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Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

nature.com

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Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#71

Post by jdironman »

chmod775 wrote: post #62
DizzyDoo wrote: post #6

As a counterpoint, The Atlantic ran an interesting article[0] yesterday suggesting that it's not really clear what the Octopuses' aims are when they do this, and that we do really like to anthropomorphize them. [0] - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/11/gloomy-o...

Engaging in play is not unique to humans, so assuming an animal is just fooling around is not anthropomorphizing anything.

It makes me wonder if they engage in "play" does it evoke some "emotion" in them such as joy etc? some reward maybe? and if it does does other scenarios evoke other emotions we consider to be human centric. Anyone have a link to a good paper regarding it?

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#72

Post by cecilpl2 »

permo-w wrote: post #66
daveslash wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be a word like "fishes". I once saw "fishes" on an interpretive sign at an aquarium and some folks were mocking such and obvious grammatical error. Turns out, "fish" is the correct way to refer to multiple individual fish as a group, whereas "fishes" is the correct way to refer to multiple species of fish. I wonder if "octopi" might refer to multiple octopus without making any indication as to weather they are…

one that I often hear foreign speakers struggling with is “hair”. 1 hair, 2 hairs, a whole head of hair. seemingly, if it’s countable it follows normal rules, if it’s not, it goes back to singular form. but then it could be absolutely correct to say “the many hairs on my head”, an uncountable which retains the plural. English is an absolute mess

Japanese is worse. You count "1 thing", "2 thing", "3 thing", except the word for "thing" changes depending on the shape of the thing you are counting.

So thin flat things like paper or shirts are 1 mai, 2 mai, 3 mai, while to count books you say 1 satsu, 2 satsu, 3 satsu.

Long round things like pencils or umbrellas go 1 pon, 2 hon, 3 bon, 4 hon, 5 hon, 6 pon, etc (yeah you read that right).

There are different counter words for different kinds of animals, small things, vehicles, shoes, drinks, people, etc.

https://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese-numbers-co...

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#73

Post by permo-w »

geraldwhen wrote: post #70
permo-w wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one that I often hear foreign speakers struggling with is “hair”. 1 hair, 2 hairs, a whole head of hair. seemingly, if it’s countable it follows normal rules, if it’s not, it goes back to singular form. but then it could be absolutely correct to say “the many hairs on my head”, an uncountable which retains the plural. English is an absolute mess

All languages are a mess. Imagine instead of specific noun rules, every single noun had a rule by way of a gender. And to conjugate “boat” or “table” you need to know its arbitrary gender.

English, unlike a lot of the big European languages, doesn’t have a central controlling body and hasn’t gone through powerful standardisation efforts - beyond dictionaries (i.e. consistent spelling and meaning). many (most?) European languages follow pretty consistent conjugation and pronunciation rules. yeah there are a few exceptions in each case, but nowhere near the scale of English.

grammatical gender is in most cases only really as hard as learning the words themselves

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#74

Post by citrusynapse »

FredPret wrote: post #12
barbazoo wrote: post #2

I'm reading Children of Ruin, that's how it starts.

I find Star Trek’s aliens so human-like that it ruins the whole thing for me. But Children of Ruin is so much better!

Steven King's lesser known From A Buick 8 is a surprisingly good slow-burner that has one of my favorite depictions of extradimensional creatures to date.

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#75

Post by permo-w »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #72
permo-w wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one that I often hear foreign speakers struggling with is “hair”. 1 hair, 2 hairs, a whole head of hair. seemingly, if it’s countable it follows normal rules, if it’s not, it goes back to singular form. but then it could be absolutely correct to say “the many hairs on my head”, an uncountable which retains the plural. English is an absolute mess

Japanese is worse. You count "1 thing", "2 thing", "3 thing", except the word for "thing" changes depending on the shape of the thing you are counting. So thin flat things like paper or shirts are 1 mai, 2 mai, 3 mai, while to count books you say 1 satsu, 2 satsu, 3 satsu. Long round things like pencils or umbrellas go 1 pon, 2 hon, 3 bon, 4 hon, 5 hon, 6 pon, etc (yeah you read that right). There are different count…

christ that is horrendous, especially pon hon bon hon hon pon. is there some kind of historical logic behind it?

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#76

Post by jjtheblunt »

daveslash wrote: post #20
bananarchist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the plural is octopodes, just like cactus->cactodes, virus->virodes and surplus-surplodes (my favorite)

It may be a word like "fishes". I once saw "fishes" on an interpretive sign at an aquarium and some folks were mocking such and obvious grammatical error. Turns out, "fish" is the correct way to refer to multiple individual fish as a group, whereas "fishes" is the correct way to refer to multiple species of fish. I wonder if "octopi" might refer to multiple octopus without making any indication as to weather they are…

octopi arises because people have learned Latin 2nd declension masculine nouns, by accident or repetition, where pluralizing (nominative case) turns the -us to -i.

It's a pattern matching phenomenon.

It would be less weird if there were not spelling irregularities, since the -pus is meant to be foot (like pes, pedes...in Latin, or pos, podes,... in Greek).

Basically, the spelling irregularity triggers a sensible pattern match, which happens to of course not honor the spelling irregularity.

And then nerds like me write too much about such, but i had years of Latin (and a little Greek) for something!

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#77

Post by mike10921 »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #4

May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…

If someone at a party complained to me that octopuses is wrong and it should be octopi, I would most likely be moving on to the next table..

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#78

Post by unsupp0rted »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #4

May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…

The plural spelling is whatever plural people generally use. Why wouldn't it be?

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#79

Post by sheepdestroyer »

permo-w wrote: post #75
cecilpl2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese is worse. You count "1 thing", "2 thing", "3 thing", except the word for "thing" changes depending on the shape of the thing you are counting. So thin flat things like paper or shirts are 1 mai, 2 mai, 3 mai, while to count books you say 1 satsu, 2 satsu, 3 satsu. Long round things like pencils or umbrellas go 1 pon, 2 hon, 3 bon, 4 hon, 5 hon, 6 pon, etc (yeah you read that right). There are different count…

christ that is horrendous, especially pon hon bon hon hon pon. is there some kind of historical logic behind it?

It's for a better sounding liaison depending on the preceding number

Re: Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other

#80

Post by space_ghost »

mike10921 wrote: post #77
4gotunameagain wrote: post #4

May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…

If someone at a party complained to me that octopuses is wrong and it should be octopi, I would most likely be moving on to the next table..

And I would happily jump in your vacant seat and enjoy hours of pedantic discussions on the vagaries of silly English words.
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