Bearsharktopus

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About

Bearsharktopus is a fictional hybrid monster consisting of shark's head, a bear's body and octopus tentacles.

Origin

On September 17th, 2009, Redditor CtrlAltDelYourFace submitted a post titled “Hey Reddit, I heard you like bears and sharks, so I made you a Bear Shark. Enjoy," which featured a photoshopped image of a bear-shark hybrid monster. Prior to being archived, the thread received over 1,850 up votes and 275 comments, many of them containing more altered versions of the image. Redditor mintyice submitted a three bear moon version of the image (shown below, middle) and CtrlAltDelYourFace submitted an updated version of the image with octopus tentacles for arms (shown below, right).

Precursor

On July 2nd, 2009, the webcomic site Nedroid published an illustration of a "Bearshark" (shown below).

Spread

On September 17th, 2009, the Bearsharktopus image was reblogged on the Internet humor site The Daily What.^[2] The same day, the image was highlighted on the viral content site BuzzFeed^[3], where it earned the “most shared”, “LOL”, and “omg” badges. On September 20th, the bear-shark hybrid version was highlighted on the Internet humor site College Humor.^[4] The same day, the satirical Christian conservative blog ChristWire^[5] published an article titled "Crazed Evolutionists Create Bearsharktopus", which scorned genetic engineering for creating the fictional creature. On September 21st, the Internet news site BoingBoing^[6] highlighted the image in a post titled "Beware the Bearsharktopus." On October 13th, 2009, GQ^[9] published a post titled "Know Your Meme", which included the Bearsharktopus image accompanied by several fictional facts about the creature. On February 28th, 2010, the Internet culture blog UpRoxx^[7] published a post titled "Nine Badass Hybrid Monsters That Deserve Their Own SyFy Original Movie", which ranked the Bearsharktopus as the #1 hybrid on the list. As of August 21st, 2012, the "Bearsharktopus" Facebook^[8] page accumulated over 1,130 likes.