The award for slimiest sports tradition goes to fans of the Detroit Red Wings. They often throw cooked octopuses onto the ice for good luck.
The custom dates back to 1952 when the team needed eight wins to take home hockey’s biggest prize—the Stanley Cup. Two brothers who owned a fish market threw an octopus onto the rink during a game. They thought the cephalopod’s eight arms made it a great good-luck charm. When the team won the championship, the idea that the animals could secure a win stuck.
Octopuses’ arms are amazing. Each appendage is covered with hundreds of suckers that can latch onto surfaces, feel, and taste. Each arm even has a miniature brain at its base. This allows the limbs to operate independently, says Alicia Bitondo, who works at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. And if an octopus ever loses an arm when tangling with a predator, it will grow back.
Octopuses lack bones. Instead, they rely on a flexible hydrostatic skeleton, which uses internal fluid pressure, to prop themselves up and give their arms strength. That’s why in an octopus’s natural ocean habitat, its body holds it shape. But out of the water—like on a hockey rink—it’s a floppy blob.
Even though the National Hockey League has banned throwing things, including octopuses, onto the ice, that hasn’t deterred Red Wings fans. There’s no sign their cephalopodtossing tradition will stop anytime soon.