What would you generally
have for breakfast ? Idly, dosa, sambar
in South India, Aloo paratha with pickle and curd in North India – never
imagined that people elsewhere eat these too.
A Hollywood movie that too
James Bond movie – happening in India !!
In 2010, the whole of Spain erupted with joy as their National
side reached the FIFA WC final for the first time ever beating the odds on
favourite Germany by a solitary goal. Before the first kick, Germany’s fate was
sealed at Oberhausen – it was the
divination of - Paul the Octopus, an ungainly looking creature, a two-year-old who correctly predicted the
results of major German international football matches especially in the 2010
FIFA World Cup.
After fleeing
knife-throwing twin assassins Mischka and Grishka in East Berlin, mortally
wounded British agent 009, dressed as a circus clown and carrying a counterfeit
Fabergé egg, crashes into the British ambassador's residence and dies. MI6
immediately suspects Soviet involvement and, after the genuine Fabergé egg is
to be auctioned in London, sends James Bond to identify the seller. Bond
infiltrates a floating palace in Udaipur and meets its owner, Octopussy, a
wealthy businesswoman, smuggler and Khan's associate. She also leads the Octopus cult,
of which Magda is a member.
An octopus is a soft-bodied,
eight-limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda. The order consists of some 300
species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefish and
more. Like other cephalopods, an octopus is bilaterally symmetric with
two eyes and a beaked mouth at the center point of the eight limbs. The soft
body can radically alter its shape, enabling octopuses to squeeze through small
gaps. They trail their eight appendages behind them as they swim. The siphon is
used both for respiration and for locomotion, by expelling a jet of water.
Octopuses have a complex nervous system and excellent sight, and are among the
most intelligent and behaviourally diverse of all invertebrates.
Octopuses appear in
mythology as sea monsters like the Kraken of Norway and the Akkorokamui of the
Ainu, and probably the Gorgon of ancient Greece. A battle with an octopus
appears in Victor Hugo's book Toilers of the Sea, inspiring other works such as
Ian Fleming's Octopussy.
Do people eat these
creatures too - Scientists think them to be famously intelligent creatures, but some
believe them to be ones on dinner plate.
Octopuses caught in the
wild using pots, lines and traps are eaten all over the world, including in the
Mediterranean and in Asia and Latin America. The race
to discover the secret to breeding them in captivity has been going on for
decades. It's difficult as the larvae only eat live food and need a carefully
controlled environment, but Nueva Pescanova announced in 2019 that it had made
a scientific breakthrough. The prospect of intensively farming octopus has
already led to opposition: Lawmakers in the US state of Washington have
proposed banning the practice before it even starts.
Nueva Pescanova's plans
reveal that the octopuses, which are solitary animals used to the dark, would
be kept in tanks with other octopuses, at times under constant light. The
creatures - the species octopus vulgaris - would be housed in around 1,000
communal tanks in a two-storey building in the port of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria.They
would be killed by being put in containers of water kept at -3C, according to
the documents. Man’s cruelty crosses all boundaries when it comes to money making !
In Madrid, Animal
rights activists gathered to protest plans for the construction of an octopus
farm in Spain, saying there are no respective laws in the country and the
European Union to guarantee the welfare of the animals in captivity. The
proposed farm, which aims to breed octopuses on a large scale in captivity, is
scheduled to be built next year in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago
located in the Atlantic Ocean. A few dozen people!! showed up to express their concerns regarding
a project that plans to confine 3 million octopuses in pools, despite these
creatures being solitary predators in their natural habitat.
“It is similar to
imprisoning tigers together. They will prey on one another and will also
attempt to escape due to their high intelligence and adeptness," said a
spokesperson for the protest called by various animal welfare organizations. He
further added that, Octopuses grown in captivity will behave differently from
those in the wild. “It is not possible to grow any (animal) species in the
European Union without respecting their welfare conditions. It is the standard,
and our group does nothing but comply with guidelines and legislations,” said the
multinational's aquaculture director.
Since the demand for
octopus consumption has been on the rise, farming octopuses is being regarded
as a first step towards ensuring sustainable food production. Innately, humans are cruel to
all other creatures – breeding them to kill is no art or Science but human
greed and barbarism.
22.5.2023.
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