Talk:Tentacle

A fact from Tentacle appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 April 2004. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that some plants have tentacles, but octopuses have none (they have arms)?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2004/April.

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"Tantacle" as a General Term vs. "Tentacle" as a Cephalopod-specific Biological Term

The article is rather vague regarding the accuracy of the use of the word "tentacle" when applied to a long, round, tapered muscular hydrostrat. This article and cephalopod limb seem to imply that it is incorrect to refer to the limb of an octopus as a 'tentacle'. I disagree to a certain extent; I would argue that the definition changes based on the scope of the topic.

When in the context of biology, specifically of cephalopods, it is necessary to use separate words to form a distinction between limbs of different anatomy and function. However, when such a biological distinction/specification isn't necessary, "tentacle" may be used as an umbrella term for cephalopod limbs.

My first argument for this is that the vast majority of English speakers will refer to a cephalopod limb as a "tentacle" in a general context. While it could be argued that the vast majority are wrong, the word 'tentacle' has become a de facto term to refer to such a limb. If a person were to write a book and one of the characters found the arm of some kind of squid or octopus on the beach, I doubt the book would say, 'He found a severed arm on the beach." Even Wiktionary describes "tentacle" as "An elongated, boneless, flexible organ or limb of some animals, such as the octopus and squid."

My next argument is that the general biological definition of "tentacle" defines things dissimilar to cephalopod limbs. A "feeding tentacle" and and "arm" have far more in common with each other than they do with the tentacles of a cnidarian. It makes no sense to refer to a hair like appendage covered in stinging cells as a tentacle while claiming it is incorrect to refer to any cephalopod limb as a tentacle.

If no one has any objections, I would like to see this edited and cleared up.

AbyssopalegicIdeas (talk) 03:11, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No Trivia

I deleted that "cultural context" crap, I've had it with random trivia on Wikipedia.

69.221.194.209 (talk) 22:38, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Octopodes, octopuses, octopi

The plural of Octopus is Octopodes:

What are the plurals of Octopus, Hippopotamus, Syllabus?

But that's not what the article says. They only mention octopodes as a way of explaining why octopi is not the correct plural, octopuses is. --Michael Geary 23:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Star Wars?

Why is Star Wars listed under "Tentacles in cultural context"? --Goobergunch|[[User talk:Goobergunch|?]] 07:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There needs to be a clear definition distinguishing arms from tentacles. Without this definition, what does it even mean to say that an octopus has arms, not tentacles? Please someone enlighten me.

Mechanical tentacles

In war of the worlds the huge tripod-thingies use tentacles to capture humans. In the matrix, some of the robots have tentacles attached to them. Could sometone mention these artificial tentacles? T.Neo (talk) 19:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lead paragraphs

The second paragraph reports that "A nautilus has cirri, but an octopus has tentacles." However, the article on octopus specifies that octopi have arms, not tentacles. One of the two may be wrong, but I'm not qualified to say which.... PurpleChez (talk) 17:01, 27 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]