Talk:My Octopus Teacher

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List "octopus" as part of the cast[edit]

Listing the octopus as part of the cast makes a lot of sense because she is literally the main protagonist of the film. Listing animals in cast of movies is not uncommon, as List_of_animals_in_film_and_television, and others eg. PATSY_Award shows.

I do agree with not listing the shark, as there were many sharks featured in the movie and they have lesser significance to the overall message of the movie.


Cephalopods are generally recognized as sentient creatures, and as such no different then cats en dogs and others animals. Under EU law there is a specific mention on this (in particular on their treatment as lab-animals) eg. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022098113000610

Furthermore, this movie seems to be a direct influence to a petition where a humane treatment of cephalopods is requested to be inscribed in US-law.

It has been removed and re-added several times before, so I am glad you brought this up as to hopefully give a definitive answer. I certainly believe we should list the octopus as per your rationale, especially since she is the main protagonist of the film, and I really see no reason why she should not be listed. The editors who removed her from the cast may not have been familiar with the listing of animals as cast members. Anonymous 7481 (talk) 00:32, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why citing Sciencedirect or Harvard... the only question we should ask ourselves is: "what do the sources say?". The credits of the film don't report the octopus, and neither Imdb or Rotten Tomatoes do. @Anonymous 7481: we should follow the sources. --Superchilum(talk to me!) 20:26, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@LunaEatsTuna: (since "Anonymous 7481" was a non-existing user) --Superchilum(talk to me!) 20:30, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough - I do agree with that statement. Perhaps I should also consider that this is a nature documentary(ish) film as opposed to a work of fiction – in which an animal character may be played by the actual animal actor – and the octopus also appears to be unnamed (at least according to the article itself), which may be another good reason on why it could be removed. I reckon you should inquire other users who have repeatedly re-added it to the article about this as well for consensus. @Superchilum: LunaEatsTuna (formerly Anonymous 7481; talk) 20:56, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Current image is suspect[edit]

I can't prove anything, but I also can't find any official source for that image beyond a lot of references to Twitter, and one single reference to 4chan (which also seems to be the oldest one Google's reverse image search knows about). And the account that added it has been removed. Also the style of the image (which looks like the cover of a romance novel) seems to feed into some recent controversy around this Documentary. As an non-subscriber I can't confirm it doesn't appear anywhere on NetFlix, which is why I am posting this here instead of changing it myself. NipokNek (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I took a quick look on Netflix, and did not see this image. I think it would be reasonable to remove the image since it is badly sourced. Cheers! Doctormatt (talk) 01:04, 22 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A similar image (with added date) appears at https://seachangeproject.com/myoctopusteacher/ (scroll to nearly the bottom of the page where there this reference to the film) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.5.233.168 (talk) 08:48, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]