Sad update everyone, Tama recently passed away… An estimated 3,000 people, including railway officials, attended Tama the cat’s funeral on Sunday, days after she died of heart failure aged 16. [x]
For those who haven’t read articles about it, the local shrine elevated her to a god. She’s now the Eternal Stationmaster and patron god of the station.
Beautiful.
Now I’m crying thanks
and a new cat was hired right?
yep! her name is Nitama (essentially ”second tama” or “tama II”) and she served under Tama as an apprentice before being appointed her deputy
she works very hard
Everytime this crosses my dash, I reblog. It is the law.
Law
I’m crying at 11pm over train cats
Nitama, already now a mature cat (born 2010), has a protege named Yontama (fourth Tama, b. 2016). There is no information available for either the physical befellment or tragic self-disgrace which has removed Santama from contention.
^Nitama majestic, and below with Yontama
Yontama.
a legacy
okay but actually what happened to santama (or sun-tama-tama, which is her name because it’s a pun on santama) was that she was basically sent to train for the position in okayama and they liked her so much they refused to send her back
“Sun-tama-tama” (a pun off of “Santama”, lit. “third Tama”) was a calico cat sent for training in Okayama. Sun-tama-tama was considered as a candidate for Tama’s successor, but the Okayama Public Relations representative who had been caring for Sun-tama-tama refused to give the cat up writing, “I will not let go of this child, she will stay in Okayama.” [25]
As of September 2018, Sun-tama-tama is working as the stationmaster in Naka-ku, Okayama and appears occasionally on Tama’s Twitter account.
their arms are similar to our tongues in that their muscle fibers are oriented in three different directions
octopuses are disconcertingly strong (anecdotal evidence says that a 15 inch wide octopus was as strong as the scientist handling it)
on that note that same scientist said that when her octopuses escaped she would have to run behind them, “like cats” (paraphrased from sy montgomery’s the soul of an octopus)
aquariums have “octopus enriching programs” so they don’t get bored and fuck shit up in their tanks
they are crazy smart like. really. really fucking smart
but we can’t compare their intelligence to ours because our evolution branched from the same common ancestor so long ago we cannot comprehend how they think
it’s believed that their intelligence evolved when they lost their shell, and had to adapt to predict how countless of different prey and predators would act, how to avoid them, distract them, lure them or trick them
they visualize how other creatures are going to act, which means they have have awareness that others are individuals which is a type of consciousness but i can’t remember what it’s called right now
like, they use tools
they have distinct personalities
aquarium octopuses are socialized from a very young age and even though in the wild they are solitary creatures they become extremely friendly with enough human exposure
sometimes they dislike people for no apparent reason and will shoot water at them
they have three hearts
each of their arms has a tiny brain that controls movement and sensory input on its own i shit you not
they are color blind and yet they can camouflage their color and nobody knows how
they can change the color and texture of their skin faster than human eyes can keep up with it
great pacific octopuses are white when they are peaceful, and red when they’re excited
aquarium octopus have escaped their tanks and slithered down pipes into the ocean
escaped their tanks to eat the fish in other tanks
escaped their tanks to go fight other octopuses cuz they were bored
octopus fight club
learned how to take photographs
cost thousands of dollars by flooding new floors
they can feel, taste, and smell with their suckers and all of their skin
they enjoy tasting their food by slowly moving it through their suckers instead of shoving it in their beaks
they can rewrite their rna. no, really
the only reason why they haven’t evolved to take over as the next dominant race is because they’re doing pretty well in the ocean so there’s no need for them to adapt further
there’s a ton more but i’m so overwhelmed by love i can’ think of any at the moment i’m going to cry
read the soul of an octopus by sy mongomery no she didn’t pay me i just love octopuses so much
Also:
learned to shoot out the annoying light over the tank
hid in floor drains when caught out of their tanks by researchers
hid the shells of crabs stolen from a tank under a third, unrelated tank
Sy is a wonderful human and a great researcher. NEAq actually named a GPO after her in honor of all her work on octopuses. (Or octopi, or octopodes – they’re all correct). Definitely read that book.
-liked being splashed. Figured out that spitting water would have keepers splash back in response
– learned to spray 45°F water everywhere to demand splashes
-likes taking brushes from divers. Knows the best way to do this was to sneak up from underneath or reach over the shoulder
-will wait until keepers are looking away/distracted to grab stuff and knows exactly how far to sink down to get out of reach
-seriously octos are huge thieves. If you have something in your hand, they want it. As soon as they grab it, it belongs to them. There’s no food and they have no use for it? Doesn’t matter it’s their thing now.
-we lost a magnet scrubber for three days because one stole it from the interns. Every time she let it go and we reached a net to get it, she would snatch it out of the net and drag it back into the den. By the time we got it back she had torn apart the scrub pad
-honestly it’s like keeping an aquatic possessive 8-legged cat
Steel Phoenix Studios 