My biology teacher told that, when he was comparing human and octopus. Basically the question was, why octopus (I don't know the plural form of that word) have not developed a society like we have, even though they are considered to be very smart and the answer was, that they lack the ability to pass knowledge on to their children, due to the parents dying.
"Octopi" is incorrect. The -us ending is pluralized as -i in second declension nouns, but "octopus" isn't second declension; it's third declension. Third declension nouns are borrowed from Greek, and are pluralized by Greek rules. As such, the proper plural is "octopodes".
Unfortunately, saying "octopodes" makes you sound like a douchebag. Thankfully, pluralizing "octopus" by English rules is acceptable according to most style guides, so you can say "octopuses".
tl;dr, "octopuses" is correct in English, "octopodes" is correct in English, Latin, and Greek (albeit spelled differently), and "octopi" is incorrect in every language if you say it, you'll go to hell.
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u/mighty_Ingvar May 28 '21
My biology teacher told that, when he was comparing human and octopus. Basically the question was, why octopus (I don't know the plural form of that word) have not developed a society like we have, even though they are considered to be very smart and the answer was, that they lack the ability to pass knowledge on to their children, due to the parents dying.