Guess Which Odd Animal is Imaginary!

We have two candidates for you today. First up is the rare Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!

Below is an artist's vision of this arboreal cephalopod. (More information on this unique animal here.)

And the second candidate is this Ecuadorian grasshopper known as a jumping stick insect.

So which is fake? (Click "Read more" to read more.)

Yeah, the tree octopus. Good one! The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus was invented as a test to see how gullible American seventh-graders are. Really. The idea was to see if students could understand when a hoax was being played. So researchers set up a Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus website.

And kids believed it was real. Why? Because it was on the Internet, so it HAD to be true! More info here.

As for the jumping stick insect, its photo comes from the excellent Myrmecos website.