibly deadly (Blue Ringed Octopus from, of course, Australia).

  31. …some octopi are incredibly deadly (Blue Ringed Octopus from, of course, Australia).

    om:

    Why does Australia hate us? 🙂

  32. Here’s a song that mentions the blue ringed octopus:

    It is, “Deadly Animals (Come to Australia)” by The Scared Weird Little Guys.

    ( ***Warnings***- there are pictures of snake bites/snake bite-type infections in this video, + a video clip of a killer-whale fighting a seal(?) in this video. Please don’t view this video, if those images are upsetting to you.)

    Here is the video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy_TB6onHVE

  35. I suppose Wells is excusing his lack of comments with the old ” I’ve been dead for 76 years ” ploy.

    How like him.

  38. Huxley: Michael Crichton used the blue ringed octopus as a murder weapon in his book State of Fear. We lost a lot when he died.

  39. PBS had a series, I think it was PBS, about what happens if the H. Sap line goes extinct about this time–technologically speaking and such.
    A number of pieces. Turns out the next intelligent taking over H. Sap’s place will be evolved octopi.
    Didn’t guy some of their intervening steps, but it was interesting.

  40. Michael Crichton used the blue ringed octopus as a murder weapon in his book State of Fear. We lost a lot when he died.

    Mr. Bill:

    Agreed.

    I believe Crichton near-singlehandedly turned the tide on Climate Change in the last high-stakes public debate, which took place in 2007. The majority of the audience was pro-Climate Change going in and skeptic-Climate Change going out.

    Since then the Climate Change mob has refused to debate their cause in a public forum and has moved to censoring, canceling, deplatforming and “denier” name-calling instead.

    –IQ2, “Global Warming Debate – Michael Crichton”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzTPPl05Wok

    –IQ2 debate web page
    https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debate/global-warming-not-crisis/#/

  41. Ediacaran fauna, Precambrian 600 million years “truly alien amimals” starting out in England then to Australia, before the Cambrian Explosion

    om:

    The Cambrian Explosion was a marvelous vintage too. Here’s “Hallucigenia,” a weird spiky-looking creature, whose name warms my ex-hippie heart:

    –“The Cambrian Explosion’s Strange-Looking Poster Child”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/science/hallucigenia-cambrian-explosions-strange-looking-poster-child.html

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