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Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

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Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#231

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.

I decided on pigs as the smart threshold because they were as smart as my dogs, and I would never eat my dog. Mutton, lamb, or chicken is no problem whatsoever. You grab them by the neck, stare deep into their eyes, and you will see the back of their skull.

My wife is grossed out if I eat anything other than chicken or fish. She says that cow, goat, and pig feel too "present" to eat.

I begrudgingly agree.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#232

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 resol…

It's too bad there aren't more software projects (and jobs) like this.

We do! https://www.earthspecies.org/about-us#careers

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely if they can punch fish they can click ads?

Awaiting the ad industry giants to see this new source of end users.

Oy, this just gave me a dystopic angle on a collective intelligence initiative I'm excited about: using LLMs to get non-human entities like rivers on advisory boards.

https://x.com/zarinahagnew/status/1815442685446033613

> Voice of Nature - leveraging advanced environmental data, we're developing fine-tuned AI agents that can deliberate on behalf of non-human stakeholders & better represent/surface relevant information about our ecosystems, as a method to improve collective intelligence.

The dystopic angle: what if future energy goes into bringing nature into active engagement with capitalism...

Hopefully I'm never living in the world where someone has a bridge in Brooklyn to sell and the buyer is the Hudson River :)

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All my friends say “octopodes”. Some people on the internet keep saying that that's wrong; I find that very strange. > because we don't pluralize any other word that way. Certainly we do “platypodes”, “matrices”, “irides”, “clitorides” and “vortices”, are all quite common words.

I had never heard of three out of five of your "quite common" words.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Octopuses don’t have money, so the people with money aren’t interested in putting more resources into understanding octopuses.

But surely if they can punch fish they can click ads?

Facts

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#236

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.

I decided on pigs as the smart threshold because they were as smart as my dogs, and I would never eat my dog. Mutton, lamb, or chicken is no problem whatsoever. You grab them by the neck, stare deep into their eyes, and you will see the back of their skull.

HA!

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#237

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.

just because something is intelligent is no reason not to eat it imho

Let me ask a similar question as another user asked: what attribute do animals lack that, if a human also lacked, would justify eating a human?

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#238

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.

I decided on pigs as the smart threshold because they were as smart as my dogs, and I would never eat my dog. Mutton, lamb, or chicken is no problem whatsoever. You grab them by the neck, stare deep into their eyes, and you will see the back of their skull.

reminds me of Werner Herzog's classic rant on the stupidity of chickens..

"Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world."

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided on pigs as the smart threshold because they were as smart as my dogs, and I would never eat my dog. Mutton, lamb, or chicken is no problem whatsoever. You grab them by the neck, stare deep into their eyes, and you will see the back of their skull.

My wife is grossed out if I eat anything other than chicken or fish. She says that cow, goat, and pig feel too "present" to eat. I begrudgingly agree.

I mean they're all mammals, just like us.

Intelligence is just one thing we can consider when deciding what's morally acceptable to kill and consume. Genetic proximity to humans clearly matters to many people as well: lots of people stick to seafood and/or poultry despite the fact that octopuses and some birds can be quite intelligent.

Sociability could be a third factor. Pigs are smarter than dogs, cows are smarter than horses, but we choose not to eat dogs and horses because they more readily comprehend and obey our commands, enabling us to connect with them on a basic social level.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Octopuses don’t have money, so the people with money aren’t interested in putting more resources into understanding octopuses.

But surely if they can punch fish they can click ads?

Wait, if I train octopuses to click ads on my website, it's not ad fraud, is it? They're not bots...
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