Suckerless but What the Hey
Today is International Cephalopod Awareness Day. So I’m making sure everyone’s aware that octopuses are supposed to have suckers. Please pay no heed to the image on the right (the full version of which you may see if you click on it). Also, any resemblance to any hypothetical deities is obviously absolutely incidental. ETA: The octopus is loosely based on Wunderpus and Mimic octopus. Loosely!
While creating this image I’ve been thinking of what kind of role cephalopods play in my life. The answer is, unfortunately, not a big one. Sweden doesn’t really have a lot of them. However, they do sometimes turn up in discussions with people who believe God created Man as the crown of all creation.
Why? Because their retina is the right way around, as compared to the vertebrate eye. When light travels into a human eye, it has to pass through a layer of blood vessels and nerve cells before it finally reaches the photosensitive cells. While this doesn’t degrade the image received all that much, some light scattering does happen. Also, as a result of the nerves being in front of the photoreceptors, they have to at one point plunge through the retina to create the optic nerve to the brain. This creates the oh-so-famous blind spot.
The cephalopod eye, which develops differently but is remarkably similar to its vertebrate counterpart, has the photosensitive cells pointing towards the light instead of away from it. No blind spot, that is. A much more logically constructed eye - the way a designer would have made it.
So, my question to believers is obviously: Does your god like octopuses more than men? Maybe they were supposed to rule the earth…