The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

by cratermoon • 3 years ago

389 173 3 years ago

blamazon• 3 years ago

I don't mean to spoil the fun, downvote me if this is not in the spirit, but it took me way too long to figure this out and others may be as slow as me and save some time by reading this comment:

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus is an Internet hoax created in 1998 by a humor writer under the pseudonym Lyle Zapato. Since its creation, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus website has been commonly referenced in Internet literacy classes in schools and has been used in multiple studies demonstrating children's gullibility regarding online sources of information. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octopus

Planktonne2• 3 years ago

others may be as slow as me and save some time by reading this comment

But then they wouldn't learn anything about reading critically.

morelisp• 3 years ago

Unfortunately the campaign was unsuccessful and octopus paxarboli went extinct not long after the page first was published, before internet access was common and before smartphones could easily take pictures of it etc. Just because there's minimal evidence of something from before the internet, on the internet, doesn't make it a hoax.

civilitty• 3 years ago

Not to mention that 100% of all octopus fossils have been found on land.

We have zero evidence of octopus fossils in the ocean.

dragonwriter5• 3 years ago

Unfortunately the campaign was unsuccessful and octopus paxarboli went extinct not long after the page first was published,

Largely, the campaign failed because of the joint US/Canadian invasion of the Republic of Cascadia based on (ironically, false) claims of Weapons of Media Deception (WMD) being deployed with imminent plans for use against North American civilian targets.

oatmeal1• 3 years ago

I don't mean to spoil the fun, downvote me if this is not in the spirit, but it took me way too long to figure this out and others may be as slow as me and save some time by reading this comment:

I believed it too. The thing is, this is something no one is really incentivized to lie about. If some website says "politician did X", then your lie detector turns on, because it's worth it for lots of websites to lie or mislead about that. It would be very hard to go through life questioning the veracity of every inconsequential bit of information that no one has an incentive to lie about. I don't think it demonstrates much that students believed it. And I especially don't think it means anything about gullibility about information found online. Almost certainly, if it were printed in a book, they'd be even more likely to believe it.

MattGaiser3• 3 years ago

Add in that the animal world is full of wacky creatures that don't fit heuristic models for plausibility.

People thought the Platypus was a hoax was it was initially discovered. It is real.

replygirl5• 3 years ago

i know enough about octopuses and forests that i don't have to care about the author's motives--i just have to skim the text or look at the photoshop. thinking a tree octopus is real because you saw a lot of words and can't relate them to a nexus of disinformation is a perfect example of gullibility

alwaysbeconsing• 3 years ago

The thing is, this is something no one is really incentivized to lie about

I don't think it's lying in the sense of trying to make someone else actually believe it. It's just a form of creative fiction writing. It can be a lot of fun to write in this mode; when well done it's a pleasant kind of erudite humor because to produce it (and get it) you have to be somewhat knowledgeable in the topic. Mockumentaries might be the film/TV equivalent. Unfortunately (especially for certain subjects) it also confuses and causes strife if readers take it too seriously.

Teever• 3 years ago

this is something no one is really incentivized to lie about.

'Click here to donate to my gofund me to save the amphibious octopus.'

tshaddox• 3 years ago

If no one is incentivized to lie about it, is anyone incentivized to tell the truth about it?

meesles• 3 years ago

And I especially don't think it means anything about gullibility about information found online

You really think it means absolutely _nothing_ about this topic? It's literally an example of people believing what they read online! I think you're having an overly defensive reaction to probably falling for it.

It would be very hard to go through life questioning the veracity of every inconsequential bit of information that no one has an incentive to lie about

The issue is you may not understand or fathom the reasons someone may lie about something. Imagine the strange traditions that leaders have maintained throughout history to help control their subjects. To those subjects, I'm sure they weren't even imagining that these things they thought were spiritual were just fictions.

As for my point - yes you should try go through life with a certain level of curiosity and apprehension when people tell you things. I feel like a lot of our societal issues are a result of things continuing for no good reason, just because we've done it in the past. It's become fairly easy to fact-check, and while not popular at parties, it's important if you're actually trying to learn and build an accurate mental model.

If people were more comfortable questioning all aspects of our society (and if society was receptive to the criticism), I feel like we would be better off.

dragonwriter5• 3 years ago

The thing is, this is something no one is really incentivized to lie about. If some website says "politician did X", then your lie detector turns on, because it's worth it for lots of websites to lie or mislead about that.

The purpose of misleading about “politician did X” is to sell a call to action. Any time there is a call to action supported by a claim, there is an obvious motivation for misrepresentation (the very same one present when “politicia did X” is the claim.) This contains a call to action, ergo, it has an obvious motivation for misrepresentation.

I don't think it demonstrates much that students believed it.

I think it demonstrates a lot that half of 13-year-old students in the US study believed a page which referenced a fictitious nation-state in the Pacific Northwest was reliable, leaving aside the other indicia of deception. Though whether what it says is about internet literacy or complete failure of education on geography perhaps less clear.

megmogandog• 3 years ago

It reminds me of a friend in high school who convinced me that he grew scallions in his bathroom. It seemed weird but he described it in some detail, how the humidity from the shower is good for them, etc. Then when I believed him he said of course I don't do that, how could you think something so ridiculous. I don't and didn't feel like believing him in this context made me gullible for the same kinds of reasons you outline, why doubt something so inconsequential, communicated 'sincerely'?

retrocryptid2• 3 years ago

Pablo Picasso once said "Art is the lie that reveals the truth." Except that he didn't really say that. What he said was "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand." (The Arts: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine Covering All Phases of Ancient and Modern Art, NYC, 1923)

Is there a subtle truth to your friend's lie? It need not be related to scallions. We perceive the world through narrative. Perhaps your friend was introducing a fundamental truth through the revelation of scallions growing in a bathroom. Or at least that's how we would interpret it on my home planet of Zeta Reticulii IV. Of course the "fact" that I'm from Zeta Reticulii IV is a lie. I grew up in Texas. You can make your own decisions regarding the relative adherence to consensual reality between Texas and Zeta Reticulii IV.

Perhaps the story of growing scallions in the bathroom is nothing other than the creation of a shared history. Does it matter that history is counter-factual? We're social beings. We do things like that.

molticrystal• 3 years ago

Well there are mudskippers [0] [1] which can end up crawling up to and resting on branches and trees growing out of the water. So while it seems untrue, it wouldn't be far fetched for a species of octopus adapted to end up doing so, especially if the out of water circumstances are narrow enough(very temporary, trunks & branches very close to water, etc).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudskippers

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNCYSCHipvw

setgree• 3 years ago

So I immediately googled because it rang an alarm bell that some octopuses would develop specialized air-breathing apparatuses — that conflicts with my basic understanding of evolution. But I wasn’t googling it to falsify, but rather to see from a more ‘objective’ source if/how this occurred.

I think it’s the same basic principle as hanging up if a relative calls you begging for money or proclaiming to be kidnapped and calling you back. The costs for double-checking incredible claims is often not that high.

brewdad• 3 years ago

The site does include a call to action. I think that’s the point where one needs to question things. I certainly don’t want to be the one that writes my Congressperson about this “hoax”. The next time I need something truly important, I’m likely to fall to the bottom of the pile.

JuanPosadas• 3 years ago

It would be very hard to go through life questioning the veracity of every inconsequential bit of information that no one has an incentive to lie about.

Some fish-looking sea creatures are actually mammals. Sea horses have pregnant males. Deep sea fish look like horror monsters. A fresh water octopus just isn't that unbelievable.

gweinberg• 3 years ago

Of course they would be more likely to believe a book, they should be. That's the point: making a web page is super easy, anyone can do it. Making a convincing fake issue of a science magazine would be a lot harder, it's highly unlikely someone would do it just for a joke.

But really, if there were something as bizarre as a tree octopus, you would have heard of it.

Self-Perfection• 3 years ago

Even widespread information can be false. For instance, you can not "catch cold" by getting cold, the name of the illness is misleading.

I mean absence of incentive to lie is far from universal criteria to distinguish false information.

brnt• 3 years ago

The incentive is practice in the conspiracy ideas market. It's fun to fool people, and these days it's profitable. Enter a popular conspiracy forum and you'll see how many are there to sell things. They create their own market.

cratermoon• 3 years ago

It's revealing that a substantial part of that wikipedia article is about Internet literacy studies.

tracerbulletx• 3 years ago

The poster at the bottom kind of gives away the parody. Pretty fun though, I wish there was a tree octopus now.

bantou_41• 3 years ago

I think part of the purpose of sharing this website without saying anything about it might be to show that, in the age of the internet and AI, we don’t really verify information before consuming it. It’s not just children who are gullible. A lot of what we read on the internet is second hand information, facts with subjective interpretations, opinions, or straight up false information.

Hendrikto• 3 years ago

in the age of the internet and AI, we don’t really verify information before consuming it

As if this had ever been different. I would even argue that, because it is simply much easier to do, people are more incentivized to fact-check imformation, than 100 years ago.

mikrotikker• 3 years ago

Sorry but you gotta be a special kind of retarded to believe this. If you believe this you probably think Jan 6 was an "insurrection", chemtrails are "just contrails" and that we need to ban hydrogen dioxide.

beej71• 3 years ago

It was good! I got to the end thinking, "I don't know if I've been had or not."

The WP article is a great read--recommend.

freitzkriesler2• 3 years ago

It's the Washington Oregon version of the Dropbear.

stephenr3• 3 years ago

Droptopus?

AndrewKemendo• 3 years ago

Had it not been for your comment it would’ve definitely taken me longer to figure out, and I would’ve most likely made a fool out of myself by telling people about it.

I was extremely susceptible to this story, because I absolutely love octopuses, and everything related to them. However I’m not an expert and it would not surprise me at all (given how surprising octopuses are generally) that there was a octopus group that could adapt to an extremely high humidity area, so it seems plausible!

I like getting fooled like this occasionally cause it keeps you on your toes and shows you how vulnerable and easily fooled we all are.

jmckib• 3 years ago

I immediately thought this looked too absurd to be real, but I wonder if my lack of octopus knowledge helped me out here. I know octopi are pretty smart, but I don’t think of them as being too surprising in their capabilities.

lo_zamoyski• 3 years ago

has been used in multiple studies demonstrating children's gullibility

And not to make everything about this, but in light of this, interpret various currently fashionable and harmful pseudoscientific ideologies being peddled in schools and backed by the force of the regime.

Children are very gullible. That's one major reason why they need parents, to protect them from predation and to guide them toward the minimum of adulthood. Worse still when parents themselves buy into these ideologies.

ortusdux2• 3 years ago

To be fair, tree octopuses sound about as outlandish as land crabs, which I still have trouble believing are real.

https://arthropoda.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/coconut-crab....

UncleSlacky2• 3 years ago

Not to mention the land shark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Shark_(Saturday_Night_Liv...

and the prairie squid: https://subgenius.fandom.com/wiki/Prairie_squid

hn_throwaway_992• 3 years ago

I think this is a great point. It's easy to come back with a "hah, look how gullible you are" when someone believes hoaxes like this, but that ignores the reality that "truth is often stranger than fiction." I mean seriously, a coconut crab specifically evolved a special breathing apparatus to survive on land - why should that be any different from an octopus having "special adaptations" to keep it from getting desiccated when out of the water for extended periods?

It's like when I used to read through Snopes feeds, and 9 times out of 10 I'd think "wow, that's so dumb, how could anyone believe that", and then the tenth time I'd think the same thing for a story that actually ended up being true.

petre• 3 years ago

I've always liked this one better:

https://zapatopi.net/belgium/

“Tourists, business travelers, and other visitors are allowed to "come" to the "country" in order to "witness" its "existence." In reality, these people are waylaid at the common borders of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and taken to NWO branch facilities where they have false memories of vast sprout fields and chocolate factory tours implanted.”

retrocryptid2• 3 years ago

Meh. You have a parochial opinion of facts.

01100011• 3 years ago

It was obvious when the page mentioned rainforests, which are on the western flank of the Olympics, but had a map showing only the eastern flank.

parentheses• 3 years ago

I scanned it and thought. HN post. Must be legit. Good reminder to RTFx.

tejohnso• 3 years ago

Well I for one appreciate it. I was drawn in after a couple of paragraphs, and then started to doubt and figured I'd check the comments for exactly this kind of thing before I run off and tell my child about an amazing animal I just heard about. Thank you.

After reading about parasites that turn ants into zombies to do their bidding, I'm pretty much all out of "that's just a nonsense story" when it comes to nature's variety. I'll be skeptical, but I tend not to outright dismiss immediately.

greggsy• 3 years ago

The article lists as bald eagles and Sasquatch as natural predators…

fourthark• 3 years ago

That's when I finally caught on!

pschastain• 3 years ago

Reading the headline I thought it was going to be an article about the octopus tree: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/octopus-tree-of-oregon

onlyrealcuzzo• 3 years ago

A little similar to Birds Aren't Real.

RajT882• 3 years ago

Another one like this, which you have to dive a bit deeper to find the give-aways:

https://objectiveministries.org/

(But once you've gone down the rabbit hole, there are some spectacular give-aways)

1024core• 3 years ago

I saw the photos of snow and immediately realized it was fake.

andreskytt• 3 years ago

Oh, but dear sir, you forgot about the AI!

swsdsailor• 3 years ago

Damn. I wanted to believe!

yissp• 3 years ago

This is great, reminds me of a classic from my childhood, the house hippo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TijcoS8qHIE

krupan• 3 years ago

Terry Pratchett added these wonderful animals to the world in which his book Nation takes place (one of his very best books, if you ask me). He undoubtedly was inspired by this website

cmehdy• 3 years ago

Sir Pterry was inspired by just about everything, which in itself is an inspiration to always digest what this world throws at us and turn it into all sorts of fantastic things.

calibas• 3 years ago

Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch.

ComputerGuru• 3 years ago

I randomly come across a link to this every ten years or so. It is put together splendidly well.

I must admit however that I’m a tad disappointed that the list of factors contributing to the critical endangerment of this wonderful specimen still has not been updated to include mention of the extinction of its once-primary source of nutrition, the harvest of the spaghetti tree [0].

Perhaps in ten more years this oversight will have been corrected!

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/04/that-time-the-bbc-foo...

woahitsraj• 3 years ago

Classic! I remember convincing friends and family members that this was real when I was young. There was something incredibly fun and powerful being a child and able to fool adults who would believe anything they read on the internet. It's amazing how websites like this inoculated myself and many other young people from obvious misinformation on the internet in a fun and mostly harmless way

fultonb• 3 years ago

It's always crazy running in to one hiking up there

tspike• 3 years ago

My uncles spent a summer working tours near Aspen in the 80s. They worked tirelessly to educate the tourist population about the dangers of the Rocky Mountain Alpine Shark.

aerodog• 3 years ago

I asked ChatGPT if octopuses exist in trees, and to my surprise, ChatGPT 'got it'

chowells• 3 years ago

Why is that a surprise? Every single text on the subject explains the joke eventually. It's the exact sort of high correlation GPT is good at finding.

Borrible• 3 years ago

Early ancestors of the Squibbon.

wood_spirit2• 3 years ago

The context of this showing up on HN made me kinda assumed it was a chatgpt generated thing.

A quick google shows it seems to be a well known classic hoax from the late 90s.

But there really are crabs and lobsters that live in trees and things, as do lots of type of mollusc (eg slugs and snails). So it isn’t completely silly.

So it’s not like a tree octopus is any more ridiculous than the coconut crab?

It seems there is no good way to know the truth anymore, as searching the internet might just find collaborating lies and conjecture…

furyofantares2• 3 years ago

The context of this showing up on HN made me kinda assumed it was a chatgpt generated thing.

It's very likely OP discovered it through the link on this HN post that was at the top yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36739920

JayPalm• 3 years ago

Yeah, this occurred to me too. Guess we'll likely be inundated with 90's websites for a few days.

CydeWeys• 3 years ago

So it’s not like a tree octopus is any more ridiculous than the coconut crab?

It is a lot more ridiculous though because land crabs are a well known thing (e.g. hermit crabs) whereas land octopuses don't exist. Octopuses are very much a water-only type of organism.

It just requires a little prior knowledge about the broad strokes of animalian orders.

wood_spirit2• 3 years ago

Octopuses are molluscs, and there are lots of land living molluscs, right?

Clamchop2• 3 years ago

People learn new things all the time, but an octopus that lives in trees would probably be pretty famous.

PepperdineG• 3 years ago

Octopuses are very much a water-only type of organism.

They're not though. Octopi generally don't like being out of water, but they're capable of traveling on land short distances and in fact the Abdopus Aculeatus octopus regularly goes on land by choice in order to hunt crabs in different tidepools. Sir David Attenborough discusses the octopus here, which this octopus was one of the animals featured in The Hunt documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebeNeQFUMa0

yosito• 3 years ago

I asked midjourney for photos of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and the results were impressive. Time to update the sightings page of the website.

wzy• 3 years ago

Reminds me of the endangered "Australian Drop bear".

bmmayer1• 3 years ago

Didn't know it was a hoax. This is the Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octopus

darkclouds• 3 years ago

Its a two hour drive from Microsoft headquarters, the perfect location to search for gullible Microsoft employees looking for this octopus, as they would become useful assets for the intelligence community. Think like a spook!

Modified3019• 3 years ago

http://www.lakemichiganwhales.com/

rootsudo• 3 years ago

I didn't believe it and was widely thinking it is fake, and then I come to the comments and there we are.

First the scientific name, obscura just sold it out as fake - but as someone who lived in the area - it would've been much more obvious and probably involved in tons of actual campaigns and protests.

BMc2020• 3 years ago

Let's not forget the ice worms:

Ice Worms and Their Habitats on North Cascade Glaciers

https://glaciers.nichols.edu/iceworm/

and the Australian Drop Bear

https://australian.museum/learn/animals/mammals/drop-bear/

corndoge• 3 years ago

Devilish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_worm

6D794163636F756• 3 years ago

Aren't iceworms real though?

carabiner• 3 years ago

Ya if you spend time on Cascade glaciers you'll see them wiggling. Pretty common.

worik• 3 years ago

and the Australian Drop Bear

Urban legend I was told (In Auckland - not Australia)

In the war the US army moved vast reserves into North Australia for quite obvious reasons.

Tanks on exercises in the Australian desert got very hot, so naturally kept their hatches open whenever they could.

Massed tanks on manoeuvres in the desert will from time to time run into trees.

Koala spend 90% of their time asleep in trees.

Completing the picture a tank blunders into a tree and koala are dislodged and rain down.

Through open tank hatches.

The "Great Australian Drop Bear" is a recently woken angry Koala in fight mode in a crowded tank.....

cperciva• 3 years ago

See also kangaroos armed with stinger missiles: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shoot-me-kangaroo-down-spo...

easeout• 3 years ago

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tree-octopus/

Daunk• 3 years ago

I wasn't until I read that the sasquatch was its natural predator that I started to question things...

notorandit• 3 years ago

For a moment...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octop...

user6723• 3 years ago

They're out of the water now? Once they learn how to use fire we are all doomed, we're DONE. Sell all your stocks but HODL your BTC.

hinkley• 3 years ago

What if he’s got a pointed stick?

hackeraccount• 3 years ago

Or a board with a nail in it.

brendev• 3 years ago

I used to teach a computer science class to elementary-middle school kids.

I always did a week on internet literacy, and would open the lesson with a worksheet that included this fella, along with a number of other fake animals, and some that look fake, but aren't.

Each kid was supposed to come up with a summary of what the animal was, where they live, what they eat, etc.

It was a lot of fun, but I've got to say... Parents: please take some time to teach your kids how to critically evaluate information that they read online.

LanternLight83• 3 years ago

Somewhat relatedly, there's the marshmello farming mockumentery: https://youtu.be/yflTu150QZw

rikroots• 3 years ago

But marsh mallow plants are real! I grew up with them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althaea_officinalis

yalogin• 3 years ago

Without the reference to the Sasquatch I wouldn’t have figured out this is made up. Well done

sparcpile• 3 years ago

There was a Discovery Channel special about future evolution that took this idea and ran with it. They had an idea of octopi being more land dwelling and becoming the dominant species.

chmod600• 3 years ago

I am not quite sure what tipped me off, but I suspected something was off in the first paragraph or two and went to Wikipedia.

I think it just seemed out of place, like someone bringing up a topic in a forced way. Kind of “trying too hard”.

brador• 3 years ago

It's fake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octopus

ortusdux2• 3 years ago

Crazy link timing! I just got my mug in the mail last week:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/YY7f3x3

CrzyLngPwd• 3 years ago

Fetch me a sky hook, I need to capture a tree octopus!

pvaldes• 3 years ago

Yep. Inoculating the idea that science is something not to be trusted is a lot of hard work. Very funny, ha ha...

voz_• 3 years ago

This kind of thing is malicious. It was maybe cute in the 90s/00s, but now? Too much fake news abound.

qwertox• 3 years ago

This makes me sad. I once saw my nephew looking at a dino book and I joined him, and for some reason he ended up telling me that they exist in some part of the world. Stupid me laughed at him and told him that they no longer exist, and this has haunted me for years.

I say this, because there was a photo of blue teddy-octopi's legs hanging from a tree on the site, and I started imagining a dad telling his kid how this is something real, that he/she should watch for them to see if he/she can spot them occasionally.

Hurts my heart, but the site is nice, like a cherished thought which someone wanted to keep alive.

Planktonne2• 3 years ago

If you haven't already read it, you might like Terry Pratchett's Hogfather [1].

[1](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/583655-hogfather)

Stratoscope• 3 years ago

People often ask why the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus has such a successful ecological niche that alternates between the rainforest and under the water.

The reason is that unlike humans and other land creatures, they are completely immune to the toxic effects of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO). In fact, they require regular immersion in it.

This also explains why the octopuses don't migrate farther south. When on the land, they still require ongoing contact with DHMO, which on the Olympic Peninsula is found in abundance in the very air!

https://dhmo.org/

booleandilemma• 3 years ago

That photo was so ridiculous but I badly wanted to believe it was real!

thyrsus• 3 years ago

I was completely taken in until the octopus hat. There's no way 1920s fashionistas go from feathers to a pile of brown turds on their heads. The 2nd ddg hit was the Wikipedia article, the second word of which was "fictitious".

zw123456• 3 years ago

Yeah, but How Fucking Cool would it be it if was a real thing.

I think it is begging for B movie treatment... OK Down vote me as being Reddit-esque... But come on, it's Sunday afternoon, have a little fun...

Tree Octopus's on a Plane.. Tree Octopus- nado Suction cups... We're gonna need a bigger backpack.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

I love this PNW Myth, deserves love right up there with Sasquatch and DB Cooper.

EamonnMR• 3 years ago

Our librarian used this site in a class about media literacy, with the lesson being that you can't believe everything you read on the internet. I guess it was a good lesson because I still remember it.

uoaei• 3 years ago

Critical thinking is hard. Stay vigilant.

The photoshopped image of an octopus and a sasquatch hand was what first tipped me off. I wanted to believe this was a real animal, octopuses are magnificent creatures.

waynecochran• 3 years ago

Blaming Sasquatch is hilarious!

einpoklum• 3 years ago

I was reminded of the initiative for Cascadian secession...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_movement

which, when I first read about it, I questioned as a potential hoax. But - no, if you're not from the US, you should know that it's a very real thing, and apparently, a full third (!) of people 18-34 years old support it, according to relatively recent polling mentioned at the link.

99_00• 3 years ago

In the past, if you believed something just because it was on the internet you were seen as foolish.

wlonkly• 3 years ago

Wow, that brings back memories. I had a link to this in my Usenet sig.. well, back in the era where one had a Usenet sig.

Octokiddie• 3 years ago

The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and *sasquatch*.

I feel like I should have figured out this was a gag sooner...

miga• 3 years ago

There is enough spam here, please avoid posting this one.

SubiculumCode• 3 years ago

If I had encountered this link on social media I would have been much less likely to entertain the veracity of the claim. But coming from the front page of HN, and only lightly skimming for a couple of seconds, I started being fooled. Shows the power of reputation.

mlongval• 3 years ago

Love it!

denkmoon• 3 years ago

This may be an internet hoax, but always watch for drop bears when camping in the bush.

reilly3000• 3 years ago

I miss when Snopes was about this sort of thing. It still is, but you have to find it amongst a lot of noise.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tree-octopus/

kibibyte• 3 years ago

This was part of my childhood (almost 20 years ago!). Growing up, we had a lesson in either elementary or middle school in which we were all asked to read this website on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and fill out a research assignment on it. At the end of it, the teacher asked us if we thought it was real and revealed that it wasn't, with the lesson that, yes, even though the internet is a valuable research tool, that we shouldn't believe everything we read.

As a bonus, I think we were also asked to review some information on the aluminum foil hat. https://zapatopi.net/afdb/build.html

tivert• 3 years ago

Decades ago, there was a Discovery Channel speculative "documentary" about far future history that had tree octopuses. I wonder if they got the idea from this website and ran with it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_Is_Wild#Hothouse_Wo...

https://youtu.be/gnasRyT52FU?t=1114

kfarr• 3 years ago

Reminds me of this classic https://web.archive.org/web/19961031232918/http://media.circ...

dxs• 3 years ago

Pacific Northwest lunacy is a tradition: "Welcome to The Church of Tina Chopp" https://tinachopp.church/menu.html

I used to see graffiti proclaiming "TINA CHOPP IS GOD" all over Bellingham, WA in the early 1980s (and it later spread to Seattle).

Still with us...

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

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