And now, a brief "science moment"

My academic background was in pyschology and neuroscience - and I stil have an abiding fascination with the wonders of biological mechanisms. So I was captivated by this recent report about Octopuses with trick elbows. So cool!

Researchers recorded muscle activity in octopus limbs, and found that an arm generates two waves of muscle contractions that propagate toward each other. When the waves collide, they form a part-time joint.

This process occurs three times, forming a shoulder where the arm meets the body, a wrist where the suckers have grasped their food, and an "elbow" somewhere in between. The elbow typically exhibits the most movement during food retrieval.

The researchers say this is a remarkably simple and apparently optimal mechanism for adjusting the length of arm segments according to where the food item is grasped along the arm.