Pacific Northwest tree octopus

"Tree octopus" redirects here. Not to be confused with Octopus tree.
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.

  1. ^ 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.