The Year of the Octopus & Humans Heading to the Moon

The Year of the Octopus and Exciting Space Missions!

Welcome to another fun episode of Takaro Kids! This time, we're diving into the fascinating world of marine biology and space exploration. We're discussing why 2025 is called the Year of the Octopus, an unprecedented phenomenon that scientists believe is linked to climate change. You'll learn incredible facts about octopuses, their intelligence, and their adaptability. We also touch upon the exciting Artemis II mission, which will take humans close to the moon for the first time in 50 years as a preparation for future Mars expeditions. Plus, don't miss our fun quiz question about a famous octopus from the 2010 FIFA World Cup for a chance to win cool prizes!

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
00:25 The Year of the Octopus
01:46 Octopus Behavior and Intelligence
03:41 Climate Change and Its Impact on Marine Life
07:16 Artemis II: Return to the Moon
10:56 Quiz Time and Fun Facts
14:33 Quiz Results and Conclusion

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Transcript

Debkanya 0:00

Mics camera Action! Welcome to another episode of Takaro Kids Now We've been talking a lot about politics a lot about things happening around the world A lot of you know okay okay Stories kind of sad stories not such exciting stories this time which is why we decided to focus on something fun And I love this episode Kiran

Kiran Menon 0:25

fun It's all about science and technology

Debkanya 0:29

our

Kiran Menon 0:31

it is It is definitely our favorite And this time we are talking about 2025 being the year of the octopus. What

Debkanya 0:41

Yep

Kiran Menon 0:42

Debbie The year of the octopus I mean I know that every China every year in China they have a year of an animal right That's how they kind of um

Debkanya 0:49

Mm-hmm

Kiran Menon 0:50

out their years It's the year of the pig and the dog and blah blah blah What is the year of the octopus?

Debkanya 0:56

According to the Chinese calendar 2026 is the year of the horse. But according to scientists 2025 was the year of the octopus and that's not because of what you just said. It's because scientists in the UK suddenly saw that there were a huge number of octopi octopus octopuses

Kiran Menon 1:17

I think it's still octopus isn't it. The plural

Debkanya 1:20

It is octopuses. The plural of octopus is octopuses

Kiran Menon 1:24

I've always said there are many octopus in the sea or

Debkanya 1:28

you know

Kiran Menon 1:29

yeah Octopuses

Debkanya 1:31

you know

Kiran Menon 1:32

Interesting

Debkanya 1:32

Yeah Yeah So it's also called the year of the Octopus Bloom by some of the scientists because they saw suddenly unprecedented amounts of octopuses in the ocean, in the coastal waters across the UK. And this is very very unusual. Okay now We have to understand what the octopus is like as a creature It's a really really shy creature. It does not like being around human beings and around too much human activity. They're not easy to spot. You have to go really deep down and look under rocks and crevices inside the ocean to actually find them. And suddenly scientists were seeing them everywhere in the waters right .And people were wondering why this is.

Kiran Menon 2:12

And they're like the chameleons of the water right. They they kind of can take on shapes and colors and mimic what's around them. So it's actually very tough to usually spot them. Even if you go diving even if you go snorkeling it's very tough to actually spot Octopus but

Debkanya 2:28

I mean

Kiran Menon 2:29

Yeah

Debkanya 2:29

Octopuses Yeah they're the masters of disguise. They're really good like you said at camouflage. And they're also by the way did you know the octopus does not have any bones which is why they can fit into all kinds of narrow spaces. It just has to be as big as their you know beak. So if you look at the octopus it's got a little beak. If the beak can fit the rest of the octopus can fit. So they can actually go into Things as small as a tiny coin you know so they can just move in. That's why they're so hard to spot and that's why it's so hard to study as well.

Kiran Menon 3:01

And there's extremely extremely intelligent beings. Scientists have basically put them into mazes where they have to find their way around and they have been Able to find their way around. They've been able to kind of I think I remember there was this one um sort of uh experiment where they were making the octopus click a button to get food and

Debkanya 3:24

Oh

Kiran Menon 3:25

understood that it needed to click a button to get food after just a couple of attempts and such crazy things. You would never think about it but it's amazing.

Debkanya 3:34

So that's the thing and scientists are like okay This creature has been so elusive. Why are there suddenly so many. That's why they called it a bloom because there were so many of them and they've said that this is possibly because of climate change. Again it's no surprise right If you yeah so they're saying that there's been an unusually mild winter It's not been as cold. The waters have been warmer than usual and this is what makes conditions ideal for um octopuses to have babies.

Kiran Menon 4:02

Yeah

Debkanya 4:02

For baby and for those babies then to grow and to survive and to live Now um octopuses in general don't have very long lives They live only up to one to three years actually. I mean they grow really fast live very very intense lives And then sadly they die out. These octopuses are actually being able to survive and live through to adulthood. And there are so many of them at the same time. Now if you remember back in October 2025 We had talked about the climate tipping point right. This is another report that scientists had uh taken out They had talked about how the earth has reached a tipping point. A tipping point is when something changes so much that there's no way that you can go back to the previous state. Right So they said that there was a major tipping point that we had reached where a lot of our coral reef were going to die out And there was nothing we could do about it And we had to stop uh the warming Right And I think this is all connected. We've been talking about how the oceans have been warming around the world. And while it is cool and while it is fun to think about okay you know it doesn't hurt to have more octopuses in the ocean but it's actually a symptom or a sign of something much much larger and probably not so great for the planet.

Kiran Menon 5:16

Yeah and I think one important thing to understand is uh you know we are we are talking about Oceans getting warmer but we're also talking about the ice caps melting. We're talking about you know Antarctica's glaciers melting, Arctic glaciers melting and they're falling into the sea So if the glaciers are melting why are the oceans getting warmer Right? And and the reason is fundamentally because oceans they actually absorb 90% of the heat that's trapped in the atmosphere. So all the heat that is getting trapped gets sucked into the ocean, that heat getting sucked in is actually way more than the coolness factor of a glacier breaking up and melting. So you must understand that that's the impact of the global warming that's that's happening.

Debkanya 6:09

One thing I was wondering about Kiran though was you know how do these scientists actually come up with these names and what does that really mean? And why do they actually do this? Why do they name a year a certain thing right Like for example why not just release a report and say Hey there are so many octopuses in the ocean uh because of this reason and this is what we've observed and leave it at that. But one of the reasons behind why scientists and the scientific community actually names a year a certain thing is because they want to draw your attention To a certain phenomenon because it's connected to something larger and far more important like we talked about right Climate change. Um if you just said it in our report you read it once forget about it right. But if you name it it'll probably stick. And they do this quite often In fact human beings we've always done this right. We've always had the your off something that year of this war the year of that battle the year off This volcano uh because we mark those occasions and this was an important enough occasion to mark and to remind people that this is happening around us to pay attention.

Kiran Menon 7:14

Totally totally makes sense. Thinking about names for each year Do you think 2026 will be the year of us returning to the moon Because Yeah

Debkanya 7:29

Would that be something

Kiran Menon 7:31

That would be amazing because we have Artemis II which is a mission, which is a rocket which is going to take humans to the moon for the first time after 50 years!

Debkanya 7:44

Wow

Kiran Menon 7:45

moon They're not gonna land on the moon They're gonna go fly around the moon do a lot of experiments. They're gonna actually use a laser to see if they can speed up communication between the spacecraft and Earth and NASA. The reason for this mission and the first time humans are actually going after 50 years. This is a really really big deal. They actually launch on February 6th, So if you can think about that date put it on your calendar remember it tell it to your parents and maybe you can find a video on Feb seventh of that launch. But the reason they're doing it is actually very interesting. It's not for the moon. Is because they are preparing to understand what it would be to create a station in the moon which becomes a launchpad to Mars. So humans have to go to the moon, stay over there, refuel, do whatever it is and then launch from there to Mars because then the trip to Mars becomes shorter. That's why they're doing all these experiments They're gonna be navigating the The rocket on their own. The the pilot of the rocket he's gonna take over control and do it on his own to see if he can navigate it. Kind of uh almost testing whether he can actually dock into a moon space station of sorts. And then basically from there launch towards Mars So this Artemis II is actually a super super interesting um would say mission because it just creates that excitement of something that we haven't seen for the last 50 years Right. It's it's crazy. So it's with the idea of establishing a long-term human presence over there. It's gonna be about 10 days long, the mission. They're gonna be looping around the moon and then come back to Earth. They're gonna test the spaceship they're gonna fly it manually Like I said. They're gonna do science experiments communication experiments. So it'll be really really cool to to kind of follow

Debkanya 9:44

So they're gonna be doing so many different things but no human is gonna be landing on the moon this time right?

Kiran Menon 9:49

No they aren't I mean we've already had about 12 American astronauts who have actually walked on the moon and all of

Debkanya 9:57

Wow

Kiran Menon 9:58

1969 and 1972. So within a span of like three years There was Apollo 11 which was the first one where Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin the two people who first stepped foot on the moon.

Debkanya 10:11

First step Yeah

Kiran Menon 10:13

Yeah there's that American flag that they planted. But after that missions of Apollo 12 Apollo 14 Apollo 15 Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 all had landings on the moon So it's still

Debkanya 10:26

Hmm

Kiran Menon 10:26

about 50 years since uh people have actually walked on the moon. But um yeah they're not gonna walk on the moon this time but after 50 years humans are gonna be near the moon.

Debkanya 10:36

Very very cool. So yeah I wonder what this year is going to be called. I hope it's something to do with the moon or maybe it'll be something to do with the planet we are on as well. It could just be that again.

Kiran Menon 10:49

Now that we've

Debkanya 10:49

hmm

Kiran Menon 10:50

two exciting stories and the first one underwater the second one in space. We have not forgotten about the quiz question for this week and this week's quiz question has something to do with the intelligence of the octopus that we talked about.

Debkanya 11:08

Yes

Kiran Menon 11:08

What is our quiz question for this week Debbie?

Debkanya 11:10

Before I give you the quiz question though there is some one other thing. So do you know a lot of people this is like a conspiracy theory or maybe like you know use your imagination. Um a lot of people would like to believe that the octopus is actually an alien.

Kiran Menon 11:26

Ooh Yeah

Debkanya 11:27

theories like that

Kiran Menon 11:28

yeah yeah yeah It

Debkanya 11:29

You know why

Kiran Menon 11:30

Yeah

Debkanya 11:30

Yeah It looks like an alien. If you look at an octopus it looks a little bit like an alien. It can squirt ink like a superhero, Dark ink to confuse its predators and escape. Like we told you it can squeeze. Squid, Yeah I know that's true. But uh an octopus is like the ultimate camouflage creature of the ocean as well. Like you said they can also change colors. They can change texture. They're shapeshifters of the sea. Their arms, they have eight arms and supposedly Each arm has hundreds of suckers which can taste and touch at the same time. Half of an octopus's brain cells are in its arms. So its arms can actually make decisions without the main brain. Like isn't that insane.

Kiran Menon 12:12

That's amazing. So do

Debkanya 12:13

Yeah

Kiran Menon 12:14

the aliens are gonna start invading us now because the year of octopus.

Debkanya 12:20

Uh okay I think that's a movie that you can write, a movie script that you can write Kiran. Maybe the octopuses are aliens or maybe they're just one of the coolest creatures that ever inhabited the earth. Speaking of let's talk about this intelligent creature. The quiz question this week is Which Octopus became famous for correctly predicting the results of eight football matches, including the final match, during the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Kiran Menon 12:49

Oh that was such an exciting time

Debkanya 12:50

Look this up

Kiran Menon 12:51

Yeah

Debkanya 12:52

Very very exciting time. Very very exciting story I was tracking that particular octopus as well during the 2010 World Cup. The options that we are gonna give you are Option one was he called Hank, two Paul, three Kraken or four the Octopus King

Kiran Menon 13:13

Oh and this guy was so good because before every match in his tank he would basically get a choice of the two countries that were playing and he would choose which one he would go And that's the intelligence I would like Pressing a switch right Like I was talking about it It's

Debkanya 13:29

Wait I mean was it was it really intelligence Because I mean he was just guessing right. There's no way

Kiran Menon 13:35

them being aliens if they're talking you're talking about them being aliens Maybe they saw the future or they knew the future and could predict it.

Debkanya 13:42

Maybe maybe

Kiran Menon 13:44

That's cool

Debkanya 13:44

uh I mean maybe maybe we should all listen to the octopus more right. Anyway look that story up and send us your answers on www.takarokids.com or you can send us your answers on Instagram. Get someone to help you do that Send us a message and we will be picking a winner -a lucky winner and also the correct winner right Kiran not just a lucky winner

Kiran Menon 14:10

Correct answer is very very important It's not just about sending in an answer. So do your research. Was it Hank Paul Kraken or the Octopus King. And you will get a gift voucher And a Takaro kids t-shirt. Does not mean you have to be the first to answer does not mean that you have to be the first time that you're answering it. You can answer it how many other times you want. And one lucky winner gets chosen every week Last week we had asked you what is Trump's new international organization called the one that is there to be to help rebuild Gaza.

Debkanya 14:49

His group of friends.

Kiran Menon 14:50

Correct. Option one Board of Friends, Option two was Boards of Canada happens to be a music group by the way, three was Board of Gaza, that seemed very logical but that was not the right answer. Option four was the right answer the Board of Peace. And we had so many entries this week It was so awesome to see. A lot of you went to our website and filled in the form. That's the best way to do it. In fact what we noticed is there were a lot of entries from a single school. All of y'all had sent in your individual entries with the school's email address which is very cool. Keep doing that no problem. And so the winner of this week's quiz is Elina who is a 12-year-old from Bangalore and Elina You seem to have given your school's email address which is hello@papagoya.com. So that's where we are gonna send over your gift certificate. And we'll get the address and send over the shirt as well. Good job Elina. Be like Elina and participate in this week's quiz. Until next week

Debkanya 16:06

It's time to say goodbye!

Kiran Menon 16:09

Bye bye