Ghatanothoa

Here are pictures of Tara and I meeting an octopus.

During my trip to Colorado, I spoke with a friend of mine about what might happen to Earth if a nuclear war completely annihilated all life anywhere near the surface. I speculated that octopuses, the most intelligent invertebrate and possibly the most intelligent deep-sea animal, might evolve into a new sentient species. Having returned home with visions of a futuristic cephalopod civilization, I read a bit about them on Wikipedia and then proceeded to rant at Tara about how cool they were.

Later, Tara was planning cool things to do during my trip to New Jersey, and booked us a visit to the aquarium. I got to meet a mysterious and alien intelligence - the North Pacific Giant Octopus. It was like a dog from Europa, very friendly yet unnervingly different from ourselves.

So, I dusted off the old family photos, in an effort to find out where we split up. Our most recent common ancestor was a creature in the subregnum Bilateria, who had two kids that differed during the embryonic stage of development. One of them developed the mouth first, and the other one developed the anus first. One led to the North Pacific Giant Octopus. Guess which one led to us.

(pause)

That's right, the ass baby! Judging by the fact that we're the ones who imprison them, I can scientifically conclude that anal is best before oral. Therefore, this will be our new motto:

Humanity: Proudly marching ass-first into the future!