All right, this is going too far. This is what some people think an octopus skeleton looks like:
They don’t have bones!
Now we get a mangling of spider anatomy:
It’s an exo-skeleton, guys.
As we all know, this is the correct version:
This is clearly a variant on the human centipede.
To improve the correctness of that last one, one pair of hands should be covering the eye sockets, another pair the earholes, and the third the mouth opening.
Or at least be banging away on a thousand, well 3–6 (15–30 for hunt-and-peck) typewriters…
I kind of like the first two… they look like a shoehorning of human bones where none should be present, but using the various bits with a certain logic. Thus the octopus gets a human ribcage (headcage?) and eight spines, while the spider has another ribcage and human fingersbones for palps and legs.
Doctor Moreau would be happy.
I decided a couple of years ago that these sorts of decorations don’t represent the skeletons of terrestrial animals, but of creatures from some hellish dimension where evolution produced forms superficially resembling the animals we’re familiar with, but significantly more bony. Makes them much less irritating to behold.
I also enjoy imagining that, since many of them are predators of each other, that they must have an appetite for apatite.
I just realised the third one seems to have eight — not six — hands. Please adjust the numerology😉 in @1 accordingly.
Obviously, some necromancer has cast “Transmute Living Thing To Skeleton” on them.
I would like to see a really big Hallucinogenia Sparsa.
Reminds me of a D&D module that was published a few years ago that had shark skeletons as monsters.
Don’t forget the bats and dogs with ossified ears.
A biologically accurate version of the octopus would just be a disembodied beak.
Could we not leave Hallowe’en to October 31?
@ ^ chigau (違う) : Its very much an American thing that has somewhat spread here in Oz too but is kinda celebrated as an opt -in thing here in Oz. As for the spread of the sales pitches and general fuss over it, could be worse, it could be Christmas..
@ 3. John Small Berries :
Okay, Nice libne. Yeah, you made me look that up :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatite
Echoes of the remarkable, endangered, iron-shelled Deep Sea Snail (Chrysomallon squamiferum) a bit here :
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/deep-sea-snail-iron-shell-first-creature-declared-endangered-ocean-mining-180972727/
maybe?
@6. birgerjohansson : I do know a bit about the Ediacara fauna but I’ll admit you made me look that one :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucigenia
up too..
StevoR:
Yes, and yes.
(Yet let’s not forget Easter and Mother/Father’s day etc. Marketing remains a thing)
Actually, I reckon it’s a passing fad here in Oz.
—
Waxing nostalgic, I remember when I was a young lad back in Spain I was given a short story to read (obs, Spanish literature) and the story was about the dread of the night before All Souls Day. Alas, I neither recall the specific story nor the author, but there was no whimsy in it, that much I recall. But it left an impression.
So. Anthropologically (obs, I’m utterly uneducated in this field, so this is opinion) speaking I reckon this business of dressing up and kitsch and jocularity seeks to assuage that dread, much like so many other cultures do.
It’s a US contribution to world culture, and fair enough, too.
But still, I’m glad it’s not really a thing here, marketing and cultural pressure aside.
(Besides, it’s not the approach to winter here, it’s the approach to summer)
ALL HAIL THE BONETOPUS!
Louis
P.S. Cthulhu’s gonna see that picture and he’s gonna be piiiiissed.
Nah, needs a line of skulls between the limbs for that..
Don’t be ridiculous; that first thing is clearly an illithid skull. Really, just skip the taxonomic key and read the Monster Manual.
And that last thing is clearly an outtake from the Den segment of Heavy Metal.
@John Small Berries #3
My go-to for these kinds of things is that they are bone golems. Being constructs, they can look like whatever the creator wants and obviously said creator wants “wait, no, that’s just wrong,” as part of the reaction to them.
Zoologist Clint Laidlaw (Clint’s Reptiles) has great fun dissections of Halloween “skeletons” like these here – 23 mins long and plus here – 19 & a half mins long FWIW. Just stumbled on these now.