The Octopus: The Devil fish of Fiction and of Fact
9781465684301
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
More than 2200 years ago—nearly four centuries before the Evangelists wrote their imperishable histories of the events on which the faith of Christendom is based—Aristotle, the celebrated naturalist of Stageira, in Macedonia, recorded observations of the habits and reproduction of the Octopus which clearly show that he was more intimately acquainted with its mode of life than any writer of a later date between his day and ours. For how many centuries before his time facts and fallacies concerning this curious animal were handed down from father to son in oral tradition, and from generation to generation in manuscript, ages before printing was invented, it is impossible to say: he occasionally quotes from the works of previous writers, and Strabo tells us that he had a good collection of books, and was the first philosopher who possessed a library of his own. But the faint glimmering of information to be derived from early bookish lore was insufficient to satisfy his desire and that of his sovereign for more complete and perfect knowledge. Alexander the Great, who, in his youth, was under his tuition for ten years, gave him, therefore, the means of extending his researches, by placing at his disposal a large sum of money and a staff of assistants. According to Pliny the latter were sent to various parts of Asia and Greece under orders to collect animals of all kinds, and by means of vivaria, fishponds, aviaries, &c., “to watch their habits so closely that nothing relating to them should remain unknown.” Aristotle thus accumulated a multitude of notes and observations, many of which, though ridiculed and discredited by later zoologists, were marvellously accurate; and from them constructed a work elaborate in its details, grand in its conception and idea, and comprehensive as a general history of the Animal Kingdom. Amongst the inhabitants of the sea therein described by him is, as I have said, the Octopus or Polypus, and many of his statements concerning it and its congeners have been remarkably confirmed by recent observations. This animal has, therefore, been long known to naturalists. The ancient Egyptians figured it amongst their hieroglyphics; the Greeks and Romans were well acquainted with it; and since the time of Homer many of the ancient poets and authors have mentioned it in their works. There is little doubt that the idea of the Lernean Hydra, whose heads grew again when cut off by Hercules, originated from a knowledge of the Octopus. Diodorus relates of it that it had a hundred heads; Simonides says fifty; but the generally received statement is that of Apollodorus, Hyginus, &c., that it had only nine. Reduce the number by one, and we have an animal with eight out growths from its trunk—the type of an Octopus, which is really capable of rapidly developing afresh, and replacing by new ones, one or all of its eight limbs in case of their being amputated or injured. According to the legend, Hercules dipped his arrow heads in the gall of the hydra, and, from its poisonous nature, all the wounds he inflicted with them on his enemies proved fatal.
