“It’s communication, in a way.”
Yes..."get the fuck away from me douchebag" has always been understood as an effective way to communicate.
Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
151–160 of 194 posts
Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
#152Really cool, though a reminder(?) of how we don't give other life forms enough credit for their thinking ability. I looked out in my backyard the other week and saw two foxes playing together with my kids' volleyball they left in the yard. Like grasping it with mouth, tossing it, going to get it, wrestling each other. Amusing stuff.
Very cool!
Out on a hike once I came across two coyotes that were playing some elaborate games. They would chase each other around obstacles and after separating would try to ambush or sneak up on the other. It was a blast watching them.
There was also a raven who started flying around in the mix and would land next to one, vocalizing at it. There was no aggression on either side, it honestly looked like the bird was joining the play but I have no idea if that's true.
I did some research and couldn't find anything on ravens and coyotes playing together, but crows/ravens have been known to hunt with coyotes and wolves.
Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
#153My wife loves These guys! Has a massive half-sleeve tat on her shoulder. my favorite exhibit of the Georgia Aquarium was the octopus. He came out and waved to us. pretty cool.
Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Japanese is worse. You count "1 thing", "2 thing", "3 thing", except the word for "thing" changes depending on the shape of the thing you are counting. So thin flat things like paper or shirts are 1 mai, 2 mai, 3 mai, while to count books you say 1 satsu, 2 satsu, 3 satsu. Long round things like pencils or umbrellas go 1 pon, 2 hon, 3 bon, 4 hon, 5 hon, 6 pon, etc (yeah you read that right). There are different count…
christ that is horrendous, especially pon hon bon hon hon pon. is there some kind of historical logic behind it?
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Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
#155As a counterpoint, The Atlantic ran an interesting article[0] yesterday suggesting that it's not really clear what the Octopuses' aims are when they do this, and that we do really like to anthropomorphize them. [0] - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/11/gloomy-o...
On the other hand, evolutionary pressures and constraints of communication and game theory are frequently similar, and hence often lead to similar functional behavior even if the underlying systems are not homologous.
Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Engaging in play is not unique to humans, so assuming an animal is just fooling around is not anthropomorphizing anything.
It makes me wonder if they engage in "play" does it evoke some "emotion" in them such as joy etc? some reward maybe? and if it does does other scenarios evoke other emotions we consider to be human centric. Anyone have a link to a good paper regarding it?
Octopuses have been known to nuzzle favored humans with their tentacles, and to spit water at disliked humans through their siphon.
Do they really feel affection for their favored humans? I don't know. Discussions of this sort tend to devolve into debates about "qualia". What I do know is that octopuses appear to manifest signs of affection, and of contempt. And that I'd be honored to be nuzzled by an octopus, and I'd surely prefer that to being spit at by one.
Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we do really like to anthropomorphize them. Yes, people tend to over-anthropormphize in the sense they map to specific human concepts. But otoh, we tend to greatly underestimate the complexity of animal behavior. Sometimes people mix these up. So, just because an anthropomorphization isn't correct, doesn't mean that the behavior isn't complex. Even animals like spiders and ants demonstratw incredible complex behavi…
Yep. I've kinda gone full circle on this. My view now is that it's increasingly difficult to say exactly what makes humans special or unique, if anything [0]. So it's overly anthropocentric to deny the possibility that other species have analogous experiences of the world, or experiences which are richer than ours, or completely inconceivable by us [1]. Sure, there will be people that do anthropomorphise the octopus'…
> it's increasingly difficult to say exactly what makes humans special or unique, if anything
Absolutely. Every trait previously thought unique to humans that I know of have been found in animals, such as deduction, tool making, intra-species warfare, delayed gratification, play, language, dialects, curiosity, mischieviousness, boredom, empathy, grieving rituals, etc etc. The only generic trait missing from my bingo card is humor (but monkeys seem close).
It may very well be that humans just got a constellation of traits that happened to fit really well together. If I was a betting man, I'd say:
- Very long brain development time. At birth, our skulls aren't even hard yet, and we're blind. This lets the brain develop at a slow pace towards general purpose problem solving.
- Hands are extremely helpful for tool making.
- Knowledge sharing. Yes, we're quite smart, but more importantly we can combine our findings through language and persist it over time through writing. This is an incredible change in the topology of knowledge. Even an animal with 3x intelligence would not stand a chance without language.
Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
#158For some reason, I imagined it would use its eight appendages and throw things like you see in a cartoon. Maybe I am watching too many cartoons. :-)
Oh, yeah, man, that riveting nature documentary -- Squiddly Diddly.
Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! My curiosity was piqued by OP, but this description is what actually convinced me to buy the book.
There are certainly good reasons to like it and it is highly rated on goodreads, it just wasn't my thing.
Well thank you for the anti-recommendation! I’m looking forward to reading it. I get that it wasn’t your thing, but your description sounds very much up my alley and I hope I can enjoy what you didn’t.
Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the plural is octopodes, just like cactus->cactodes, virus->virodes and surplus-surplodes (my favorite)
I googled "cactodes" and this comment was the 7th result on the first page.
Does not show up for me at all in results, interesting. I am outside, wonder if they have geographically separated cashes.