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In my last post , I wondered: How did Asian fishermen manage to discover the mimic octopus? Thaumoctopus mimicus is a wildly talented cephalopod that lives in shallow waters off Indonesia and Malaysia. It can change shape any time it likes, and can mimic anything — flatfish, giant crabs, seashells, sting rays, you name it — so if you see a blob that looks like a walking clam on Monday, and on Tuesday it looks like a snake, how would you know it's the same guy (or gal)? And yet, somehow, the species was identified in 1998.

A puzzlement.

And now the answer. Alert reader "digital cuttlefish" (who ought to know, being a cephalopod him/herself) has discovered this hand-drawn key, strangely written in English, published by blogger Randall Munroe, who posts at xkcd . I can see this chart being passed from boat to boat in Brunei Bay or maybe tacked up over the bar in Bukit Batu as a handy dandy guide for puzzled fishermen.

So now we know.

Fussy Word-People Alert

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