The heart of the matter

We’ve all seen the Grinch and you know what they say, his small heart grew three sizes that day. We all know how impressive we find it that the terrible Grinch used to have a heart two sizes too small and now he has the biggest of all. That is extraordinary until you hear it from me, octopuses have not one heart, not two, but three!!!

Okay now that I’m done with my poor attempt of trying to rhyme and be clever, let me explain to you what caused me to come across this information. The other day when reading Don't be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson, he told a story about an octopus using its beak to maul a diver who was trying to get a picture with the massive creature. It explained that the diver only got away after he finally relaxed because when he struggled with the octopus, its grip only got stronger and its bite harder. I found this interesting so I went searching for more information.

The biggest octopus is the giant Pacific octopus which is a whopping 110 pounds and can be up to 16ft in length. Although these creatures are huge, they are by no means dopey and stupid. Studies have shown that they can distinguish between shapes and patterns and have short- and long-term memory! They also have the ability to lose an arm in order to trick a predator and it will grow back in 6-8 weeks. Now on to its three hearts; one main heart is used to pump blood to the entire body while two are used to pump blood through the gills where waste is dumped and oxygen-rich blood is then pumped back to the main heart. Also, the blood of an octopus contains hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin so the blood is blue!

For more information, you can go to this link from Moment of Science and to the Animal Planet octopus page.

I tried to use the arouse and fulfill technique by adding the introduction about the Grinch to make people wonder what the heck this science blog was talking about. I am not very good at the "show me, don't tell me" and often find myself blurting out fact after fact, which I did the same here L But I tried to incorporate a video which may help to offset my ramblings. I also tried to use active voice when writing the blog. I need to work on transitioning from paragraph to paragraph and sentence to sentence.