The Pacific Northwest tree octopus is an

Internet hoax A hoax (plural: hoaxes) is a widely publicised falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information, with the either malicious or humorous intent of causing shock and interest in as many people as possible. S ...

created in 1998 by a humor writer under the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...

Lyle Zapato. Since its creation, the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...

tree octopus website has been commonly referenced in Internet literacy classes in schools and has been used in multiple studies demonstrating children's gullibility regarding online sources of information.

Description

This fictitious endangered species of

cephalopod A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan Taxonomic rank, class Cephalopoda (Greek language, Greek plural , ; "head-feet") such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral symm ...

was given the Latin name ''Octopus paxarbolis'' (the species name being coined from Latin ''pax'', the root of ''Pacific'', and Spanish ''arbol'' meaning "tree"). It was purportedly able to live both on land and in water, and was said to live in the

Olympic National Forest Olympic National Forest is a U.S. National Forest located in Washington. With an area of , it nearly surrounds Olympic National Park and the Olympic Mountain range. Olympic National Forest contains parts of Clallam, Grays Harbor, Jefferson, ...

and nearby rivers,

spawning Spawn is the Egg cell, eggs and Spermatozoa, sperm released or deposited into water by aquatic animals. As a verb, ''to spawn'' refers to the process of freely releasing eggs and sperm into a body of water (fresh or marine); the physical act is ...

in water where its

eggs An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo begins to develop. Egg, EGG or eggs may also refer to: Biology * Egg cell, the female reproductive cell (gamete) in oogamous organisms Food * Eggs as food Places * Egg, Austria * Egg, Switzerland ...

are laid. The Pacific Northwest tree octopus was said to prey on insects, small vertebrates, and bird eggs. Its major predator was said to be the

Sasquatch Bigfoot (), also commonly referred to as Sasquatch (), is a large, hairy Mythic humanoids, mythical creature said to inhabit forests in North America, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.Example definitions include: *"A large, hairy, manlike ...

, a

mythical creature A legendary creature is a type of extraordinary or supernatural being that is described in folklore (including myths and legends), and may be featured in historical accounts before modernity, but has not been scientifically shown to exist. In t ...

said to inhabit the same region, as well as

bald eagle The bald eagle (''Haliaeetus leucocephalus'') is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (''Haliaeetus albicilla''), which occupies the same niche ...

s and

cat The cat (''Felis catus''), also referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the ...

s. The conceit of the website was that the Pacific Northwest tree octopus was an endangered species, threatened by habitat loss,

overexploitation Overexploitation, also called overharvesting or ecological overshoot, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. Continued overexploitation can lead to the destruction of the resource, as it will be unable to ...

for the fashion industry during the early 20th century, and eradication as a nuisance animal by loggers.

Reception

In 2018, the website was selected as one of 30 websites to form the initial collection of the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

's Web Culture's Web Archive. In 2024, it was used as a question on

Lateral Lateral is a geometric term of location which may also refer to: Biology and healthcare * Lateral (anatomy), a term of location meaning "towards the side" * Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle, an intrinsic muscle of the larynx * Lateral release ( ...

Internet literacy studies

Design

Leu et al. (2007) conducted an empirical study on 13-year old US school children's ability to critically evaluate online information for reliability. The sample included the top quartile of school children (n=53) in samples from the states of Connecticut and South Carolina. Each school child was exposed to the spoof site ''Save The Northwest Pacific Tree Octopus'', devoted to this rare species of octopus, complete with pictures of the animal itself and its environment. The school children then received a short, fictitious, message from another class, asking them to locate and evaluate the reliability of the website. They were to provide three reasons for their answer, and summarize the most important information from that website in one or two sentences. Then they were asked to send their information via instant messaging, email, or to post this on a blog site. Following the activity, school children were interviewed to ensure that they were familiar with the term "reliable", an important concept in the task. When asked what this term meant, all responded with answers indicating that they understood the term (e.g., "It means that you can trust it"; "It means it will always be there for you"; or "It's like a friend that you can trust"). In the spring of 2017, Loos, Ivan & Leu (2018) replicated the study in a Dutch school class of 27 children (13 girls and 14 boys, 11/12 years old) in the following way: The teacher and the school children were told by the first author of the study that the lesson that would follow would be an online reading comprehension exercise; the real purpose of the lesson was not revealed in advance. The children were asked by the scholar to visit the abovementioned website. They were given the following instructions: "Have a look at this website. Look at the pictures, click on the links if you wish. Do not hurry, you have time enough. And this is not a test. It will not be graded." The website was automatically translated to Dutch, a facility offered by the

Chromebook Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a line of laptops, desktops, tablets and all-in-one computers that run ChromeOS, a proprietary operating system developed by Google. Chromebooks are optimised for web access. They al ...

they all used. Then, they were asked to answer the following questions: # This website presents an octopus living in trees. What country does this animal live in? # According to the website, this particular octopus is an endangered species. For what reason? # If Greenpeace were to ask you to save this octopus, would you support this and sign? YES, because ... NO, because ... (choose one) # Were there parts of the website you didn't understand? If so, please explain. # Are there any other comments about this website you would like to make? Hence, these school children thought the text was about their willingness to undertake action for an endangered animal. The pupils who answered 'YES' to question (3) were judged as perceiving the site as a reliable one. In this way, it was not necessary to explicitly ask about the reliability of the site, which would have risked priming them. The school children were debriefed after the session and they received a new media literacy training.

Results

The 2007 US study found that slightly more than half (27) of the 53 school children taking part in the study reported the website as being very reliable. Only 6 out of the 53 school children (11%) viewed the website as unreliable. Each of these 6 school children had just participated in a lesson that used this website to teach them to be suspicious of information online. In the 2017 Dutch study only 2 out of the total 27 school children (7%) recognized that the website was a hoax. The setting of the task (school environment), the trust in their teacher and the scholar, and the emotional involvement (the topic was an animal in danger) might have made it more difficult for them to perceive the information on the website as fake. Several told the scholar they were shocked that they had considered the digital information on the website to be reliable, as they had received several lessons in new literacy training at school over the past year.

References

External links

Official site
* {{small, (178

KiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

) Professor Leu's teaching tool. 1998 hoaxes Fictional octopuses Hoaxes in science Hoaxes in the United States Internet hoaxes