Pacific Northwest tree octopus

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Doctored image of the Pacific Northwest tree octopus as it appears on the website Pacific Northwest tree octopus.jpg
Doctored image of the Pacific Northwest tree octopus as it appears on the website

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus is an Internet hoax created in 1998 by a humor writer under the pseudonym Lyle Zapato. [1] [2] Since its creation, the Pacific Northwest 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. [3]

Contents

Description

This fictitious endangered species of cephalopod 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 and nearby rivers, spawning in water where its eggs 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, a mythical creature said to inhabit the same region, as well as bald eagles and cats. The conceit of the website was that the Pacific Northwest tree octopus was an endangered species, threatened by habitat loss, overexploitation for the fashion industry during the early 20th century, and eradication as a nuisance animal by loggers. [1] [4]

Reception and legacy

The tree octopus hoax website was used in a 2007 study on 13-year-old U.S. school children's ability to critically evaluate online information for reliability. [5] [6] [7] A 2018 study replicated the experiment in a Dutch school class of 27 children. [8]

The 2007 U.S. 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. [8] In the 2017 Dutch study only 2 out of the total 27 school children (7%) recognized that the website was a hoax. [8]

In 2018, the website was selected as one of 30 websites to form the initial collection of the Library of Congress's Web Culture's Web Archive. [9]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Lyle Zapato. "Help Save The Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus From Extinction!". Archived from the original on 2021-05-14. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
  2. ↑ Heine, Carl; O'Connor, Dennis (2013).  Teaching Information Fluency: How to Teach Students to Be Efficient, Ethical, and Critical Information Consumers Archived 2023-03-14 at the Wayback Machine . United States, Scarecrow Press. pp. 85-87.
  3. ↑ Unger, Shem; Rollins, Mark (2021). "Don't Believe Everything About Science Online: Revisiting the Fake Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus in an Introductory Biology College Course" (PDF). Science Education International. 32 (2): 159–163. doi:10.33828/sei.v32.i2.9.
  4. ↑ "Is the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus Endangered?". Snopes. 2014-10-16.
  5. ↑ Leu, D. J., Reinking, D., Carter, A., Castek, J., Coiro, J., Henry, L. A., ... & Zawilinski, L. (2007). "Defining online reading comprehension: Using think aloud verbal protocols to refine a preliminary model of Internet reading comprehension processes". D. Alvermann (Chair) 21st Century Literacy: What is it, How do students get it, and how do we know if they have it.
  6. ↑ Krane, Beth (November 13, 2006). "Researchers find kids need better online academic skills". UConn Advance. 25 (12). University of Connecticut. Archived from the original on 2007-10-13. Retrieved 2008-01-11. Don Leu, Chair in Literacy and Technology at UConn, 'All 25 students fell for the Internet hoax....anyone can publish anything on the Internet, and today's students are not prepared to critically evaluate the information they find there.'
  7. ↑ Bettelheim, Matthew (March 14, 2007). "Tentacled Tree Hugger Disarms Seventh Graders". Inkling. Archived from the original on 2007-03-20. Retrieved 13 May 2016. Of the 25 seventh-graders identified as their schools' best online readers, 24 recommended this bogus website to another class that Leu had told them was also researching endangered species.
  8. 1 2 3 Loos, Eugène; Ivan, Loredana; Leu, Donald (2018). "'Save the Pacific Northwest tree octopus': a hoax revisited. Or: How vulnerable are school children to fake news?". Information and Learning Science. 119 (9/10): 514–528. doi:10.1108/ILS-04-2018-0031. hdl: 1874/421595 .
  9. ↑ Catalano, Frank (2018-03-14). "Library of Congress saves the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and other online 'web cultures'". GeekWire . Archived from the original on 2021-10-07. Retrieved 2021-10-07.
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