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Just how smart is an octopus?

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Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#181

Post by [deleted] »

squidfood wrote: post #173
imjared wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a veteran of working at an aquarium and have heard this story before. Is it something you witnessed? I've wondered where this story came from: - http://belizeadventure.com/2013/08/octopus-facts/ - https://www.tonmo.com/threads/midnight-tank-escapes-fact-or-... Edit: this is not to call you out for you story, it's very possible that this happened at CHS aquarium, I'm just wondering the origins since it's such…

I heard this story in three different marine biology labs going back to the 1980s (prey type differed depending on location). All were "it happened a few years ago", it was "caught on camera back then" and no actual eyewitnesses who could attest to seeing the film. Then again, I've also had to clean up a couple (witnessed) octopus escapes, though not with the full "got out, got prey, got back in." So they are at leas…

[deleted]

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#182

Post by [deleted] »

squidfood wrote: post #173
imjared wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a veteran of working at an aquarium and have heard this story before. Is it something you witnessed? I've wondered where this story came from: - http://belizeadventure.com/2013/08/octopus-facts/ - https://www.tonmo.com/threads/midnight-tank-escapes-fact-or-... Edit: this is not to call you out for you story, it's very possible that this happened at CHS aquarium, I'm just wondering the origins since it's such…

I heard this story in three different marine biology labs going back to the 1980s (prey type differed depending on location). All were "it happened a few years ago", it was "caught on camera back then" and no actual eyewitnesses who could attest to seeing the film. Then again, I've also had to clean up a couple (witnessed) octopus escapes, though not with the full "got out, got prey, got back in." So they are at leas…

[deleted]

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#183

Post by hyperion2010 »

donretag wrote: post #123

Octopuses are solitary animals, so they have little in terms of learned behavior. What they accomplish is generated by thoughts originating from themselves.

I used to think that this was the case, however more recent research (popular news article form of it) [0] seems to suggest that that may not be the case.

0. http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-have-found-an-oct...

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#185

Post by mturmon »

squidfood wrote: post #176
itp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there is no single authority of the English language (as seen in other language academies). As I mentioned in another comment, you may fall into a prescriptivist or descriptivist camp, but there's no authority to which one can appeal for a single answer. Generally speaking, octopuses is preferred by most if not all well known dictionaries in modern usage, and the pseudo-Latin cognate has fallen out of favor. I…

The style guides to most scientific journals will assert "octopuses", so you're unlikely to get "octopi" past that collective editorial authority, in any case - the others are however deemed acceptable alternates in common use.

... most scientific journals will assert "octopuses" ...

I saw a lecture by Peter Godfrey-Smith, the author of the book in TFA, and he also comes down on the side of "octopuses".

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#186

Post by [deleted] »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #145
pacaro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In her book "Animals make is human" - Temple Grandin makes the argument (among many others, this is not the main thesis of the book) that we can have a symbiotic relationship with animals, wherein we provide secure food supply, protection from predation and the associated stress, etc. and in return we eat the animal. Factory farming, by contrast has more in common with a parasitic relationship.

To play devil's advocate, would you accept the same trade? We've provided you with medicine, police protection, and subsidized food and shelter. Does that give me the right to presume that I should be able to eat you?

[deleted]

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#188

Post by anigbrowl »

komali2 wrote: post #64

Total anecdote here, but when I volunteered at our aquarium in Charleston, SC (amazing aquarium, go check it out), we had a problem where our flounder were vanishing from their tank. We suspected theft and so put a camera up in the back room. The next time flounder disappeared we checked the feed - one of our octopi was escaping from his tank that we thought we had already anti-octopus'd, climbing over the walls, bre…

Presumably he (or she?) wanted to go back to his own tank to get the regular food. Frankly I think you should take the carpet down - OK you don't want to keep losing flounder, but if the guy can wander around and climb out of his own tank you should be studying that, not trying to make the behavior go away. If nothing else, it's cruel to bore him like that. Yes, I'm serious.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#189

Post by deanCommie »

Falling3 wrote: post #140
overcast wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key difference here is that dogs were bred for thousands of years, to be our companions, while pigs were bred as food. That's where it comes from.

In what way is that a meaningful distinction?

It's a betrayal of trust.

You know how Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a pig that has been genetically bred to want to be eaten? Like that is it's greatest desire in the world.

Dogs have been selectively bred over thousands of years to want to be our friends - to trust us, and to work together as companions. To deliberately kill and eat an animal like that is worse than eating any other.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#190

Post by anigbrowl »

tzs wrote: post #84
bduerst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went diving with a retired marine biologist who said, half-jokingly, that if octopodes had ever formed the same tribal culture as primates that we would have been competing with them for dominance at some point.

Fortunately for us, they have two biological strikes against developing that kind of culture. 1. They have short lifespans, limiting how much knowledge and wisdom an individual can acquire over its lifetime. 2. Reproduction is fatal. Males dies a few months after mating. Females spend all their time after the eggs are laid guarding them, and neglect to eat. They die of starvation around the time the eggs hatch. The o…

How do you know the parents don't psss on information chemically or genetically? There's studies in humans suggesting trauma can alter the genome (see https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/holocaus... for a skpetically-minded overview of the paper), and it's not like we know genetics backwards and forwards. I'm wary of assuming other species should have to follow a recognizable parallel to human development. After all, fish that live in schools are essentially tribal but it doesn't seem to have led to an increase in sophistication.
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