The idea of a freshwater octopus isn’t too outlandish,
especially compared to some of the cryptids on this blog. Other marine animals
have made the jump to lakes and rivers, including mussels, clams, snails,
bryozoans and jellyfish (though the biologist in me is compelled to note that
the freshwater jellyfish, Craspedacusta
sowerbii, is of the class Hydrozoa rather than Scyphozoa, which are the “true
jellyfish” like moon jellies, lion’s mane, upside-down Cassiopeia jellies and others). The bull shark, Charcharhinus leucas, is infamous for its
habit of swimming up estuaries into freshwater. There is even a rare group of
poorly-understood, exclusively freshwater sharks in the genus Glyphis that inhabit the Ganges and
Irrawaddy rivers. Taking all these into account, it isn’t a huge stretch to
imagine an animal as intelligent and curious as the octopus evolving to live in freshwater.
Perhaps this has, in fact, happened, if urban legends about gigantic
octopi inhabiting lakes in Oklahoma are to be believed. According to rumor,
Lake Thunderbird, Lake Oolagah and Lake Tenkiller are all home to red,
truck-sized cephalopods that may be responsible for the upswing in drownings in
recent decades.
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| The Devil's Lake Monster |
This is actually not the only time freshwater cephalopods have
appeared in legend. Devil’s Lake in Wisconsin is said to be haunted by two
distinct types of monsters. One is a classic Nessie-style plesiosaur. The other
is a tentacled beast that was said to have attacked a canoe of Native American
men paddling across the lake to more fertile hunting grounds. The origin of
this particular story is hard to trace. It’s unclear if it genuinely originated
with the Nakota Sioux who call the land around Devil’s Lake home, if it was an
invention of European settlers, or if perhaps it was even a modern invention
given a precolonial setting to try to create more legitimacy.
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| The Berkeley Square Horror |
Another, more ambiguously cephalopodic cryptid comes from
London. The house at 50 Berkeley Square in the West End was infamous in the
18th and 19th centuries for being haunted by a shapeless gray Thing. Though the
bottom floor of the house has been consistently occupied, the second floor
rooms have long been left empty because anyone who sleeps in them will,
according to the legend, will literally be frightened to death by a visit from the
Thing in the middle of the night. Calling the Berkeley Square Horror an octopus
is, admittedly, a bit of a stretch. Descriptions of the entity are vague and
contradictory. Some witnesses said it looked like a collection of shadows or an
amorphous blob. Others claimed it
was a twisted, man-like specter. At
least one witness, though, did describe the Horror as a bizarre, tentacled
creature like a deformed octopus. Assuming the Horror was not something
supernatural, perhaps it was indeed a species of freshwater octopus that found
its way up the Thames and into London’s vast sewer system, where it eventually
emerged in the Berkely Square house.
While the marine ancestors of the Berkely octopus may have
migrated into the Thames via it’s link to the North Sea, it is more difficult to
imagine how cephalopods could have moved deep into the land-locked interior of
North America. This is further compounded by the fact that none of the lakes
inhabited by America’s supposed freshwater octopi have outlets to the sea.
Devil’s Lake lies at the bottom of a closed drainage basin-- a glacially-created
valley that does not link to any rivers with links tot he sea. Lakes Thunderbird, Oolagah and Tenkiller,
furthermore, are reservoirs created in the 1940s and 50s. How then could octopi
even get into any of these bodies of water?
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| Octosquatch |
Well, maybe they just walked. Terrestrial, octopus-like
cryptids have been occasionally sighted around the world. In 1961, two Spanish truck drivers reported
encountering an odd creature covered in rust-colored fur that stood upon four
tentacle-like limbs. Octopi are actually
known to venture out of the water for short periods of time, usually when they
are moving between tide pools in search of prey. Perhaps some evolved an even
more amphibious existence and took to venturing farther and farther inland in
search of food.
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| Hairy Octopus from www.nad-lembeh.com |
Even the unusual “fur” on this Octosquatch is not unprecedented.
A small species of taxonomically undescribed hairy octopus is known to inhabit the waters
around Indonesia. The filaments covering this creature’s body-- which are
extensions of its skin rather than the genuine fur of mammals-- are believed to
provide camouflage in the furry red algae common to the creature’s habitat.
Perhaps the land-walking cephalopod also developed a similar covering, though
in its case the filaments may have been used to provide insulation and possibly
to hold water against its body during terrestrial excursions.
Perhaps an Octosquatch-like species gradually made its way
into North America, using freshwater lakes as stepping stones. Over time, this
creature may have lost its terrestrial abilities and become fully aquatic
again, eventually becoming the enigmatic monsters terrorizing swimmers and
Native exploration parties in the Midwest.