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How?
Gorillas can use sign language, dogs can use speaking buttons, I’m sure dolphins or orcas could be taught something we would recognise as language, maybe even chimpanzé
Here's a great talk that sent me on a recent youtube dive on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH9boP9pksM
"Octopus: Making Contact" https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus-making-contact-y8dya...
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I think that lifespan it is their biggest disadvantage, and the reason why there is no octopus civilization, unless you want to go beyond the Mountains of Madness. Modern humans for instance spend more time learning than the lifespan of most animals. If we were limited to a lifespan of 20 years, which is typical for a mammal of our weight class, human society would have been very different. Make it 5 years and there…
Answer to both of your questions is that there was no evolutionary path. Evolution is blind and path dependent. It only responds to differential pressures affecting just now. Evolution is like greedy search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm They didn't develop longevity because intelligence + longlivety does not provide immediate advantage. They didn't develop collective strategies because they the path…
I can't read the article at the moment to judge, but going by some of the comments, the original famous essay of this ilk (exploring the idea of consciousness by imagining experiencing life as an very different species) might be of interest. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3...
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Answer to both of your questions is that there was no evolutionary path. Evolution is blind and path dependent. It only responds to differential pressures affecting just now. Evolution is like greedy search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm They didn't develop longevity because intelligence + longlivety does not provide immediate advantage. They didn't develop collective strategies because they the path…
Yes. But I'd reverse these questions: why so much intelligence, with seemingly few opportunities to use it?
Even in human brain huge area of brain dedicated into hands. Human fine motor skill (or dexterity) is superior compared to other apes. We can do small detailed moves. Other apes and monkeys are clumsy.
After the complexity of brain developed to control their dexterity, octopus gets benefit from spatiotemporal intelligence to exploit tentacles in hunting and moving. It's not surprising that intelligence plan and solve problems as well.
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Thank you for sharing those comments, jbotz. > We don't know how common or rare sentience and consciousness are in the Universe, but because of the Octopus I believe that if ever we do encounter non-terrestrial sentience we'll have no trouble recognizing it and will find that we have enough in common to establish communications and a relationship. And... what of terrestrial sentience?
> Although first we'd do well to do a better job at communicating with and respecting the many non-human sentient beings on this planet.
Also if anyone else has other books that follow similar themes, please recommend!
I would recommend these scifi books https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim... And https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40376072-children-of-rui... Lots of fun reading them, great author :)
I've also read both books. It's a good exploration into the minds of spiders and octopuses, if given "uplift". A recent study I read about shows that spider intelligence is ill-studied but actually holds a wealth of interesting facets. Jumping spiders plan, such as when hunting, and can be surprised. They are also doing elaborate planning when building webs, and make adjustments to strength/stickiness in webs based o…