Have you ever heard someone claim that octopuses are really aliens? Or have you ever wondered why so many of our fictional aliens look undeniably octopus-like? Well, octopuses and their fellow cephalopods are truly awesome and even alien–just not in the from-outer-space sense.
A Nerd Nite fan-favorite, “cephspert” Danna Staaf returns to our stage to debunk the space alien myth and celebrate one of the weirdest creatures on Earth. Danna is the author of “Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods” (http://www.cephalopodiatrist.com/p/squid-empire.html) – which chronicles the 500-million-year evolutionary journey of cephalopods from masters of the primordial sea to calamari on your dinner plate – and a contributor to the anthology “Putting the Science in Fiction” (https://www.writersdigestshop.com/putting-the-science-in-fiction-r7244). She earned her PhD in “Squid Sex and Babies” from Stanford University and works as a freelance science writer.
This presentation is from Nerd Nite San Francisco.