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Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

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Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#241

Post by golergka »

rickydroll wrote: post #227
nerdponx wrote: post #77

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.

You have to consider that eating meat or not is not matter of life and death for an animal. It's a matter of either living and then being killed, or not being born at all. When people don't eat meat, farmers don't breed the animals.

Now, you still might think that not being born at all is a better alternative, of course. I'm only pointing out it's a different dilemma.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#242

Post by SoftTalker »

Wojtkie wrote: post #206
rkagerer wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet like us they have two eyes. I wonder if we meet aliens from another star-orbiting planet if their light-sensors will look anything like ours.

Well, I'm not sure there'd be much benefit to spending energy on a 3rd eye. You can already achieve stereoscopic vision with just two eyes, why waste the energy on a third? It probably doesn't increase fitness enough to be worth the energy spend.

Yet some creatures have many more than two eyes. Spiders, for example.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#243

Post by shiroiushi »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #239
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Sure, but it's pretty obvious that fish and chicken are very stupid animals, and those mammals are much smarter, so I'm not sure that genetic proximity is as important as you think it is. Octopuses are the only real standout here: they really are quite intelligent, which is even more remarkable because they're invertebrates. And yes, some birds are quite intelligent (like crows), but we don't eat those types of birds (probably because they're just not very good as food).

>cows are smarter than horses, but we choose not to eat dogs and horses because they more readily comprehend and obey our commands

Who's "we"? Horsemeat is very easy to find in restaurants here in Japan. It's not bad if cooked properly, but it's a lot like deer meat. Deer are pretty stupid too (probably about as smart as cows), but they aren't normally eaten either, and it's because most people just don't like the taste that much (it's "gamey"), and it's difficult to cook. Cows taste better than horses because they have a lot more fat.

Also, octopuses have been mentioned here many times, but in the US they aren't a terribly popular food item, whereas here in Japan they're very common (along with squid). So differing cultures and culinary traditions I think have a lot to do with it too, just as with horses above.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#244

Post by rkagerer »

patcon wrote: post #233
tonetegeatinst wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 informati…

Some rivers have been granted legal personhood: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/these-rive... (with a varying spectrum of exactly what that means).

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#246

Post by makeitdouble »

golergka wrote: post #241
rickydroll wrote: post #227

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.

You have to consider that eating meat or not is not matter of life and death for an animal. It's a matter of either living and then being killed, or not being born at all. When people don't eat meat, farmers don't breed the animals. Now, you still might think that not being born at all is a better alternative, of course. I'm only pointing out it's a different dilemma.

Your point is correct, but it's also a view on life/death that is typically not accepted.

We don't look at human life in that lens, it's a whole can of worm, but we can agree that ending someone's life is viewed separately from whether that person could have not existed in the first place.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#247

Post by timschmidt »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #103
hagbard_c wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eat them after they reproduced then, they only do that once in their life.

They typically die after reproducing. Mothers use their remaining energy to help their offspring survive, fathers sometimes do but not all - if you could somehow capture only post-mating male octopuses from species that don't sacrifice themselves for their offspring then sure, but that seems like an unrealistic expectation.

So is growing billions of genetic clones of that one perfect fruit, but you know...

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#248

Post by rglynn »

banannaise wrote: post #124
neerajk wrote: 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

#249

Post by naasking »

shiroiushi wrote: post #243
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Sure, but it's pretty obvious that fish and chicken are very stupid animals, and those mammals are much smarter, so I'm not…

> Sure, but it's pretty obvious that fish and chicken are very stupid animals, and those mammals are much smarter

Does "smartness" carry inherent moral worth? That would be an interesting principle to hold, given what it might entail for humans.

Re: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

#250

Post by shiroiushi »

naasking wrote: post #249
shiroiushi wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Sure, but it's pretty obvious that fish and chicken are very stupid animals, and those mammals are much smarter, so I'm not…

> Sure, but it's pretty obvious that fish and chicken are very stupid animals, and those mammals are much smarter Does "smartness" carry inherent moral worth? That would be an interesting principle to hold, given what it might entail for humans.

>Does "smartness" carry inherent moral worth?

Well that seems to be the assumption in this discussion thread.

>That would be an interesting principle to hold, given what it might entail for humans.

If you're implying that stupid people should be used as food, that's already been addressed elsewhere in this thread: cannibalism is very rare among other animals that are much stupider than us, and for good reason: there's a big risk of disease (such as prion diseases).

However, if we were visited by aliens that found humans tasty, the morality of offering up our stupidest members of society as food for them might be an interesting argument.

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