Doctor Octopus' Tentacles

Gallery

Official Name

Doctor Octopus' Tentacles

Aliases

Tentacles

Model

3

Origin

Universe

Earth-616

Lead Designer

Doctor Octopus

Characteristics

Dimensions

6 ft. (compressed), 24 ft. (extended)

Owners

Current Owner

Doctor Octopus

Previous Owners

Carolyn Trainer, Luke Carlyle, Peter Parker

First appearance

Amazing Spider-Man #3
(July, 1963)

History

Otto Octavius constructed these to assist in an experiment. He has since used them as weapons to fight Spider-Man and other heroes.

Capacity

Tentacles: Doctor Octopus' superhuman abilities derive from the four mentally-controlled, electronically-powered, telescoping, prehensile titanium-steel tentacles attached to a stainless steel harness encircling his body from lower chest to waist. Each tentacle, approximately five inches in diameter, terminates in three single-jointed pincers. The pincers are able to rotate in relation to the arm for 360 degrees, in a screwdriver-like twisting motion. Each tentacle segment contains four high-efficiency electric motors equipped with a clutched, helical-gear train, independently mounted on frictionless gimbals and housed in four thin, overlapping layers of titanium-niobium steel. The titanium-steel alloy is light, has high-tensile strength, a high melting point, and high thin-wall rigidity. The motors get their power from a small nuclear-powered thermo-electric generator, which can provide several hundred watts per hour for up to five years before needing to replace its U-239 core. The tentacles have been modified since the time of the original accident to include high-efficiency battery packs (enabling movement when cut off from the central power source) and individual micro-circuit control modules (enabling each arm to perform certain pre-programmed actions when Octopus loses conscious control). In the event that Octopus loses consciousness, the control module of each arm has enough pre-programmed conditional responses in its memory chip to enable it to perform a relatively complex sequence of actions, such as saving his life. The trauma of his arm or arms being separated from the harness causes a period of disorientation in which his arms flail about uncontrollably until the pre-programming takes over.

• Telepathic Control over Tentacles: Octopus can control the actions of his artificial arms psionically, even when they have been severed from his body and are separated from him by vast distances (a distance of 900 miles has been recorded).
• Telescoping: Each tentacle is approximately six feet long at full contraction, but can extend to a maximum of 24 feet in length.
  
• Superhuman Striking Force: Each tentacle is capable of moving at a speed of ninety feet per second and strike with the force of a jackhammer.
  
• High-Wind Generation: The tentacles can generate 50 mile per hour winds if spun like a giant fan.
  
• Wall-Climbing and Traveling: By combining the intrinsic strength of both his tentacles and the pincers, Doctor Octopus can scale stone, brick, or concrete walls by rending "handholds" in the surface of the wall. Octopus is able to use his tentacles for traversing horizontal distances as well. At full extension, he can travel high above the ground as if on stilts, either using two tentacles, or for maximum speed (approximately 50 miles per hour), four tentacles.
  
• Sensation Feeling: Although there are no nerve endings throughout the length of his artificial arms, Octopus can "feel" basic sensations with them. As a result of the mutagenic changes from exposure to radiation during the accident, electrical connections have been made from his chest harness to his spine. Thus, Doctor Octopus can mentally perceive "tactile" sensations by feeling the amount of electrical resistance that the pincer's electric motors feel when the pincers grasp an object.
  

Superhuman Concentration: Doctor Octopus possesses extraordinary mental abilities and concentration, and through years of practice is able to perform two complex and two simple independent actions, simultaneously, one with each arm.

Notes

In the movie Spider-Man 2 movie, the tentacles are different. In the movie, they attach to his nervous system along his spinal cord and he controls them mentally from the start. They also have a degree of artificial intelligence in the movie - Octavius controls this with an inhibitor chip, but when the chip is destroyed in his accident (caused when the "sun" he creates becomes unstable, and a large "flare" from it strikes him in the back, giving him a huge electric shock that melts the tentacles' attachments to his spine), they are able to control his mind and drive him to rebuild his failed fusion device. The tentacles' influence combined with the loss of his wife and his failure is what makes Doc Ock evil in the movie, rather than him simply becoming (possibly) insane due to brain damage from the accident as he does in the comics.

Trivia

• No trivia.

See Also

• Appearances of Doctor Octopus' Tentacles
• Images featuring Doctor Octopus' Tentacles
• Item Gallery: Doctor Octopus' Tentacles
• Fan-Art Gallery: Doctor Octopus' Tentacles

Links and References

• None.