Behold the Mighty Tree Octopus

It seems there has been some confusion as to the existence of the magnificent critter living in the forests of the Pacific Northwest-- that's right, we're talking about the ever elusive tree octopus. From the website devoted to them:

he Pacific Northwest tree octopus (Octopus paxarbolis) can be found in the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula on the west coast of North America. Their habitat lies on the Eastern side of the Olympic mountain range, adjacent to Hood Canal. These solitary cephalopods reach an average size (measured from arm-tip to mantle-tip,) of 30-33 cm. Unlike most other cephalopods, tree octopuses are amphibious, spending only their early life and the period of their mating season in their ancestral aquatic environment. Because of the moistness of the rainforests and specialized skin adaptations, they are able to keep from becoming desiccated for prolonged periods of time, but given the chance they would prefer resting in pooled water.

An intelligent and inquisitive being (it has the largest brain-to-body ratio for any mollusk), the tree octopus explores its arboreal world by both touch and sight. Adaptations its ancestors originally evolved in the three dimensional environment of the sea have been put to good use in the spatially complex maze of the coniferous Olympic rainforests. The challenges and richness of this environment (and the intimate way in which it interacts with it,) may account for the tree octopus's advanced behavioral development. (Some evolutionary theorists suppose that "arboreal adaptation" is what laid the groundwork in primates for the evolution of the human mind.)

Now some people are going so far as to say that the regal tree octopus doesn't exist. Well, we can tell you categorically that it does. The species actually had its genesis when a certain annoying classmate of the Wicked Witch of West Texas, formerly known as the Wicked Witch of Western Washington, and before that as the Wicked Witch of Walla Walla, did one too many underarm farts in Spanish class.

The other thing this study highlights is the importance of lying to kids constantly. We've actually studied the effects of constant tall tales on the child brain and found that the more kids are fibbed to the more they learn to question EVERYTHING. True, they eventually won't believe you when you tell them real, and even extremely mundane, facts until they check several sources, but then, isn't that sort of a good thing?