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Just how smart is an octopus?
- dekhn 10y agoOctopi? Pah. Cuttlefish are fucking brilliant.
- ramy_d 10y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PWP8uL-1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PWP8uL-1o
- daveguy 10y agoOriginal video posted by merriam-webster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk But they weren't arguing about the plural form, but that cuttlefish win in a battle of intelligence. Also, if you watch the video it says all are correct.
- ionwake 10y agoAgreed Flamboyant ftw
- overcast 10y agoWay to make me feel worse about eating them.
- ch4s3 10y agoWell pigs are smarter than dogs, and many people eat them.
- overcast 10y agoI don't feel great about that either, but octopuses have shown repeatedly their problem solving abilities.
- ch4s3 10y agoPerhaps that would be an interesting area of study. I think the lack of dexterous limbs probably inhibits the pig's ability to solve certain problems they would otherwise be mentally capable of tackling.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- oneeyedpigeon 10y agoI've seen an experiment in which pigs controlled an object on a screen, using a 'joystick', by controlling it with their snout. It certainly looked as if they were demonstrating a level of intelligence.
- ch4s3 10y agoI read about that study as well, it's what I was thinking of when I made the previous comment! Cool stuff! Do you have a link by any chance?
- oneeyedpigeon 10y agoAll I know is that it was a TV programme in the UK; sorry, I know that's not very useful!
- 10y ago
- Nexxxeh 10y agoI love how completely alien they are compared to us. The sort of decentralized nature of their nervous system compared to our path of evolution. (I'm no marine/evolutionary biologist so I'm probably butchering the terminology...) I loved reading the two pieces Sy Montgomery wrote that are in Orion Magazine. https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/ https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/ And the follow-up: https://orionmagazine.org/2011/11/interviews-with-an-octopus/ https://orionmagazine.org/2011/11/interviews-with-an-octopus... (Edit: Si -> Sy)
- bduerst 10y agoI 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.
- tzs 10y agoFortunately 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 octopus young are on their own, with no living parents to pass on learned knowledge and wisdom.
- FreeFull 10y agoI also suspect it's a lot harder to advance technologically when you live underwater. One of the big boosts to human evolution was the mastery of fire and development of cooking.
- bduerst 10y agoDepends on whether or not cooking would expand an octopode diet the way it did with humans. They're also technically "cold" blooded.
- Koshkin 10y agoAnimals have always seemed to me smarter than humans in some (important) ways. Squirrels, for instance, are extremely resourceful and can survive in conditions few, if any, humans could. If that isn't being "smart", I don't know what is. In any case, the smart/brain weight ratio is not in humans' favor here, that is for sure!
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoUsing analytic thought to problem solve? That's probably a pretty common definition. And most animals don't do that.
- Koshkin 10y agoThis may be true (but what do we know?). Animal don't solve problems for fun, though; those that they do have to solve, they solve pretty well, it seems.
- eduren 10y agoIsn't your statement a bit fallacious? The animals that couldn't "solve problems" aren't exactly around for us to study. The difference between the two comes down to luck doesn't it? The animal that survives is far more likely to have done the right thing by random mutation rather than some weird semi-intelligence that you are attributing to them.
- Koshkin 10y agoSure, but it's the end result that matters. Incidentally, the human brain also has evolved by natural selection (which involves random mutation).
- oneeyedpigeon 10y agoOne interesting aspect of this is that, as a human species, we are discovering over time more and more animals that do use analytic though to problem solve. I wonder if many more than we currently know about do actually do that, we're just unaware of it at the moment. Dystopian sci-fi incoming: maybe all animals are totally aware and intelligent, and maybe we'll understand that one day ...
- platz 10y agoWeird pupils let octopuses see their colorful gardens (berkeley.edu) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084534
- rayiner 10y ago> And yet . . . could we be missing something here? While they can’t see much of their own kaleidoscopic skins, they can clearly sense inside what they are doing. Remote cameras on the seabed show octopuses crackling with color changes, even when there is no other creature present to observe them. Godfrey-Smith believes this is just a byproduct of neural activity, no more than an expressive quirk. But maybe it isn’t. Perhaps they are talking to themselves. God I hate science reporting. It's like they can't help but interject spasmodic blather into an article.
- HCIdivision17 10y agoThe phrase "believes this is just a byproduct of neural activity" taken at face value is just a strange thing to say. I feel like the author is playing a trick on me, and feels like when Feynman cracked the joke about a French curve "The French curve is made so that the lowest point on each curve, no matter how you turn it, the tangent is always horizontal." [0] Neat! ... wait. Oh. Right. Of course. [0] https://todayinsci.com/F/Feynman_Richard/FeynmanRichard-FrenchCurve.htm https://todayinsci.com/F/Feynman_Richard/FeynmanRichard-Fren...
- pdabbadabba 10y agoI agree it's a little silly. But I think it might be more charitably described as "speculation that remains intriguing to ponder, even though it has no evidentiary support." And the reason they inject it is, of course, that certain readers are more interested in thinking about that kind of stuff than hard scientific evidence. If you really think this is just "spasmodic blather," then I think you may be missing a lot of important things about the human experience--and even, I'd submit, some of the true wonder of science. (This is not to say, however, that you must find it interesting, much less persuasive. I don't.)
- cecilpl 10y agoIsn't Godfrey-Smith's belief in fact also "just a byproduct of neural activity"?
- cicero 10y ago
- up_and_up 10y agoSmart enough to hunt on BOTH land and sea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar5WJrQik2o&feature=youtu.be&t=15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar5WJrQik2o&feature=youtu.be... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFzpC_e44Tg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFzpC_e44Tg
- NotThe1Pct 10y ago3x smarter than a managing director
- dang 10y agoYou've posted plenty of unsubstantive comments to HN. We ban accounts that keep doing that, so please stop doing that.
- NotThe1Pct 10y agoWho cares This is free Go ahead and ban me
- NotThe1Pct 10y agoYou did not ban me yet asshole. I am waiting. This is a country of free speech and you little cunts like Facebook can stick up your asses your nazi-like politically correct attitude. Go fuck yourselves and carry your Frankfurt school with you.
- Raphmedia 10y agoSaving you a click: "Are they capable of conscious thought? Godfrey-Smith treks through some rather testing philosophical and psychological terrain to conclude in the negative. While cephalopods are capable of exceptional complexity in their signalling, the machinery of interpretation is too limited. Humans, perhaps uniquely, have gained the ability to step outside ourselves, to think about our thoughts by means of an unstoppable internal monologue."
- pcl 10y agoThe next paragraph: "And yet... could we be missing something here? While they can’t see much of their own kaleidoscopic skins, they can clearly sense inside what they are doing. Remote cameras on the seabed show octopuses crackling with color changes, even when there is no other creature present to observe them. Godfrey-Smith believes this is just a byproduct of neural activity, no more than an expressive quirk. But maybe it isn’t. Perhaps they are talking to themselves."
- delanceyplace 10y agoAlso check out Sy Montgomery's book,The Soul of an Octopus, fascinating. Did you know "Three fifths of octopuses' neurons are not in the brain..." Here is an excerpt: http://www.delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=3054 http://www.delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=3054
- komali2 10y agoTotal 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, breaking into the flounder tank, eating a flounder, and then breaking back out of the flounder tank and back into his. The weird thing isn't that he went to go eat a flounder, it's that he broke back into his own tank after, leaving us scratching our head for weeks over where the flounder were going. Obviously if we came in one day to see an octopus in the flounder tank the mystery would be solved day 1. Anyway we put carpet on the walls so his little suckers couldn't stick and let him carouse around the aquarium like some sort of aquatic monkey.
- pacaro 10y agoPedantic mode here: linguistically it should be octopodes (but nobody who isn't speaking Greek would say that); by usage it should be octopuses; octopi or octopii are just wrong (it's not a second declension noun, despite the 'us' ending)
- itp 10y agoI basically agree with you, but this also reflects where you are on the prescriptivist/descriptivist split. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus#Etymology_and_pluralization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus#Etymology_and_pluraliz... Anyway, while I wouldn't put it like you have, I agree with the bottom line -- spread the message of "octopuses"!
- irrational 10y agoAccording to James Bond it should be octopussies (or is it octopussys?).
- ClassyJacket 10y agoYou just can't win with grammar Nazis. If they'd written octopuses, someone would be in here telling them "It's octopi".
- forkandwait 10y agoAnybody have a pet octopus and can comment on what that's like?
- treehau5 10y agoDon't tell the Greeks. We are probably the world's largest consumer of octopus (after cheese, that is)
- daveguy 10y agoI am almost certain that cheese does not consume octopus.
- jwtadvice 10y agoI'm reminded of Paul the Octopus in the Sea Life Centre in Germany, who at least reportedly likes watching soccer. Crowds have taken to watching his behavior like an aquatic Punxsutawney Phil - looking for signs of Paul feeling optimistic or depressed - and leading crowds through an exercise to imagine that Paul is able to predict the outcomes of games. While not really equipt with fortune-telling capabilities, Paul and most other octopi (as aquarists will share) have very distinct personalities, have favorite caretakers they can individually recognize, and in the wild will save food, trade rocks and have learned to pull diving masks off humans who bother them.
- donretag 10y agoOctopuses are solitary animals, so they have little in terms of learned behavior. What they accomplish is generated by thoughts originating from themselves.
- Pica_soO 10y agoSo you could not put them through a school?
- tudorw 10y agoonly fish do schooling ;)
- hyperion2010 10y agoI 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-octopus-village-off-australia-that-reveals-the-creatures-social-side-2016-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-have-found-an-oct...
- deeth_starr 10y agoWow. Thanks.
- JoachimS 10y agoHumboldt squids at least work together to achieve goals such as catching prey. They coordinate to confuse and ambush the selected target. This shows (to me) not only that they are not solitary (all the time) and are able to communicate to achieve their common goal. A bit like killer whales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_squid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_squid
- brilliantcode 10y agoWell I feel slightly bad for wanting to eat it alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sannakji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sannakji
- Ajedi32 10y agoWoah, it's real-life gagh!
- brilliantcode 10y agoit tastes better than it looks or so I hear. The only concerning point is that people have choked on this while drunk as it sticks to whatever it can latch on to and throat is not the ideal place....need to chew this until it stops squirming....your life may depend on it, more so when you are drunk and think this is hangover food. This will be one of the first things I will try if and when I am in Korea. I'm not bothered by it since I'm Korean but I can understand the reaction, I'm sure Hindus aren't too thrilled by our cow consumption either.
- andrei_says_ 10y agoHow smart inevitably limits the question by applying a human measure to it. What I am more interested in, is to know how it is smart, not how much. How does it perceive? How does it connect and process information? How does it interract? Is there a way to approach this subject besides shape shifting into an octopus?
- asciimo 10y agoIt's like an octopus dismissing humans as inferior because our appendages lack suckers. I don't think humans can ever fully understanding other species. Yet, the more we observe, cut, and process other animals, the more of ourselves we discover. Rats dream and laugh! Crows use tools! Dogs understand fairness! Is it really any surprise that we have so much in common?
- andrei_says_ 10y agoExactly. > We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
- deeth_starr 10y agoHacker news is what reddit should have been [imho]
- elastic_church 10y agoI just like to imagine Octopus dominance if they banded together and decided not to die at 3 years old. Pretty smart for mass produced babies. Humans wouldn't stand a chance.
- nickeleres 10y agoTL;DR Not a scientific article and doesnt arrive at many conclusions.
- zoom6628 10y agoSmarter than us, obviously!
- JoachimS 10y agoGood article up to the end when speculation about the uniqeness of humans are presented. "Humans, perhaps uniquely, have gained the ability to step outside ourselves" AFAIK we have established that quite a few animals for example apes such as the Orangutan are able to identify and reason about themselves in relation to the rest of the world. They are capable of deception, cooperation etc. And of course a range of complex feelings. The color changing and arms of an octopus would at least allow for complex information communication.