Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Fractal Octopodes
Genetically altered baby octopus
  (+5, -2)
(+5, -2) 		  [vote for,
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It shouldn't be all that hard for someone with a bio lab and a sense of fun to mess with the gene responsible for giving all species of octopus eight arms. The GM critters would have eight smaller arms on the end of each of their eight arms and eight smaller arms on the end of each of those and eight smaller arms on the end of each...

This idea came to me whilst eating baby octopus for lunch today. Their little tentacles were curled up in such cute patterns.

UnaBubba, Sep 22 2001

Bush Robots (1980) http://www.frc.ri.c...ot.papers/1980/bush
According to Minsky, Hans P. Moravec and Minsky had roughly the same idea without knowing of each other. [jutta, Sep 22 2001]

More on bush robots http://www.islandon...ravecRobotBush.html
Not clear if it's mechanically useful. I'm also pretty sure it wouldn't exactly be the trivial GM project UB is proposing. [egnor, Sep 22 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Octopi or octopuses? http://www.aquarium...ing/upwelling32.htm
<pedant>"The most proper plural for octopus is octopodes...The word octopi is the least correct..."</pedant> [-alx, Sep 22 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]


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       Boned. You should know better...
StarChaser, Sep 22 2001
   

       I do, but this one is probably possible, using existing technology.
UnaBubba, Sep 22 2001
   

       A meal that comes with it's own floss? Croissant!
phoenix, Sep 22 2001
   

       I believe fleas have a fractalness quality if there is such a word because it is well known that fleas have little fleas that have smaller fleas that have tinier fleas that have.......
po, Sep 22 2001
   

       There's a robot like what you describe (with N=2, not 8) in Marvin Minksy's and Harry Harrison's (badly written, wooden) Sci-Fi collaboration "The Turing Option". It's called a "tree robot" in the book; independnetly, Hans P. Moravec came up with "bush robots" that share the same fractal structure. (See link.)
jutta, Sep 22 2001
   

       jutta, something similar in "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Richard Dawkins.
UnaBubba, Sep 25 2001
   

       Animals which regenerate body parts can be induced (by sadistic vivisectionists) to grow duplicates--lizards with two tails, flatworms with two bodies and one head. Point being, there may well be a gene that can be turned on or off here in order to deform unfortunate molluscs.
Dog Ed, Sep 25 2001
   

       There's a big difference between cutting a lizard and keeping it from healing and 'turning on a gene'.
StarChaser, Sep 29 2001
   

       If you could do that to a monkey's butt cheek, oohh!
croissantz, Aug 21 2004
   

       <rhetorical question>Then we'd have any one of a certain type of halfbaker, wouldn't we?</rq>
UnaBubba, Aug 21 2004
   


 
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