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Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#141

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

suriyaG wrote: post #42
hermitcrab wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so maybe think twice before eating one.

eating any meat is morally questionable. (I say this as a person who does eat a lot of meat). octopus passing a intelligence test does not keep it above the fold, neither does cattle go below the fold because they don't clear the bar (surprise, cattle are equally emotional, smart, curious etc.). sounds wrong when I type it out but that is just the truth. milk is actually more ethically wrong when you think about it (…

Both are clearly ethically wrong.

We have alternatives. And many are even more healthful. Theres no reason to personally engage with either.

Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#142

Post by srean »

shafyy wrote: post #133
srean wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point a few out ? I would be eager to try them out if they are available here in India.

I'm only familar with the brands in Germany unfortunately. You might have Beyond Burger available in India — not my favorite vegan burger patty, but I think it's good enough.

Thanks, will check.

Oh they are in fact available in India. Will definitely try them out.

Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#143

Post by srean »

deepvibrations wrote: post #131
srean wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I don't get it why milk is considered more ethically sound than eggs in my country. Milk is stolen baby food extracted industrially under not so nice conditions. Precision-Fermented (animal-Free) milk does exist but it is not easily available. Unfertilized eggs are products that come out anyway and cannot become a chick till it is successfully fertilized outside of the hen. Granted that these two are extracted in…

Just to note, eggs are not as ethical as you may assume... We have bred chickens so that they lay an unhealthy amount of eggs, which is likely a pretty stressful life experience. The original breed of bird (Red junglefowl) laid roughly a dozen eggs a year, where as modern layer hens will lay 300+. So it's not really "comes out anyway". They often get medical conditions like Keel bone fractures and reproductive tract…

I agree. Their 'living quarters' can be pretty bad too. I was describing their situation as compared to milk.

Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#144

Post by alistairSH »

soco wrote: post #132
Miraltar wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding this is doable in a context like yours but if you want to run a business out of it you have to optimize it which requires this separation.

The business of "optimizing" is breaking a lot of things in the world, when you think about it.

Yes, there's even a new-ish word this... enshitification.

Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#145

Post by Gud »

soco wrote: post #132
Miraltar wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding this is doable in a context like yours but if you want to run a business out of it you have to optimize it which requires this separation.

The business of "optimizing" is breaking a lot of things in the world, when you think about it.

It's also providing a lot of value.

Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#146

Post by ninalanyon »

ethersteeds wrote: post #92
47635274172635 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farm animals wouldn't even have existed in the first place if it wasn't for farming them. They wouldn't have experienced their life at all. I personally think hunting is horrible, that's going after something that is alive without you having a say in it. But say for farmed cows, living in a field for a while, that's better than not existing at all. You cannot judge if it's worth it from the cow's perspective, it got…

This is an interesting thought experiment, though I generally come to opposite conclusions. I personally think that hunting a wild animal situates the hunter in the broader context of the natural world, in which organisms live by their wits and try to outrun others doing the same. Conversely, farmed animals owe their existence as you say to our cultivating them. But where you see a moral release in that connection, I…

> hunting a wild animal situates the hunter in the broader context of the natural world, in which organisms live by their wits and try to outrun others doing the same.

It's not exactly a fair fight though. In modern hunting the hunter might not always win, but he never loses.

> Can we say for them that their lives are preferable to not existing at all?

I doubt it. But we don't have to breed animals for maximum meat production at lowest cost in the shortest time. For instance the largest chicken producer in Norway [1] has declared that in future it will only produce slow growing chicken.

[1] https://www.nortura.no/b%C3%A6rekraft-i-nortura/omsorg-for-m...

Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#147

Post by uxcolumbo »

messe wrote: post #138
shafyy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only familar with the brands in Germany unfortunately. You might have Beyond Burger available in India — not my favorite vegan burger patty, but I think it's good enough.

The beyond burger is decent, but there's no way it's fooling someone in a blind taste test.

Is 100% taste match more important than not supporting an industry that kills Billions of animals a year and on top of that causing a huge amount of greenhouse gases and biosphere destruction?

What if it's 85% taste match, wouldn't that be enough to make the jump to plant based alternatives?

Male chicks for example get thrown in a wood chipper.

Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#148

Post by Otterly99 »

throw310822 wrote: post #2

Pure, shameless clickbait as usual from Smithsonian magazine. > Although there is no direct evidence that the adaptation is linked to expanded octopus brainpower, I.e. the entire connection between this mutation and octopus intelligence is made up. Not even a shred of justification.

That's a shame, because the study in itself is interesting and raises some questions, but the whole time I was wondering why protein translation accuracy would be related to intelligence? Turns out there is no evidence of link and that the title just speculates.

Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#149

Post by randomImmigrant »

zabzonk wrote: post #79
yieldcrv wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this tied to the senesce? Where their digestive tract has closed and they starve to death at the nest

Indeed, AFAIK. I've never seen an explanation for this. Most things that reproduce successfully want to do it again - or at least their DNA does. Perhaps octopuses are simply disappointed by the experience.

Octopus senescence isn’t a choice. It’s a fully programmed part of their life cycle. There’s a bunch of hormones released by the optic gland that put them in this stage where they stop eating, stop healing, and sometimes even mutilate themselves.

For the mothers, the entire time is spent cleaning and blowing water over the eggs.

It’s generally accepted this behavior is the necessary pair to their high aggression and cannibalism. It’s likely if they didn’t go through this they’d end up eating their babies. By dying, they make way for a new generation. And this is their reproductive strategy. Live a short very active life. If you survive, mate, then die and leave the hunting grounds to the next generation.

Re: Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

#150

Post by MPSimmons »

VorpalWay wrote: post #118
MPSimmons wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you could consider what the AV node in the heart does as "processing". It's more like a clock, to my understanding.

I'm not a biologist or in a medical field at all, but surely the fact that the heart rate goes up if you exercise means there is some form of feedback loop (which to me sounds like a rudimentary form of processing).

Weirdly, this is controlled by the brain as part of the sympathetic nervous system: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/23262-sympathetic...
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