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The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

nytimes.com

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Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#51

Post by Baeocystin »

hyperpallium wrote: post #35

How much of an impediment to technological progress would not have being able to tame fire have been? You probably don't need the warmth underwater, but cooking facilitates nutrient absorption ("exodigestion"?), wards off predators, post-sunset light, and (later) smithing, smelting, steam power etc.

Probably significant. If I were to make a SWAG, though, it would be the hard limits of dissolved oxygen on maximum metabolic output that would be the biggest showstopper. There is very little oxygen available in even the most oxygenated water compared to our atmosphere, and without a powerful oxidizing agent available to provide the chemical oomph required, there is only so much resource-hungry brain a gill-breather can support, no matter how useful the neural material would otherwise be.

Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#52

Post by Nasrudith »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #12

I would like to keep one for a pet but they only live a few years. Been through that with a rat, won't do it again; even kits and pups only last 15 years or so. too soon

Turtles and tortoises can be very long lived - Harriet [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_(tortoise)] died at 175 well outliving Darwin. They aren't the most interactive or cuddly but they have the longevity. Terrapins tend to be about 20 to 30 years though.

Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#53

Post by steven2012 »

How does an octopus know how to match its body with its background? All video I've seen have been with the octopus eyes up, it's not even looking at the background, so how does it know a) what the background color is, and 2) that its body is matching the background, since it's not looking at itself either.

Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#54

Post by Nasrudith »

phil248 wrote: post #21
pishpash wrote: post #9

The getting coconut shell part doesn't impress much. Even snails or hermit crabs know to find abandoned shells to hide in. Seems pretty natural for that class of animals.

I imagine the difference is that hermit crabs are exhibiting a rote, inborn behavior that is universal among the species. Cephalopods apparently figure this stuff out on the fly.

I don't know about rote or learned but they do figure it out on the fly and are willing to go with basically anything to protect their soft abdomen and keep it from drying out rapidly - including litter if it is their only option.

Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#55

Post by lawrenceyan »

codeisawesome wrote: post #36
phil248 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the difference is that hermit crabs are exhibiting a rote, inborn behavior that is universal among the species. Cephalopods apparently figure this stuff out on the fly.

Not to take away from this point - but I was always curious - Anyone have a summary of how these “rote inbuilt behaviours” work Hardware-wise in living things? Is the research even far along on defining and demarcating behaviours easily based on this?

Instinctual responses are generally understood to be stored within the genetic material, though I imagine like most anything, there’s a sort of continuous distribution between instinctual and learned behaviors rather than an analog black and white distinction.

Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#56

Post by analog31 »

blattimwind wrote: post #30
Animats wrote: post #3

Octopi are interesting in that they evolved along their own path. The octopus eye has the wiring on the back, where it belongs, instead of on the front blocking some of the light, as most other animals with eyes do.

Curiously the same applies to imaging sensors. They used to be inverse (front-illuminated), for process reasons, but everse (back-illuminated) sensors have better sensitivity and lower noise (but are harder to manufacture). A notable advantage of everse eye construction is the complete absence of a blind spot, which is where all the wiring passes through the sensor surface. (Image sensors never had that problem becau…

Indeed, the manufacturing is more difficult because the silicon has to be thinned after fabrication of the circuitry. The lucky feature of image sensors is that the image is actually shifted to the edges of the chip by an analog shift register mechanism. But they still need an electrode structure to make the shift register work, and the light has to pass through it in front-illuminated sensors.

Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#57

Post by nimish »

bodi wrote: post #42
blattimwind wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curiously the same applies to imaging sensors. They used to be inverse (front-illuminated), for process reasons, but everse (back-illuminated) sensors have better sensitivity and lower noise (but are harder to manufacture). A notable advantage of everse eye construction is the complete absence of a blind spot, which is where all the wiring passes through the sensor surface. (Image sensors never had that problem becau…

Any indication if this backlit image sensor development was inspired by nature (the octopus here, for example) or was just an independent evolution of the technology?

Independent. Nobody would do Frontside illumination if it weren't a lot cheaper and easier because you very clearly lose out on light.

Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#58

Post by mirimir »

finnh wrote: post #50
mirimir wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to imply that. Indeed, Portia! So if you love Portia, I recommend Peter Watts' Echopraxia and (for a full-length focus) Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time .

Don’t forget A Deepness In The Sky!

Wait. That has Portia?

[digs up his copy]

Edit: Doh. I last read that so long ago that I'd forgotten that they were large spider-like beings :)

... and yes, they hop, so maybe Portia. But I don't recall that Vinge ever says so.

Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#59

Post by chrisweekly »

warent wrote: post #45
jaggednad wrote: post #37

One theory why primates evolved big brains is because they had hands. Big brains for an animal like a gazelle don’t pay off because, without hands, there isn’t much a gazelle can do with that big brain. Better it use that energy for bigger leg muscles. Primates evolves hands so they could better grasp branches, but, once they had hands, there was a lot more they could do with them, like make tools. A bigger brain for…

When you're saying "Big brains" I assume you mean a higher level of cognition and awareness in some general sense, not a physically larger brain. First I think you're getting the cause/effect of evolution backwards. For example, primates did not evolve hands so they could better grasp branches, but rather they better grasp branches because they evolved hands and so had a higher rate of survival. So the question isn't…

"primates did not evolve hands so they could better grasp branches, but rather they better grasp branches because they evolved hands and so had a higher rate of survival."

We agree that it can be difficult to distinguish causation from correlation, and in this case you may be right that the survival advantage conferred by better grasp of branches might have been a "bonus" or helpful side-effect, rather than an adaptive trait directly informing our ancestors' evolution. But I don't think it's so clear-cut or obvious.

Re: The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?

#60

Post by megablast »

steven2012 wrote: post #53

How does an octopus know how to match its body with its background? All video I've seen have been with the octopus eyes up, it's not even looking at the background, so how does it know a) what the background color is, and 2) that its body is matching the background, since it's not looking at itself either.

They have photoreceptors on their skin too.
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