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Octopus!: The Most Mysterious Creature in…
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Octopus!: The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea (edició 2013)

de Katherine Harmon Courage (Autor)

MembresRessenyesPopularitatValoració mitjanaMencions
14216191,119 (3.12)11
Veteran journalist and contributing editor for 'Scientific American,' Katherine Harmon Courage dives into the mystifying underwater world of the octopus, sharing new scientific discoveries and demonstrating deep cultural ties that connect us all to this alien-like creature.
Membre:rabbit.blackberry
Títol:Octopus!: The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea
Autors:Katherine Harmon Courage (Autor)
Informació:Current (2013), 254 pages
Col·leccions:La teva biblioteca, Llegint actualment, Llista de desitjos, Per llegir, Llegit, però no el tinc, Preferits
Valoració:***
Etiquetes:abandoned-paused-set-aside, to-read

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Octopus!: The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea de Katherine Harmon Courage

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Es mostren 1-5 de 16 (següent | mostra-les totes)
Reading the reviews and blurbs on the cover of this book I was expecting to be fascinated by these wonderful creatures. And in many ways I was. They are indeed intelligent, powerful,and mysterious almost beyond comprehension. The only problem I had with this book was in the way it started. The first two chapters were all about capturing and then eating octopuses. In my opinion, beginning a book celebrating the wonders of octopuses, by focusing on how to kill and eat them, is in pretty bad taste(pun intended). That being said, one of the most fascinating passages in this book was when the author went to a restaurant in New York and was served a live octopus. Her description of that meal and the way it effected her, stands alone, and is by itself, worth the price of the book. I mean, the cut up arms of the octopus fought her all the way into her mouth and down her stomach !

"Many American diners seem generally creeped out by their encounters with this dish. But strangely , as revolting as it might look to to the amateur eater, the dish left me thinking about it and, dare I say, missing it for days afterward. It was the most intimate eating experience I've ever had. Although for the poor octopus it was not the best of times, to me, it felt almost as if we shared the dining experience."

After reading that passage I wanted to hop on a train to Queens, visit that restaurant, and experience that meal myself. ( )
  kevinkevbo | Jul 14, 2023 |
This book has so many problems it isn't even funny, well it kind of is, unless you paid for this or your tax dollars paid to put it in a library. Let's get started:

1. Chatty magazine-ish prose. Like a People magazine article on octopuses (yes, that is correct, there is no "i" in octopi). Words like "gazillion," "cool," and "bejesus" just don't belong in a natural science book. I cringe.

2. The first two chapters and half of the Introduction deals with, I kid you not, eating octopus. 60 pages including recipes. The first chapters! We are treated to both the details of the author's peregrinations to the various restaurants and then the gourmandizing itself. Complete with the live suckers sticking to her gums! Yeah! Good book so far.

3. Who is this book written for? Page 66: "The mouth is hidden away at the center of the eight arms. But be careful up there - it has a sharp beak and a scary toothed radula for drilling into hard shells. This chitin structure awkwardly positioned on the octopus's underside, at the center of all its appendages, almost evokes the strange myth of the vagina dentata. (But don't worry; because the female octopus accepts sperm from a male directly into her mantle, she keeps the chance for love bites to a minimum.)" Woo-who

4. Bad Science. Page 159. "A sucker's strength depends in part on how much volume it holds." Hmmm, volume of what? Presumably water. The murk becomes inkier. "Under water, that force is limited by the weakness of the water molecule itself." What? The suction force driven by a sucker is dependent on the "weakness" of the water molecules themselves.

'Once a sucker is stuck onto something, "if you reach the point where water capitates (sic) - where you're actually breaking apart the molecular structure of the water - so it is not holding itself together anymore, it will break" he says. So in theory,the octopus could generate more force of attachment if the water itself were stronger'

Where to start? Well the correct word would be cavitate not capitate. Cavitation creates suction by forcing a fluid to cavitate, form a lower pressure vapor by mechanical means instead of thermal means. Like when a propeller in a liquid turns fast enough to start cavitation, small unstable vapor bubbles are formed mechanically.

You are not at any point creating enough mechanical cavitation force to be "breaking apart the molecular structure of the water." There are forces between water molecules that are affected by cavitation, but the structures of the water molecules themselves never break apart. This would require truly tremendous mechanical forces no organic creature could manage.

Journalists should all be required to take at least one science course as an elective.

5. Plain absurdity: Page 97 Caption under a black & white photo that reads thus: "Woods Hole Octopus flashing its blue ring at me." I suppose we're to guess just exactly where this blue ring is on the b&w photo.

6. Dumbed down. The prior quote about vagina dentata excluded, this is written for a ten year old's reading level. It is just cringingly full of childish simile.

I'm not going to savage the author since this will get me flagged and it will serve no good purpose otherwise let it simply do to say Ms. Courage had great courage to attempt to write a science book that is clearly above her depth. (he, he, he) ( )
  Gumbywan | Jun 24, 2022 |
Interesting book about interesting creatures. I like the author's voice, too. It's very Mary Roach, but without the sometimes overly jokey tone. (That is to say enthusiastic, humorous, and down-to-earth) ( )
  JessicaReadsThings | Dec 2, 2021 |
This rather thin book on octopuses is delivered in an easy-to-read, informal and occasionally juvenile style more suited to a magazine article than a science book, even a popular science book. There are some interesting facts (ok there are lots of interesting facts) but there is also too much space dedicated to travelogue "stuff", eating octopuses (recipes are included) and being sea-sick. Did I mention there was a ridiculous amount of space dedicated to murdering and eating octopuses? A reference section is included, as well as some bad quality black & white photographs. There really should have been some colour photographs of these magnificent animals. Suitable for children and teenagers.

PS: Promoted from 2 to 3 stars for the simple reason that the science chapters were very interesting and I learned new things. ( )
  ElentarriLT | Mar 24, 2020 |
Harmon Courage, Katherine (2013). Octopus! The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea. New York: Current (Penguin Group). 2013. ISBN 9780698137677. Pagine 272. 14,60 €

Non un libro di scienza, per la verità, ma di giornalismo scientifico. Giornalismo partecipato, se è per quello, perché la signora Katherine Harmon Courage è abbastanza avventurosa (merito del suo cognome acquisito, Courage?) da mangiare i polpi anche crudi, di farsi avviluppare da un tentacolo pieno di ventosette e di andarli a pescare su una barchetta pur soffrendo il mal di mare (ma la dettagliata descrizione degli attacchi di vomito poteva anche risparmiarceli).

Mi ha molto ricordato Gulp! di Mary Roach, anche nei tentativi (per la verità non sempre riusciti) di fare dello spirito.


http://katherinecourage.com/
Il polpo è un animale veramente interessante (oltre che gustoso, e né io né Katherine Harmon Courage smetteremo di mangiarlo) e ho imparato cose che ignoravo. Peccato che, proprio perché adattabile e intelligente, sia difficile tenerlo in un acquario. Interessante anche che alcuni degli scienziati che lavorano sui polpi (per esempio quelli del progetto europeo OCTOPUS) siano italiani, guidati da Cecilia Laschi della Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa.

Il libro ha delle cadute e più di uno svarione (strano, con tutti gli editor ringraziati negli Acknowledgment). Ma nel complesso si legge con piacere.

Se siete interessati all’argomento, sul sito di Katherine Harmon Courage c’è una sacco di materiale interessante e un blog.

Prima di proporvi i soliti estratti dal libro, eccovi un breve video sugli exploit mimetici del polpo:


* * *

Qualche bocconcino (non di polpo, ahimè). Consueti riferimenti alla posizione Kindle:

Milone’s specialty is octopus carpaccio, a traditional dish from around Milan. [776: forse l'autrice ignora dove sia Milano rispetto al Mediterraneo]

Gythio (also called Gythion, Gytheio, or Ytheio) […] [838: la povera Katherine non ha studiato il greco antico e ignora che quello che lei confonde con un y è un γ]

Despite all of the octopus’s flashy flesh, however, as far as we know, it is color-blind. And we don’t know if it is even aware of what its skin is doing at any given moment. [1274]

Like some species of birds, octopuses occasionally decorate the area around their dens with found objects, both natural and man-made. This creative behavior is, of course, the inspiration for the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden,” from their 1969 album Abbey Road. Ringo Starr wrote the lyrics while on vacation in Sardinia, lounging on Peter Sellers’s yacht, as he recalled in the book The Beatles Anthology. [1908]

Cephalopods have had hundreds of millions of years to cultivate their intelligence, but the development of exceptional (okay, at least pretty darned impressive) intelligence is not an evolutionary given. Much of the animal kingdom does quite well for itself—cockroaches, mites, fruit flies—apparently without much complex cognition at all. [2130]

“Intelligence means taking information from the environment,” Mather says. “Their brains are not like ours, and they’re paying attention to different factors, but intelligence is intelligence is intelligence.” [2198]

[…] ager gels […] [2396: un altro sconcertante errore sfuggito agli editor. Si tratta chiaramente di un gel di agar agar]

Cecilia Laschi, a biorobotics professor at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy, has been coordinating the effort. [2445: merita una foto]


sssa.bioroboticsinstitute.it
[…] queen of Eretria […] [2451: ancora un errore, dovuto alla cattiva comprensione dell'autrice e al mancato controllo degli editor. Stiamo parlando dello Scoglio della regina di Livorno, un posto che tutti i livornesi conoscono. La regina Maria Luisa di Borbone, allora regina d’Etruria – non di Eretria! –, figlia del Re di Spagna Carlo IV, nel 1806 vi fece il bagno in una piccola piscina coperta solo da tendaggi. Convintasi della funzione terapeutica dei bagni di mare la regina fece scavare nei pressi dello scoglio una vasca alimentata da quattro canalette per trascorrervi le giornate estive con le dame di compagnia. Nel 1846 il dottor Carbone Squarci ebbe l’autorizzazione a costruire uno stabilimento balneare, con un palazzetto in muratura collegata alla terraferma da un piccolo ponte a sei arcate. Oggi la struttura ospita il centro di ricerca internazionale nel settore delle tecnologie marine, in particolare della logistica e della robotica, istituito nel 2009 con un progetto del Comune di Livorno in collaborazione con Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa, Regione Toscana, Capitaneria di Porto e Finmeccanica. La storia la trovate qui] ( )
  Boris.Limpopo | Apr 29, 2019 |
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Does the complete understanding of a natural phenomenon strip away its miraculous qualities? It is certainly a risk. But it should at least maintain all of its poetry, for poetry subverts reason and is never dulled by repetition. Besides, a few gaps in our knowledge will always allow for a joyous confusion of the mysteries, the unknown, and the miraculous.  --  Jean Painleve, filmmaker, "Mysteries and Miracles of Nature." Vu 1931
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To my grandfather Ted Rogers, the most amazing (human) specimen I've met
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The octopus is a tough beast to grasp.
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Veteran journalist and contributing editor for 'Scientific American,' Katherine Harmon Courage dives into the mystifying underwater world of the octopus, sharing new scientific discoveries and demonstrating deep cultural ties that connect us all to this alien-like creature.

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