3 ms·
I'm wondering if Octopuses are more social creatures than we thought before. In My Octopus Teacher, the octopus seemed really friendly and social with the human
by deepzn 3y ago
I'm wondering if Octopuses are more social creatures than we thought before. In My Octopus Teacher, the octopus seemed really friendly and social with the human.
But I also read that they don't get along with other octopuses most of the time. And in this article too they fight over territory. But Humans do that too, and we're social.
If forming social relations are evolutionary advantages, then I wonder would perhaps Octopuses start developing more social tendencies as a means of adapting to these new environmental changes. As noted in the article, the areas contained surplus food. Which is also interesting, but maybe this is just a local phenomenon, because there were many headlines in recent years about overfishing.
- deepzn 3y agoI guess the evolutionary advantages don't exist as their prey are usually small and a single octopus wouldn't have trouble hunting by themselves. And outside of teaming up to thwart predators, but I don't think that would help against sharks unless they have a much higher intelligence and can outsmart them like how humans have evolved to do. So not really clear to me why they are living nearby, aside from abundant food and no pressure to explore new areas. So it comes back to maybe they are social. Next thing you know, they'll playing underwater pickleball with each other.