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Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

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Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#161
The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02525-2

Sampaio et al., Multidimensional social influence drives leadership and composition-dependent success in octopus–fish hunting groups

I was curious about the the 3D reconstruction of the scenes.

> We manually tracked individuals in the videos using the software Computer Vision Annotation Tool. We annotated three frames per second, which yielded a time resolution of 0.33 s for animal movement.

> We then used another software developed to incorporate the previously tracked animals in each camera in the ‘colmap’ habitat models and camera paths, ‘multiviewtracks’ or ‘mvt’ [29]

> [29] Francisco, F. A., Nührenberg, P. & Jordan, A. High-resolution, non-invasive animal tracking and reconstruction of local environment in aquatic ecosystems

Seems it was specifically developed to track fish. Cool project.

Links to https://github.com/matterport/Mask_RCNN and https://github.com/pnuehrenberg/multiviewtracks.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it turns it into a four-syllable word with three consecutive unstressed syllables. It has bad meter and ruins the meter of almost any sentence constructed around it.

But "teleporters" or "marathoners" or tons of other words follow the same pattern of stress and sound fine. "Photocopiers" extends it to four unstressed syllables and sounds fine.

We treat words like they have a single stressed syllable and everything else is unstressed, and that's a useful abstraction sometimes, but that's not actually true. "Photocopiers" has primary stress on the first syllable but secondary on the third - PHO-to-CO-pi-ers. The same goes for "teleporters" and "marathoners".

But that also goes for "octopuses", so what gives? Seems like there's something else going on that my brain hasn't accounted for yet. It's probably that the plosives (stop consonants) are hugely unbalanced, with all of them coming in the first half of the word. Plosives, as the word implies, can add quite a bit of oomph to a word, even if they aren't reflected in the stress pattern. So "octopuses" seems to just peter out halfway through the word.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I would say. It does beg the question though, how’d we come up with the list of animals to pluralize like that? Why “five birds” but not “five deers?”

Note that those are animal we generally hunt/eat. I'd bet this is tied to the language of the ruling/hunting classes of England, back when they spoke French more than English. There are also some middle-ground words like "Shark". One goes fishing for "shark" like they would "fish" but it is more common to say "several sharks" using a plural as opposed to "several fish" using the singular. But "fishes" is still a word…

"Fishes" is a plural of a plural. You wouldn't likely say "two fishes", but you might say "all the fishes in the sea", referring to many groups of fish (much as you might refer to the "peoples of the world" referring to many cultures). Aside from that, I bet you're onto something.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#164
post #22

aside: me after reading the headline: Shouldn't that be Octopii? But no! "The plural form octopii is doubly incorrect. Firstly, octopus derives from Greek, not Latin; its etymologically-consistent plural form is octopodes. Secondly, even if octopus were a second-declension Latin noun, the plural form would be octopi; in the correct plurals radii and gladii, with which octopii is analogous, the first ‘i’s are part of…

I wonder why it is that "octopuses" just kind of sounds wrong? Is it the repeated "s" at the end? But we have no problem saying "buses" or "rebuses". Is it something to do with the plural of "fish" just being "fish"? But we have no problem making whales and dolphins plural with an -s. Is it that "-puses" sounds slightly vulgar, like we're talking about multiple female genitalia? I genuinely don't know. All I know is…

The pronunciation of the word is already on the boundaries between "awk-toe-poos", "awk-tuh-puhs", and "awk-tah-piss" depending on your region just in America.

So adding an additional "-es" that can be "-ehhs" or "-iz" gives at least six possible pronunciations.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#165
post #22

aside: me after reading the headline: Shouldn't that be Octopii? But no! "The plural form octopii is doubly incorrect. Firstly, octopus derives from Greek, not Latin; its etymologically-consistent plural form is octopodes. Secondly, even if octopus were a second-declension Latin noun, the plural form would be octopi; in the correct plurals radii and gladii, with which octopii is analogous, the first ‘i’s are part of…

While I'm all for a history lesson (and the double-I octopii is indeed simply incorrect) I take issue with anyone insisting that "octopi" is wrong: 1. Language is neither static nor a series of rules to be blindly followed. The way a word was pluralized 1400 years ago has limited relevance today. 2. As noted just about everywhere, "octopodes" looks insane in any modern English sentence because we don't pluralize any…

But octopi is also trying to be pedantically latin, octopodes though it could be pedantic is at least correct, and entirely descriptive. In practice I wouldn't expect someone to say octopi to my face, but writing weird words online is another matter.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#166
post #22

aside: me after reading the headline: Shouldn't that be Octopii? But no! "The plural form octopii is doubly incorrect. Firstly, octopus derives from Greek, not Latin; its etymologically-consistent plural form is octopodes. Secondly, even if octopus were a second-declension Latin noun, the plural form would be octopi; in the correct plurals radii and gladii, with which octopii is analogous, the first ‘i’s are part of…

While I'm all for a history lesson (and the double-I octopii is indeed simply incorrect) I take issue with anyone insisting that "octopi" is wrong: 1. Language is neither static nor a series of rules to be blindly followed. The way a word was pluralized 1400 years ago has limited relevance today. 2. As noted just about everywhere, "octopodes" looks insane in any modern English sentence because we don't pluralize any…

There's "antipodes" though.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#167
post #22

aside: me after reading the headline: Shouldn't that be Octopii? But no! "The plural form octopii is doubly incorrect. Firstly, octopus derives from Greek, not Latin; its etymologically-consistent plural form is octopodes. Secondly, even if octopus were a second-declension Latin noun, the plural form would be octopi; in the correct plurals radii and gladii, with which octopii is analogous, the first ‘i’s are part of…

While I'm all for a history lesson (and the double-I octopii is indeed simply incorrect) I take issue with anyone insisting that "octopi" is wrong: 1. Language is neither static nor a series of rules to be blindly followed. The way a word was pluralized 1400 years ago has limited relevance today. 2. As noted just about everywhere, "octopodes" looks insane in any modern English sentence because we don't pluralize any…

[dead]

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#168
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the intelligence of pigs as well. Even if cows, sheep, deer, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, et al. all sit below the "I don't want to eat you" cutoff point, pigs should probably be above it.

Not doing that is why future generations will loathe me and my generation.

If you're referring to not choosing to eat meat, I sort of doubt future generations will 'loathe' you - just as I don't 'loathe' members of previous generations who did things we've since learned better about.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure I read a sci-fi novel some years back where one of the main characters selectively breeds octopuses for intelligence before dropping them on a terraformed planet and there was a small bit about how he didn’t like octopuses either and so called them octopii. I’m in his boat ;) fun book, forgot the name.

Could it be "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky? (ht Claude)

> Could it be "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky?

Currently reading that one and there is no octopuses (only read half so far though) but a lot of spiders, ants and space-faring primates :)

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#170
post #95

I used to love eating octopus, but since I've learned so much about their intelligence, I have not been able to bring myself to do so, anymore. I have the luxury of choice. There are many, in this world, that do not.

I doubt there are many people in the world whose diets rely on eating octopuses. You'd need either an environment that had octopuses in abundance despite having little of everything else, or a selective method of fishing that primarily caught octopuses.

> I doubt there are many people in the world whose diets rely on eating octopuses

Probably right (about the relying part), but eating octopuses is fairly common around the Mediterranean, at least the West side of it. Most restaurants have at least one item on the menu involving octopuses in some form or shape./

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