Bird brains (2023)

Yes, a five year lifespan octopus would be something.

Unfortunately they can't parent, as both parents die directly after reproduction. But octopus can learn from observing, so some kind of mentoring or modeling between individuals could be encouraged or arranged.

And perhaps animatronic or video animations could contribute? If it turned out octopus could learn from video, the potential experiments would be unlimited. Most of an octopus eye's field of vision, maybe all, is monocular.

One of my dreams is to have an octopus reserve and a parrot reserve. And breed and create situational and living contexts for both species, where both individual and social intelligences are brought to the surface and encouraged to flourish.

I view those two animals as the most and 2nd-most (peak, for their separating phylums/classes) alien intelligences on Earth. The octopus intelligence is a true alien from a functional perspective, in that our common ancestor only had a rudimentary nervous system. A bilateral marine worm, 600 mya.

Our common ancestor with parrots would be something like the Hylonomus, 320 mya. something like a primitive gecko.

The differences in managing the two species would be extreme. Water, air. Hermit vs. tight knit social bents. Extremely short generations vs. very long ones.

But both are highly curious and actively engage and bond with people, other creatures and artifacts they find interesting.

Short octopus lives would ironically, be an exceptional boon for breeding longevity. Not only would changes be very apparent quickly, but the short lifecycle makes breeding vast numbers, to implement a broad gene/morph search, relatively inexpensive.

We have 94 parrot genomes [0], and at least one octopus genome. [1] Octopus genes are as trippy as everything else about them.

My guess is with both creatures, a significant intelligence uptick could happen very quickly simply by mining their current very high diversity of genes, across large populations and numbers of sub-species. They are both ideal creatures in that respect.

The west side of Hawaii's Big Island had both an octopus lab and a parrot reserve. The reserve is still there. I was able to visit the lab twice before it was shut down.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36405343/

[1] https://scienceandculture.com/2023/02/geneticists-puzzled-by...

Not OP but of some bird owners I've see that let their birds hang out in their house / on their shoulders and such the birds willingly go to their cage to rest.

That's a little different, no? A cage that is open that you can willingly access and leave versus being locked in a cage.

We have a 3-year-old African Grey - he has 3 cages dotted around the house, but he only sleeps in one which is in our bedroom at night, and we never lock him in even if we leave the house.

He knows when we are leaving him when we say goodbye - the garage door opening - the car - the gate opening and closing.

During the day he sits in the home office with me and my office days he is around my daughter.

Most of the time he sits on the top or the side of the cage perching on wooden sticks.

Occasionally he will dismount if the gardening services are busy making a racket with the weed whacker and will walk to the bathroom and climb to the top of the shower.

The one cage is close to an outside gate so he will climb on the window or the gate itself during summer.

We also have 3 cats, but he just walks past them, and he talks and even scolds them in my voice.

Worth nothing that the "mirror test" may not be accurate for a lot of animals - like dogs. Dogs are a lot more sensitive to smell, and can pass smell-based mirror-test-equivalents.