Think About It: Octopuses (non-fiction article)

***This article is mostly true.
Four sentences are NOT TRUE.***
Read, think, and research to find out the truth about octopuses.













Octopuses are an ocean animal belonging to the cephalopod group of invertebrates. They live most commonly in warm ocean water and are bottom-dwellers. Octopuses eat crayfish, crabs, and mollusks.
The octopus body is soft and has eight arms with rows of suckers. Octopuses use several strategies for protection, including camouflage, ink squirting, losing an arm, and biting with their strong beak.
Octopuses use their arms for a wide variety of tasks. They are intelligent animals, able to learn by watching the behavior of other octopuses.
An octopus behavior recently reported is an amazing ability to use coconuts as a tool for survival.

Scientists working in Indonesia have observed Veined Octopuses carrying empty coconut shells to hide in.
These octopuses crawl to a coconut tree at night to choose a coconut of a useful size. They then use their strong arms to crack the coconut shell against a rock. The octopus carries the two shell halves under its body, walking as if on stilts. A Veined Octopus will keep the same coconut shell until the shell is no longer of a useful size.

The Veined Octopus joins other tree-climbing octopuses, such as the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

Use these sources, along with others, to decide which four sentences are false:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Wild-Things-201002.html?c=y&page=2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphioctopus_marginatus http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)01914-9?large_figure=true#app2
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octopus

Starfish (non-fiction)

Starfish are an ocean animal. They are not a fish. The correct name for starfish is sea stars.
Sea stars live on the ocean floor near the shore and can be found in all oceans of the world.
There are about 2,000 kinds of sea stars, and many of them have 5 arms. Some kinds have more than five arms.
Sea stars have spiny skin to protect themselves. They can also lose an arm to keep a predator from eating their entire body.
They have tube feet all over their underside which they use to walk and to pry open shells. Sea stars eat the meat from inside shell animals.
To read more about sea stars, visit the sites below.
sources:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/starfish.html
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/interesting-facts-about-starfish.html
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/invertebrates/echinoderm/Seastarprintout.shtml