Hesiod in his Works and Days (c. 700 BC) talks about the behaviour of octopuses, saying that when octopuses get hungry they will eat their own tentacles. Amazingly, Hesiod was right about this behaviour (octopuses do sometimes eat their own tentacles) but it's not because they're hungry, but because they're stressed.
The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
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Re: The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
#52I read these articles about octopuses, and then lament the fact that we hunt them down and eat them. Given all of the other sources of nourishment available to us, why eat them?
Re: The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
A shallow comment can contain a profound question. "What is the meaning of life?" would be an even shallower comment. Were a comment to contain new and interesting information about a profound, i.e. generic, question, that would be fine. But this is precisely what internet comments bringing up generic questions don't usually do. It's not a good fit for the genre. Someone who really has something original to say about…
In this case, the question is informative and stimulating because it challenges the assumption that human interaction has a different dynamic to animal interaction. Bringing this question to conscious awareness is a different category of social discourse to “What is the meaning of life”, which is not really a social question at all.
I'm sorry, but I don't agree. The topic is the social behavior of octopuses. It's not always bad for HN threads to go off topic—for example if there's an unpredictable direction which is more interesting than the original topic—but it's pretty much always bad for them to go in generic, pseudo-profound directions like this. It makes discussions more predictable, and therefore more (yes) shallow.
p.s. Please don't use multiple accounts to comment in the same thread. That's abusive, and will eventually get your main account banned as well.
Re: The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
#54A nice book about octopuses: Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28116739
He is mentioned repeatedly in the article.
Re: The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
#55When humans are social with humans, are they reaching out or simply reacting?
I changed the title from "Can We Really Be Friends with an Octopus?" to "When octopuses are social with humans, are they reaching out or simply reacting?" (the subtitle, more or less) in the hope of avoiding shallow comments like this. (A comment reacting purely to information, or lack of information, in a title is pretty much shallow by definition.) Since that didn't work, I guess it's time to look for some more rep…
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Re: The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I changed the title from "Can We Really Be Friends with an Octopus?" to "When octopuses are social with humans, are they reaching out or simply reacting?" (the subtitle, more or less) in the hope of avoiding shallow comments like this. (A comment reacting purely to information, or lack of information, in a title is pretty much shallow by definition.) Since that didn't work, I guess it's time to look for some more rep…
… in the hope of avoiding shallow comments like this. Shallow? It’s profound. Have you tried to respond to the question, in the human context?
The reason it's shallow is this is directly addressed by the content of the article. The author starts out the essay by giving all of the reasons we have to believe that our relationships with pets and other humans are mutual, i.e. closeness in evolutionary distance, the fact that we're all social creatures that form bonds within our own species that are clearly advantageous to us and friendship makes sense from that standpoint. It then contrasts that with a traditional naive view of octopuses as loners that either mate or kill each other when they meet in the wild, giving reason to doubt that they would form friendships with humans.
It then goes on to complicate that narrative, claiming that more recent discoveries indicate many species of octopus are, in fact, social creatures, and older understanding of them was likely due to insufficient observation and the fact they hide themselves so well.
It's quite an in-depth essay with a lot of information in it that addresses this exact question with nuance, research, anecdotes, from every side of every possible answer. It deserves better than a pithy response implying the author never thought to just ask the reverse question. He definitely already thought of this.
Re: The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I changed the title from "Can We Really Be Friends with an Octopus?" to "When octopuses are social with humans, are they reaching out or simply reacting?" (the subtitle, more or less) in the hope of avoiding shallow comments like this. (A comment reacting purely to information, or lack of information, in a title is pretty much shallow by definition.) Since that didn't work, I guess it's time to look for some more rep…
I agree with sibling comment; parent comment may be terse, but I didn't find it shallow.
I found it shallow because it didn't meaningfully add or respond to the article's topic. Saying "humans also do similar things implies the animals do it for the same reason" would not make a reliable way of evaluating the motivations behind the actions.
I don't believe humans are nearly as "special" as historically seen in comparison to animals, but the rephrasing as performed in the comment here doesn't add anything to support that case.
Re: The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dogs have lived alongside humans for millennia. They're genetically engineered animals (in the oldschool way - by breeding and selection, not in a test tube). And we've bred them largely by rewarding their ability to interact with us. Dogs are obviously quite artificial species in that sense
That's a good point. They've definitely been bred for their ability to communicate with us. I know it's a bit tangential, but I do like the fact we have a kind of sister species in that way. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if our ancestors had instead domesticated another animal to that extent (besides the cat, I suppose). In an alternate universe, maybe we'd have smallish bears as trusted companions :-)
If you lived near a farm or spent time at one, many animals are curious, intelligent and eerily sentient. They have things they want to do, they devise and follow up on plans to get to their goals which are not necessarily only based on eating.
Re: The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
An even better aquarium owner wouldn't have them at all. My Octopus Teacher is a fantastic look into the life of an octopus, their intellectual capacity, and their propensity to interact with humans.
Here is a critique of My Octopus Teacher as a movie of a self-centered man who projects his issues onto an unsuspecting wild animal: "MY OCTOPUS TEACHER & Environmental Horror, An Analysis" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whb4unrhy44
> a self-centered man
Self-centered? I'm assuming you're basing that off of an edited film designed to entertain people and not because you actually know the man.
> who projects his issues onto an unsuspecting wild animal
Humans tend to project their issues onto unsuspecting things all the time in my experience: partners, co-workers, strangers, pets, etc. And inanimate objects too, if you've ever seen someone slam a door, pound a table or seek guidance from nature. We seem to be driven to share our experience with others.
In the film the octopus has no trouble hiding, running away or disappearing when it wants. And likewise, no trouble approaching after it became comfortable with him. And he refuses to intervene when its life is in danger.
After these quips, I usually hear the criticism that he was a rich white guy of privilege telling a "woe is me" storyline. If you don't like what the guy represents, fine, but his actions are not that different from many other naturalists who loves to observe animals in the wild.
Re: The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
#60I read these articles about octopuses, and then lament the fact that we hunt them down and eat them. Given all of the other sources of nourishment available to us, why eat them?
For the same reason people kill most animals: tradition and they're delicious.
I've heard of vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, etc., but it would be interesting if there was another eating style based on some (admittedly challenging) evaluation of the animal's cognition or social behavior.