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Biologists discover four new octopus species
- j13n 3y agoNueva Pescanova is already sizing up cages. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59667645 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59667645
- yungporko 3y ago[flagged]
- piombisallow 3y agoYou first buddy.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y agoI find it weird that people won't eat meat and poultry, but still eat fish and seafood and sometimes cite environmental reasons. Most fish are caught and some sea based farming efforts have been pretty terrible for the environment. I reckon if you want to eat meat still you should mostly be eating chicken.
- lukan 3y ago"I reckon if you want to eat meat still you should mostly be eating chicken. " But favorably chicken that has seen the sun and real soil to pick in, not only on the way to the slaughterhouse. And there is nothing inheritently wrong with fishing, it is just that the way it is usually done, is quite horrific. But there is somewhat certified ethical fishing. Or local fishermen.
- meyum33 3y agoAt this point wouldn’t it be easier to artificially select for traits that make the chicken mind more tolerant of poor conditions? Like if we can have consciousless chicken then it wouldn’t matter the condition they grow under?
- abound 3y agoHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has you covered here, with sentient cows engineered to be ecstatic about the thought of being killed for meat.
- Filligree 3y agoThis seems problematic in a different way.
- mywacaday 3y agoLike this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken
- Applejinx 3y agoThat is one heck of a story. Salient to discussion about consciousness: to what extent does the ability to act like awareness, count as awareness for the purposes of outside observers?
- c22 3y agoYou would need a clearer working model of consciousnes to be able to know whether your efforts were succeeding. But this is the idea behind lab-grown meat, just don't grow the brain at all and you don't have to worry as much.
- lukan 3y agoIt sounds way easier, to continue to pretend, that animals don't have feelings. And in general not know too much of the meat factories. Which is why many people choose this approach. Also like the sibling comment said, not really possible with our tech and knowledge. Lab grown meat would be the way to go to achieve it.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y agoThe massive problem with fishing is that the fish are wild. They need to get replaced by nature. You can’t scale up the operation. Add to that pollution, warming seas, and you’re disturbing a system way too much. What’s the plan once the oceans are messed up permanently? At this moment, I think factory farmed chicken would have less impact on the environment.
- lukan 3y agoThe oceans are huge. When you are not overfishing and destroying the ground with bad trawling, where is the problem? (But yes, it is a problem, that both is done) The oceans warming is a separate problem. And I like fish as well as chicken as well as beef. But I don't have to eat it every day.
- poulpy123 3y agobecause people feel less close from fish and seashell than birds, and less close than birds than mammals.
- moffkalast 3y agoI think it's more to do with us being able to empathize more easily with other land animals because we're biologically similar. Fish can't scream in pain or show basically any emotion we'd recognize at all. They're so different it's like looking at a wiggling steak, so it's trivial to dismiss them as simple automatons.
- marginallen 3y ago[dead]
- hammock 3y ago>Most fish are caught Overfishing aside, I guess you would most often find people that believe hunting /fishing for your food is more ethical than farming it
- ArtDev 3y agoWhich is absurd when you realize that commercial fishing kills up to half or more than what it catches.
- adrian_b 3y agoHunting/fishing for food was really more ethical many millennia ago, when humans were fewer than wild terrestrial vertebrates. Nowadays, there are many more humans and domestic animals than wild terrestrial vertebrates, so hunting could not sustain any non-negligible fraction of the humans. The modern methods of fishing are much too wasteful, so neither fishing has any future.
- graemep 3y agoThere are other reasons than environmental for eating fish but not meat. I used to be pescatarian and my main reason for that was factory farming. Once reason I now eat meat is that it has become a lot easier to buy meat that has been well treated.
- ArtDev 3y agoBefore I was a programmer, I was a marine biologist and also worked as a fish farmer. By virtually all metrics, intensive land-based animal farming is much harder on the environment. Also, in terms of animal welfare, its super sketchy even with animals labeled organic. The misinformation around fish farming is absurd. I think people want to believe in the myth that commercial fishing is a couple guys in a wooden boat; when its actually a floating factory discarding up to half or more of what it kills. There are many aquatic things I won't eat but mostly it is of the "wild fish" variety (overfishing, pollution, mercury, bycatch). I worked a single season as a fisheries observer in Alaska. The destruction was maddening. I put wild fish in quotes because many times they are raised in a hatcheries then released into the wild. Which has ruined the gene pool of salmon in places that do this. After a few years raising chickens at my home farm, I became pescatarian. I drew an arbitrary line at intelligence where I wouldn't eat anything as smart or smarter than a chicken. Anyhow, avoiding farmed fish while eating land meat is really misinformed. I think the meat industry and commercial fishing industries have managed to completely misinform the American public (and a few well-meaning but misleading documentaries on the subject). America doesn't not farm very many aquatic things besides oysters, trout and catfish. Which are all very very green industries. I like to bring these ones up in conversations about this topic.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y agoAt the moment my line of thinking is “what’s easier to engineer around?” I’m not saying we should eat “land meat”. I’m saying specifically chicken. I believe they are the most cost effective of the meats. Of the farmed fish, did you single out trout and catfish because they are green, or has the industry in general improved?
- anthomtb 3y agoI refuse to eat Octopus based on its level of sentience. I regularly eat pig despite a higher level of sentience. And despite having had far more interactions with pigs compared to Octopus. Point being, we humans really are not rational with our food choices.
- LazyMans 3y agoIt takes some effort, but you can buy responsibly raised/caught seafood. https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/download-consumer-guides https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/download-consum...
- pvaldes 3y ago> Nueva Pescanova is already sizing up cages. Please don't make false accusations about a third part without a minimum understanding of the matter first. Nueva Pescanova has nothing to do with this case, and I doubt that they would be interested at all in breeding a deep sea (and, most probably, non edible) species.
- bertil 3y agoNothing to do with the controversy, just curious: Why would deep-sea octopuses not be edible?
- pvaldes 3y agoDeep sea cephalopods accumulate ammonia in their body as a buoyant device. This way, they don't need to spend so much energy swimming. Ammonia is fairly toxic, so they would taste either like pee, or like poison. I had touched some of this animals and the smell of rancid fat and urine last for days in your hands Also if you put this animals at the surface they will literally burst from inside and turn into a mushy mess. I had explained this yet a few times before, but for some reason this particular Muusoctopus nursery is a recurrent history on HN. Octopuses are benthic, so they could store a different amount of ammonia, but my bet would be that such partially disintegrated octopus product would look and taste awful. None of the other species of deep sea octopuses are fished commercially.
- adolph 3y agoThe ammonia content of Greenland Shark doesn't prevent them from being a treat: The traditional method begins with gutting and beheading a shark and placing it in a shallow hole dug in gravelly sand, with the cleaned cavity resting on a small mound of sand. The shark is then covered with sand and gravel, and stones are placed on top of the sand in order to press the fluids out of the body. The shark ferments in this fashion for six to twelve weeks, depending on the season. Following this curing period, the shark is cut into strips and hung to dry for several months. During this drying period, a brown crust will develop, which is removed prior to cutting the shark into small pieces and serving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl
- piombisallow 3y agoFrom an ecological perspective, farming is probably better than fishing wild species no?
- kjkjadksj 3y agoNah fishing wild is better assuming your catch rate is sustainable for the population. Farming means taking acres of natural area with a careful web of ecological interactions that took millions of years to develop as such, and replacing all of that with a temperamental monocrop sometimes as far as the eye can see. It would be like if we fished by first sterilizing the ocean and then growing up some goldfish.
- MattGaiser 3y agoThose who claim there is little left to discover on Earth clearly haven't bother to look. This is awesome.
- mykowebhn 3y agoThere'd be a lot more if it weren't for the shenanigans of a certain bipedal species.
- asah 3y agoDeploy a fleet of unmanned drone subs with cameras, then use AI to filter for possibly-new creatures? Seems like you'd find 1000s...
- BelleOfTheBall 3y agoIt's not exactly that simple, especially the part where AI would somehow differentiate extremely visually similar species from each other, while in near-complete darkness and on the move.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> especially the part where AI would somehow differentiate extremely visually similar species from each other We have an AI for this exact task now, Seek by iNaturalist. It keeps getting rave reviews. The only problem is that it's terrible at identifying things. I have a picture of an elephant seal that it is certain actually shows a clouded monitor lizard.
- justincormack 3y agoSeek is not “by” iNaturalist. It does use models generated from their data.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> Seek is not “by” iNaturalist. This is one of the stupidest comments I've ever seen. The app is provided by iNaturalist, and its name is, literally, "Seek by iNaturalist". Check it out: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app
- BelleOfTheBall 3y agoI've used Seek and, yes, if this is what the current capabilities are like, we are not ready to use AI for new species discovery.
- 3y ago
- begueradj 3y agoWe know more about the Moon than about the seas and oceans.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoThis might sounds snarky, but I'm serious when I say if we want to know more about the oceans, Hollywood is going to have to come up with a better ocean competitor to Star Trek than 'SeaQuest DSV'. For better or worse, public interest is driven by popular entertainment, and there's maybe one interesting under the water movie once a decade.
- DiscourseFan 3y agoWe see the stars every night, but rarely dip below the surface of the ocean.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoIt's also easier to get to the moon than it is to get to the deep ocean. And once you're there, the environment is more welcoming.
- CarRamrod 3y agoWe know more about the Sun than melanoma
- pompino 3y agoThat is an interesting opinion, what sort of knowledge are referring to ?
- twic 3y agoWell at least we know exactly how many species of octopus on the moon.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoI can’t understand why all these billionaires keep funding rockets instead of lidar equipped submarines Explore Earth before exploring outside Earth
- Xeyz0r 3y agoTotally agree. While space exploration is an exciting endeavor, it is essential to prioritize the exploration of Earth first. By understanding our own planet, we can develop the knowledge, technologies, and inspiration necessary for responsible and successful exploration beyond Earth.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoAll these lidar projects keep finding ancient ruins and structures in the Amazonian rainforests. Imagine what a planet wide lidar project would find, especially in coastal regions that are now underwater.
- michelb 3y agoMoney. Billions are not enough apparently.
- DarkNova6 3y agoBecause it is not about science.
- snet0 3y agoI think rockets have this unmatched spectacle, especially for those born in a certain time. Submarine exploration is really cool, but I don't imagine the launching of a new submarine explorer is going to match the momentous-ness of the launch of a new rocket. There's also just a kind of social narrative issue, where space is cool because sci-fi and aliens and astrophysics, while the deep oceans are scary because dark and unknown and shipwrecks. I guess it's like "if we explore space, we might find alien life; if we explore the oceans, we might find a really weird fish".
- 3y ago
- Xeyz0r 3y agoThe discovery of these new octopus species contributes to our understanding of the diversity and evolution of cephalopods. It also highlights the importance of ongoing research and exploration to uncover the hidden wonders of the marine environment.
- jounus 3y ago[flagged]
- Xeyz0r 3y agoI'll take that as a compliment
- FergusArgyll 3y agoCan you explain the navier stokes equation using a simple analogy? I will tip $20 for a good answer
- pompino 3y agoI'm pretty sure someone who has accumulated deep knowledge and expertise on NSE gets paid a lot more for their time. Unless you're talking about ChatGPT computational time?
- hombre_fatal 3y agoIt really did read like a trivial claim made by a backlink blog spammer.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- verisimi 3y ago> News that the world's first commercial octopus farm is closer to becoming reality has been met with dismay by scientists and conservationists. They argue such intelligent "sentient" creatures - considered able to feel pain and emotions - should never be commercially reared for food. I really don't get the dismay. Sheep, cows, fish even, feel pain and probably feel emotions. So why stop now? It's such an arbitrary line.
- yreg 3y agoAny line is arbitrary by definition. However, the current consensus is that consciousness/sentience is a gradient. The higher the sentience, the higher the ability to experience (anything, including pain and emotions). We believe humans to be more sentient than octopi, which are more sentient than cows, which are more sentient than fish, which are more sentient than yeast. We might be wrong of course. It's probably impossible to even ever find out. But no one cares about hurting yeast.
- tbitrust 3y agoImagine human beings farmed for food by an alien civilisation that has "debates" on whether it's ethical or not to eat homo-sapiens. They have centuries and centuries to settle the question while rearing and killing billions of human beings each year. N.B. The price of baby meat is higher because it's more tender or whatever.
- c22 3y agoImagine an ecosystem where living things don't eat eachother and live in full cooperation and harmony. No chance to ingest the biological building blocks created by other organisms. No evolutionary pressure to develop defenses or hunting strategies, etc... Now ask yourself if the level of sentience that develops in this environment is satisfactory. Is there even a chance of developing thinking matter that can have a debate about ethics?
- datameta 3y agoI recently read a sci-fi short story that describes an alien forest that has no predation, only vicious instant scavenging the moment something dies. The colonists wear light-suits to prevent brutal death because only the dead indigenous lifeforms create no light.
- didgetmaster 3y agoScientists estimate that there are nearly 9 million species currently living on Earth and far less than a third of them have been identified. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/biodiversity/ https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/biodiversi...
- lupusreal 3y agoHow many of these unidentified species are animals scientists gave seen before, but previously considered to be members of another very closely related species? It seems like that is how most new species discoveries work; not the discovery of an animal never before seen but rather the discovery that one previously documented species is actually two species.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoWhich calls into question the actual point. Perhaps species as a category is too fine-grained.
- iteratethis 3y agoA species' discovery is never about first "seen", it's first described. There's no way to know whom first saw it. Your assumption regarding splitting known species is wrong as it comes to numbers. It often happens for birds but this doesn't move the needle as there's only 10K birds. Almost every species on this planet is an arthropod and most are not described. It's trivially easy to "discover" new ones. Go to a bio-diverse area (say a jungle) and fill a wheelbarrow with soil. Filter the dirt and describe anything you find. It will take you forever but there will be dozens if not hundreds of "new" species. The main bottleneck is not finding them, it's describing them, which is very time consuming. Put some specialized lights up in the same area at night. One remote site I attended in Colombia discovered on average 20 new species of moth every single day. There's expected to be 150K moth species, which still may be an underestimation. And this doesn't even describe the truly tiny organisms living in soil and rivers and oceans. As it comes to species, the public has a bias for mammals and birds. Combined they're about 17-18K species only. Not even a drop in the ocean. You can split each of them into 10 separate species and this still doesn't do anything to inflate the total amount of species.
- fatkam 3y agooctopus are great... so far from humans in the evolution tree and yet so smart.
- teddyX 3y agoHuman ‘discovery’ is the kiss of death for other species