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Larger Pacific striped octopus
- diurnalist 25d agoDespite the efforts of many of centuries, we are still so ignorant of the vast variety of life that surrounds and supports us on this planet. We should have more humility about this, but we (collectively, as a species) do not. Some will say that AI can solve this, as is the fashion. But so far the things people are interested in doing with the new potential for synthesizing and translating animal sounds does not inspire any confidence[0]. [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-04/ai-s-next-ethical-dilemma-should-humans-talk-to-animals https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-04/ai-s-next...
- timster6442 25d agoNot to be combative, coming from genuine interest, I'd like to ask you why we should care? I study biology, and can think of a plethora of topics that we can study about human physiology that we don't understand and if we did would more directly lead to treatment of human diseases. That is not to say we need invest all resources towards this frontier but in the optimal scenario we must weight resource allocation to the potential usefulness of the discovery.
- diurnalist 25d agoI don't think we have to understand the natural world to care about it. But I will go further haha: I think we _already_ prioritize human health and advancement above preserving anything about the natural world (unless we have identified that the preservation is advantageous for our own purposes.) And I reject this anthropocentric view, which is I suppose where we might differ :)
- jaggederest 25d agoGeneral knowledge is unpredictable. If you want to treat human diseases, explore the natural world, because a huge portion of the pharmacopea we have is in some way directly derived from general knowledge - the taxane family is derived from yew, sometimes when you explore easter island you find rapamycin, penicillin is a very old story of accidental primary research, it goes on and on. And many of the synthetics we have now are adaptations of an older drug with negative side effects to manage the side effects.
- Zizizizz 25d agoHypothetically, in 100,000 years, if human activity has led to the death of everything not human on this planet and we ourselves are on the brink (effectively leading Earth to go back to square one) would you rather that, or humans end in 50,000 years but through conservation and study made way for other life on this planet that will eventually conquer space and some of the mysteries of the universe. Obviously the timelines are insane but just as a thought experiment, I would suspect we would get different answers depending on who you ask, and thus the study, understanding and conservation of other life that shows a form of intelligence becomes much more important to some, whilst human preservation at the expense of all else is more important to others. (I also recognise you aren't saying that by the way, but it's what came to mind when I read your comment. I personally think we have more than enough resources to do both. I'd also imagine we will learn more about ourselves and what's possible in medicine by studying other species.)
- d34dman 25d ago"usefulness" being the keyword here. I agree that the investment of resources goes towards the "usefulness" as in, there is a profit to be made here "usefulness" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- teiferer 25d agoFrom a purely utilitariatic POV, understanding your environment helps avoiding mistakes that mess it up which then indirectly impacts you too since you depend on your environment. So, more understanding improves policy making. Second, what people know is often valued more. If you can tell people about the environment then you can create a fascination and make them value their surroundings more, maybe causing them to think twice before dumping trash mindlessly in the forest or voting for the next guy who wants to expand fracking operations. And in order to tell them, you first need to understand it. Third, it can give you material for creating useful tools or medicine which then improves lives, like vaccines or airplanes (which we wouldn't have without curiosity about birds). Apart from that, it's empathy too. Animals can suffer and causing them suffering is usually against empathy people feel. More understanding helps with that. (It's not too long ago that the prevailing view of "that's just a fish, they don't feel anything, so I can eat them even though I'm vegetarian" was challenged and slowy overturned.) And finally, beauty. Nature is just beautiful. Compared to a dead rock like mars, it's absolutely amazing what we have around us. I hope these five reasons give you some perspective as a biology student. I wonder, what made you choose that field of study?
- rightnutwingjob 25d agoAnimals feel pain. Let’s raise them humanely, kill them swiftly, and use they wholly letting nothing go to waste. This is an entirely reasonable ethic.
- timster6442 24d agoThanks for the response, I think these are some great points. I originally studied electrical computer engineering as that was the most interesting to me but by happenstance went on to work in a neurobiology lab and felt that I had the ability to contribute a different perspective/skill-set to the lab/field. Through research and witnessing human diseases, I now feel more strongly about contributing to understanding of human disease mechanisms.
- monster_truck 25d agoWhat happens when they find even bigger ones?
- Smoosh 25d agoThey name the new one The Largest Pacific Striped Octopus
- Athas 25d agoThey ask the guy who also names telescopes for the next name on the list.
- tempfile 25d agoUnfathomably Huge Pacific Striped Octopus
- poly2it 25d agoLPSO Astra.
- layer8 25d agoELPSO
- gregoriol 25d agoPro Max is still available
- monster_truck 24d agolmao
- wantoncl 25d agoPh'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
- rightnutwingjob 25d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_tit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_tit
- drakonka 25d agoSomething about seeing "gregarious nature" used to describe a non-human animal feels so... whimsical? I like it. Likewise with "intimate embrace" and other descriptions that follow.
- durakot 25d ago[flagged]
- NewJazz 25d agoOne critical feature of these octopuses is that they don't just die after mating (most species of octopus do)... Which opens up possibilities, like teaching their young skills they have acquired.
- PowerElectronix 25d agoLife expectancy is 2 years. They can mate more than once, but not many times more.
- MPSimmons 25d agoA lifespan of 2 years for intelligent creatures is heartbreaking
- butlike 25d agoOnly if their critical flicker frequency isn't in line with those 2 years.
- MPSimmons 24d agooh wow, I'd never heard of this. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold - now I think I understand why I can always tell GM vehicles with LED taillights at night. I can spot them a mile away, literally, because their taillights blink slower than others and I can see it, and it drives me crazy. Thanks for opening me up to this!
- m_kos 21d agoThere is also an auditory gap detection threshold, but no wiki page, sadly.
- PowerElectronix 24d agoThey are extremely intelligent for a mollusk(like, these folks are family with slugs and clamshells), but they are not that intelligent if you compare them to a pig or a dog. Their main brain is after all very small(although huuuge for a mollusk), most of it is dedicated to the processing of vision, with two big lumps next to the eyes, and there's a small lump in between these two for the brain proper.
- TulliusCicero 25d ago> The species was first documented in the 1970s and, being fairly new to scientific observation, has yet to be scientifically described. Because of this, LPSO has no official scientific name. Is that a joke? It takes over 50 years to come up with a scientific name for a species?
- Someone 25d agohttps://www.newscientist.com/article/2227516-octopuses-were-thought-to-be-solitary-until-a-social-species-turned-up/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2227516-octopuses-were-...: “In the late 1960s, Aradio Rodaniche was diving off the coast of Nicaragua when he made the discovery that has tantalised cephalopod biologists ever since. […] The discovery of an apparently social species was so implausible that few believed it and Rodaniche’s story passed into legend. He published a short account of the species in 1991, but hardly anyone had seen the animal and no one could confirm the report” That takes account of (at least) a few decades. I also think the issue isn’t coming up with a name but scientifically describing it. That (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_description) can take time. Finally, the group of people interested in having a species description may not be very large; and the group willing and able to create one even smaller. Nowadays the money in biology is in biochemistry.
- gucci-on-fleek 25d ago> Finally, the group of people interested in having a species description may not be very large; and the group willing and able to create one even smaller. Perhaps, but the caption on the picture in the article [0] says that it was taken at "an aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences", which sounds like the kind of place where octopus scientists hang out. And the article cited in Wikipedia [1] has quite a few authors, which makes me think that there's something more complicated going on here. [0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Larger_Pacific_Striped_Octopus.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Larger_Pacific_Strip... [1]: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134152 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134152
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- teiferer 25d agoIrony: Nowhere on that page does it say how large that octopus actually is. An inch? 2 meters? Unclear. To save you the google search, it's about "tennis ball size" according to https://30a.com/larger-pacific-striped-octopus/ https://30a.com/larger-pacific-striped-octopus/ . Somebody should add that to the wiki.
- musha68k 25d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing
- bondarchuk 25d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Being_the_Right_Size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Being_the_Right_Size "The most obvious differences between different animals are differences of size, but for some reason the zoologists have paid singularly little attention to them. In a large textbook of zoology before me I find no indication that the eagle is larger than the sparrow, or the hippopotamus bigger than the hare, though some grudging admissions are made in the case of the mouse and the whale."
- dunefox 25d agoSomebody? Why not you?
- bluebarbet 25d agoIndeed. Even easier: complain on the article's Talk page. Somebody else may then do the work for free.
- gwbas1c 25d agoIt's Wikipedia, I'm sure you can add it to the wiki in about as much time as it took you to write that post.
- morningsam 25d agoNot really, because you need a reputable source. The popular science article they linked is good enough for HN but WP would remove it.
- rolfus 25d agoI've been fascinated by Cephalopods since reading (the excellent) book "Other Minds" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. They are probably the closest we'll get to an alien intelligence. Their nervous systems evolved along a completely different evolutionary path from us vertebrates. It pains me that they are so short lived, though. I wonder what potential could be unlocked by their intelligence if they lived for 40 years or longer.
- PowerElectronix 25d agoYou just need to convice the ethics review board on some research lab to allow for editing the genes of a few octopus to make them longer lived, give them education, etc...
- lproven 25d agoQ: What do you get when you cross an octopus with a cow? A: An immediate cessation of funding and a stern letter from the Ethics Committee.
- __patchbit__ 25d agoThe nautilus is a genetic precursor to the octopus on the cephalopod branched tree of life and takes 20 years to mature.
- samsari 25d agoYou should read Time by Stephen Baxter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(novel). Part of it deals with this precise topic.
- listingbott 25d agoDo we know why this species evolved to be social when most octopuses are solitary?
- zhengyi13 25d agoGame theory? A long while back, I read (and just now refound) an article about a biologist's take on cooperation and competition. David Sloan Wilson is quoted as saying "Selfishness beats altruism within groups, [but] altruistic groups beat selfish groups, and everything else is commentary." https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/06/david-sloan-wilson-make-world-better-place https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/06/david-sloan-... Perhaps with sufficient intelligence and time, altruism/cooperation is discovered to be a better fit for any given environment, and that's passed on.
- pvaldes 24d agoExtra warm waters maybe. A lot of animals seem to be acting strange in the last years.
- amelius 25d agoI once read that zebras have stripes to keep mosquitos away.
- pvaldes 24d agoCould be as there are bloodsuckers also in the sea, but my bet would be Batesian mimicry. Many dangerous animals have stripes. Some similar species of octopuses are known to master moves an patterns mimicking sea snakes and lionfishes.
- Rygian 25d agoQuite confusing how the referenced paper [1] juxtaposes Guatemala, Panama, and the (British) Columbia region of Canada. Unless they actually meant Colombia. But peer review would certainly catch that. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4534201/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4534201/
- adolph 25d agoThe paper doesn't seem to mention Canada anywhere. Columbia has coastlines on the Pacific and Caribbean. I can see how the adjective stack could lead a person astray tho. In the 1970’s this species was common in the Bay of Panama, Panama, and commercial shrimp trawlers found individuals on the northern Pacific coast of Columbia.
- tiffanyh 25d agoThe more I learn about octopus, the more they seem like alien species. They have something like 8 different brains, can regenerate limbs, incredibly smart, can change colors & texture to match surrounds, and more.