4 ms·
The Octopus: Stable Genius
- hawktheslayer 9y agoMy daughter and I have been learning about octopui and squids and I never cease to be amazed by these creatures so far removed from us on the evolutionary tree. Recently I learned how scientists studied the squids giant axons to understand our own brains.
- themagician 9y agoI believe you mean octopodes my good sir. https://youtu.be/wFyY2mK8pxk https://youtu.be/wFyY2mK8pxk Pip pip, cup of tea, cheerio.
- jjtheblunt 9y agoi thought the same immediately: octopus is a screwy latiny-misspelled greeky word, with octopodes the plural. happy to see another knew that.
- Digit-Al 9y agoThis view is "contentious" :-) https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/270/what-is-the-correct-plural-of-octopus/271 https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/270/what-is-the-...
- mc32 9y agoThat it might be but it's pretty clear the Latin associated plural is misapplied. So English has octopuses. Greek has octopodes. Some English speakers prefer to use the Greek word rather then the loan derived plural which uses English construction.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- euler_ 9y agoI recently took a class which extensively covered the early squid giant axon research. While they are very far away from us in the evolutionary tree, the overall mechanisms are very similar. You might also want to check out Otto Loewi's famous frog heart experiments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Loewi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Loewi
- chadash 9y agoFor a much more in-depth article, I'd recommend Amia Srinivasan's review of two recent books about octopuses at https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-sucker-the-sucker https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-sucker-the.... Of course, the books that Srinivasan reviews go into far more depth than any article summarizing them could, but if you're not going to read the entire books, I think you'll still find this article very interesting.
- headhunter 9y agoThat's an amazing article. Thanks for sharing. They truly are such cool creatures.
- sho 9y agoThanks. If you enjoyed that, you might also enjoy David Foster Wallace's famous essay Consider the Lobster, which also examines the issues inherent in comprehending the inner experience of animals, and the ethics involved in our eating of them. I can only find this genius link, unfortunately: https://genius.com/David-foster-wallace-consider-the-lobster-annotated https://genius.com/David-foster-wallace-consider-the-lobster...
- andresgottlieb 9y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Consider-Lobster-Essays-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316013323/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=andres0c-20&linkId=44fd262f02ee75f1799d8f257443fabd https://www.amazon.com/Consider-Lobster-Essays-Foster-Wallac...
- jackhack 9y agoThat was a thoughtful, interesting article. From the link: "Like most arthropods, they date from the Jurassic period, biologically so much older than mammalia that they might as well be from another planet." (then later...) “The nervous system of a lobster is very simple, and is in fact most similar to the nervous system of the grasshopper. It is decentralized with no brain. There is no cerebral cortex, which in humans is the area of the brain that gives the experience of pain.” Which makes it all the more remarkable that we share some basic elements. As Jordan Peterson recently explained in his book (12 rules) and the now-famous BBC Channel 4 interview, lobsters have been around for an exceedingly long time -- before there were trees! And we share a number of hormonal pathways with this lowly, delicious creature. https://www.google.com/search?q=lobster+dopamine https://www.google.com/search?q=lobster+dopamine The same hormonal triggers that lead an Alpha-lobster to walk with pride and swagger and respect among his carapace-suited peers are involved in our own human sense of accomplishment leading to machismo. How incredible that durable, robust mechanisms replicate in nature and result in enormously complex systems (such as social networks),built on this foundation!
- pqh 9y agohttp://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm This is an interesting essay on the minds of our ocean-dwelling aliens.
- Jesus_Jones 9y agoThey must have been thinking about Trump's comment when they made the headline, right?
- saosebastiao 9y agoI was trying to explain how CitusDB works the other day to another developer and tried using an octopus as an analogy. Turns out I needed an analogy to explain my analogy.