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I 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
by bduerst 10y ago
I 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.
- eridius 10y agoAlso booze. The desire to make our own alcohol is what triggered the spread of agriculture, if I remember my old history classes correctly.
- WalterBright 10y agoAgriculture predates history.
- eridius 10y agoRecorded history, perhaps. Doesn't mean we can't still figure things out about what happened before recorded history. But don't ask me how we figured out that humans switched to agriculture in order to make booze, because I'm not qualified to answer that, all I can tell you is that I learned this at some point from someone else who is more qualified than I am to talk about this.
- noiv 10y agoWell, essentially cooking is trying to dissolve food in water - a non existing problem for octopi, mussels taste raw, too!
- mertd 10y agoI have never heard of that reasoning. What's the advantage of dissolving in water? There are other advantages of cooking such as producing shelf stable foodstuffs and increasing the bioavailability of nutrients.
- Mikeb85 10y agoCooking is about breaking down cell walls, allowing us to expend less effort digesting food, making more calories available.
- bduerst 10y agoI think you've identified precisely why tribal culture would have helped octopodes: (never thought I'd be saying that today) 1. Before writing, technology was passed down through word of mouth from elders to younger generations in tribes. 2. Rearing/protecting young is assigned to specialized members of the tribe while others hunt/gather resources.
- peatmoss 10y agoAs an experiment, I wonder if octopuses could be taught rudiments of culture that would have evolutionary advantages...
- multjoy 10y ago"You were so busy wondering if you could do it, you never stopped to ask if you should" That's going on your headstone come the Great Octopus War of 2033.
- peatmoss 10y agoNah, evolution will take a while to produce killer octopodes. I figure I'm good for a few million years, until after humanity has already gone full star-robot.
- anigbrowl 10y agoHow do you know the parents don't psss on information chemically or genetically? There's studies in humans suggesting trauma can alter the genome (see https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/holocaust-trauma-is-it-epigenetically-inherited/ https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/holocaus... for a skpetically-minded overview of the paper), and it's not like we know genetics backwards and forwards. I'm wary of assuming other species should have to follow a recognizable parallel to human development. After all, fish that live in schools are essentially tribal but it doesn't seem to have led to an increase in sophistication.
- wishinghand 10y agoI assume evolution would eventually take its course by selectively choosing the ocotopodes whose mothers lived long enough to pass some sort of knowledge down. The longer and longer mothers live, perhaps the more those types of octopodes get selected because they outcompete orphans.
- kabdib 10y agoIt's hard to light a fire under the water. You're not going to do much industry there. The deck is stacked against water-based intelligence developing technology. Might be a good thing for us. I bet they could evolve into awesome tool users.
- vacri 10y agoThis being said, they have the 'third hand' that every technician dreams of. Two hands to hold the work steady, and the third to do the action.
- kabdib 10y agoBut I can just see octopuses hankering for that fourth hand. You probably can't have too many hands, and wanting N+1 is going to be universal . . . :-)