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A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

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Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#101

Post by PrimeMcFly »

efitz wrote: post #51

We know that octopuses and many other animals are intelligent. We don't know for certain if anything nonhuman is sentient. Scientists and activist groups have been designing frameworks for sentience and tests to measure it. This paper [1] (about crabs, but discusses octopuses) has a very interesting section talking about defining and measuring sentience. It was used to support a recent bill in the UK [2] attempting t…

> We know that octopuses and many other animals are intelligent. We don't know for certain if anything nonhuman is sentient.

You are mixing up terms. All animals are sentient. Not all animals are intelligent. Only very few animals appear to be sapient. Octopuses are certainly one of the few animals that appear to be beyond a reasonable doubt.

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#102

Post by PrimeMcFly »

corethree wrote: post #11
mouse_ wrote: post #2

Pigs are pretty smart, too.

Smarter then dogs. The criteria for edibility is mainly ugliness vs. Cuteness. Octopuses are recently getting more media attention with that movie about the diver that made friends with one so they are getting cuter. Try farm raising and eating baby penguins you'll get the same reaction even though penguins are dumb AF. It has nothing to do with intelligence.

> Smarter then dogs.

Certainly not. I'm not sure why this myth keeps propagating.

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#103

Post by PrimeMcFly »

SirWart wrote: post #47
lp4vn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is opposite of every other intelligent creature that we know of, and so I'm extremely skeptical of claims of their intelligence. Octopuses can demonstrably learn: scientists put food inside a pot with a lid and gave the pot to an octopus. If my memory doesn't fail me, in the first attempt the octopus took 2 hours to open the lid and in the second one it took 5 minutes.

Sorry, my use of "intelligent" here was imprecise. They can clearly learn, but seem much less intelligent than other animals that we commonly eat, and not anywhere close to the same level of intelligence of animals that we generally do not eat, such as great apes, elephants, and whales.

> They can clearly learn, but seem much less intelligent than other animals that we commonly eat,They can clearly learn, but seem much less intelligent than other animals that we commonly eat,

What?

You think an octopus is less intelligent than a cow, chicken or fish? Really?

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#104

Post by shaneofalltrad »

dv_dt wrote: post #60
fegu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 20kg figure sounds wildly inaccurate. Fish feed is in general 75% plantbased. It is also very efficient (in terms of conversion rate to growth). Could this 20kg figure be decades old?

Also the non plant parts of it could be fairly efficient too. e.g see black soldier fly farming for fish feed. Not that that is a 100% answer for all feed for seafood farming, but interesting options abound. Personally though, Octopi are too smart for me to eat. I'll always pass on it now.

Whatever happened to the Roach farming as a viable option for quality protein farming? I could see a flow like algae/hemp -> roach -> fish -> human

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#105

Post by shaneofalltrad »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #101
efitz wrote: post #51

We know that octopuses and many other animals are intelligent. We don't know for certain if anything nonhuman is sentient. Scientists and activist groups have been designing frameworks for sentience and tests to measure it. This paper [1] (about crabs, but discusses octopuses) has a very interesting section talking about defining and measuring sentience. It was used to support a recent bill in the UK [2] attempting t…

> We know that octopuses and many other animals are intelligent. We don't know for certain if anything nonhuman is sentient. You are mixing up terms. All animals are sentient. Not all animals are intelligent. Only very few animals appear to be sapient . Octopuses are certainly one of the few animals that appear to be beyond a reasonable doubt.

The confusion is how Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 determines this, with the wrong definition of sentient to determine legalities, even seeing news articles describing it as so, for example https://www.gov.uk/government/news/animals-to-be-formally-re...

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#106

Post by dendrite9 »

boring_twenties wrote: post #90
corethree wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the practicality for why thing are the way they are. My argument is about starting up a baby penguin slaughterhouse in the north pole right now and how much activist resistance you will get versus a crocodile meat slaughter house in Florida.

I'm pretty sure there are no crocodiles in Florida, only alligators.

There are crocodiles but they are less common than alligators. https://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/reptiles/america...

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#107

Post by pvaldes »

I wouldn't discard the alternative possibility that we should choose to ignore "activists".

After all, people may have a hidden agenda, conflicts of interest, or be simply a bunch of uneducated morons craving for attention. Why to choose them as figure of authority at the same level of researchers that proven real effort searching for truth and spent ten years acquiring real knowledge?

Oh, Is for the promises of violence. I see.

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#108

Post by pvaldes »

joak wrote: post #71
jpmattia wrote: post #16

The older I get, the less I want anything sentient on my plate.

"Sentient" is ill-defined, you can apply it to almost anything you want. From its Latin ethnology it means: able to feel or perceive.

The term was weaponized to confuse deliberately.

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#109

Post by dv_dt »

shaneofalltrad wrote: post #104
dv_dt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the non plant parts of it could be fairly efficient too. e.g see black soldier fly farming for fish feed. Not that that is a 100% answer for all feed for seafood farming, but interesting options abound. Personally though, Octopi are too smart for me to eat. I'll always pass on it now.

Whatever happened to the Roach farming as a viable option for quality protein farming? I could see a flow like algae/hemp -> roach -> fish -> human

Soldier fly leaks from farms are more palatable than Roach leaks?

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#110

Post by pvaldes »

s_dev wrote: post #13

The real problem is that nearly all seafood is unsustainable. Even when using euphemisms like 'farms' make us thing it's somewhat contained to one place and we just throw them some food pellets manufactured from vegetables in another factory. The reality of salmon farms for instance is that for every 1kg of farmed Salmon it takes 20kg of wild fish to feed them to maturity.

> nearly all seafood is unsustainable

If we only could convince vegans to renounce to hoard cats...

All this young anchovies ending in a can tomb just for Mr whiskers appetite... sigh

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