The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02525-2
Sampaio et al., Multidimensional social influence drives leadership and composition-dependent success in octopus–fish hunting groups
I was curious about the the 3D reconstruction of the scenes.
> We manually tracked individuals in the videos using the software Computer Vision Annotation Tool. We annotated three frames per second, which yielded a time resolution of 0.33 s for animal movement.
> We then used another software developed to incorporate the previously tracked animals in each camera in the ‘colmap’ habitat models and camera paths, ‘multiviewtracks’ or ‘mvt’ [29]
> [29] Francisco, F. A., Nührenberg, P. & Jordan, A. High-resolution, non-invasive animal tracking and reconstruction of local environment in aquatic ecosystems
Seems it was specifically developed to track fish. Cool project.
Links to https://github.com/matterport/Mask_RCNN and https://github.com/pnuehrenberg/multiviewtracks.
It's too bad there aren't more software projects (and jobs) like this.
Octopuses don’t have money, so the people with money aren’t interested in putting more resources into understanding octopuses.
But surely if they can punch fish they can click ads?
Awaiting the ad industry giants to see this new source of end users.
New meaning to HN hug of death too
I love imagining how the fish are almost an extension of the way the octopuses think. Octopuses seem to have quite a bit of independent cognition in each of their arms, which are wrangled by the central brain. Now they're wrangling independent fish brains instead of octopus arm brains. Incredible
You might enjoy 'Children of Ruin' by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which explores this idea in depth with a civilization of genetically modified, super-intelligent octopuses. (Though I'd start with the first book in the series, 'Children of Time')
A solid series, with descriptions of thought process feeling truly alien. I'm currently enjoying "The Mountain in the Sea" by Ray Nayler for more octopus based speculative fiction
Also featuring geneticaly modified super-intelligent octopuses, is "Manifold: Time" by Stephen Baxter.
>Octopuses seem to have quite a bit of independent cognition in each of their arms, which are wrangled by the central brain.
Yes, that's inherent in the design. All grey matter (optimized for local intercommunication), no white matter (optimized for sending signals between regions).
Each arm has its own ganglion ("CPU") and the central unit struggles to keep up with these and keep them coordinated.
living brains are not "CPUs"
it's a metaphor, you sperg.
why not?
I used to love eating octopus, but since I've learned so much about their intelligence, I have not been able to bring myself to do so, anymore.
I have the luxury of choice. There are many, in this world, that do not.
Consider the intelligence of pigs as well. Even if cows, sheep, deer, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, et al. all sit below the "I don't want to eat you" cutoff point, pigs should probably be above it.
Not doing that is why future generations will loathe me and my generation.
If you're referring to not choosing to eat meat, I sort of doubt future generations will 'loathe' you - just as I don't 'loathe' members of previous generations who did things we've since learned better about.
Yeah, generally when you see historical figures talked about like that it's people who were standout bad and criticized even in their own times, like Christopher Columbus.
I’ve been able to give up eating cephalopods, but pigs are too delicious to give up.
I try to eat meat to minimize the formula of:
cruelty_cow = IntModifier * Animal_Intelligence /(AmountOfProvidedMeat/Deaths) * FrequencyOfEatingThisAnimal
Solve for:
Min (cruelty_cow + cruelty_pig + cruelty_octopus + ...)
Where AmountOfProvidedMeat > NeededMeatForHealthyDiet
And Cost * AmountOfProvidedMeat < Food_Budget
I've generally found that maximizing on Fish, Chicken, and Cow (in that order) seems to be the best bet. I tend not to touch veal, lamb, or octopus.
[delayed]
One thing to consider about veal is that it's an unavoidable byproduct of the dairy industry. Veal calves do not need to be mistreated to become veal, but the plain fact is that they are also not going to be kept alive either. A male cattle that is not a breeding bull has no economic value until its corpse is processed, barring entertainment uses like rodeo.
If you refuse to eat even humane veal (free to roam and milk-fed), then IMO you should refuse dairy entirely.
It might also be worth considering that the entire concept of humane dairy is questionable. It depends on separating mothers from calves, and either eating the latter or weaning them at far too young an age, or both. Cows are dumb, but they're not that dumb, and more importantly they are prey mammals with strong "familial" instincts. The process is fundamentally at least somewhat cruel.
A single walrus eats 4500 clams a day so let's hope they are low on pain awareness.
I doubt there are many people in the world whose diets rely on eating octopuses. You'd need either an environment that had octopuses in abundance despite having little of everything else, or a selective method of fishing that primarily caught octopuses.
> I doubt there are many people in the world whose diets rely on eating octopuses
Probably right (about the relying part), but eating octopuses is fairly common around the Mediterranean, at least the West side of it. Most restaurants have at least one item on the menu involving octopuses in some form or shape./
Octopuses are usually specifically fished [Cephalopods. Ecology and Fisheries, Peter Boyle, Paul Rodhouse. Chapter 16].
I know enough people who have made this exact same choice (myself included) for this to have its own name. Octoparian?
just because something is intelligent is no reason not to eat it imho
Eating a carcass isn't a problem, throwing it into boiling water while it's still alive or clubbing it to death is the objectionable thing.
This is an honest question, I'm not making a joke.
Why shouldn't we eat _you_ then?
Cannibalism is rare even among animals. That's probably why people don't eat other people. Otherwise, saying we can't eat animals because they are smart is dangerous. Some humans are not smart...
The main reason for humans not eating one another is in-species nepotism, I believe. It's not very principled, but probably closest to the truth.
There is also don't mess with the effectively most powerful species on the planet whose members have collectively decided that (for somewhat principled reasons) none of them should be eaten.
Disease is actually the main reason.
Any parasite, bacteria, virus, and especially prions spread much much more easily the closer the food is to your own biology.
Cannibalistic tribes have had issues with this in even the recent past.
Things will eat me, if I let them.
while i do keep in shape and i'd certainly make for a juicy steak or filet, i doubt this culinary experience is worth ten years to life in prison.
Ok, one step up then, why should it be illegal?
It is not. It's illegal to kill the OP though.
i find your questions a little funny as i had this sort of conversation already dozens of times and i know where this is coming from and where it's going. i mean i've been a vegetarian myself for more than a decade (am not anymore) and i took pleasure in leading people who initiated discussions around it ad absurdum.
in germany there was a case of cannibalism many years ago where a guy known by the name Armin Meiwes slaughtered and ate another guy called Bernd-Jürgen Armando Brandes. never got the panic around it given that the whole deal was consensual. other than that you know yourself that society comes up with rules to ensure its stability and survival. eating each other wouldn't fly well from that perspective.
You could restate the golden rule as "treat others sufficiently like myself the way I'd like to be treated", not so long ago this wasn't applied to other humans who didn't look the same, but now it just seems reasonable to expand who the golden rule applies to beyond just species into... beings within a certain threshold of human intelligence. It is somewhat of a fundamental of morality, beings which are sufficiently intelligence deserve the same rights as I want for myself.
If you remove intelligence (or something quite similar) as the criteria, what do you have instead?
prion disease shudders
You should try Polvo à Lagareiro or Pulpo a la Gallega, life is too short to not eat good food.
They already said they used to love eating octopus. You reply they should try eating octopus because it's tasty. They already tried it before and decided to give it up for reasons beyond how it tastes.
You should try eating young children, life is too short to not eat good food. That's what that sounds like to someone that opts not to eat something on the basis of its intelligence
If my parents and everyone around me for thousands of years ate young children and they all told me it was legal and tasty and good for you, I probably would. But since it's not it'd seem you're making a false equivalency from the top of your horse.
There are a lot of second order benefits to eating irish children, I think most would consider such a proposal modest.
well, except for the switch to cannibalism.
Same here
They only live for 3 years or so, just eat them when they're close to kicking the bucket.
This short lifetime combined with their intelligence does raise the question how far an octopus could get if it were able to reach our age. Would they continue learning and adapting, leading to a race of superintelligent molluscs or would they plateau in their first year and just coast along?
Typically octopuses produce offspring only near the end of their life, so eating them at any point is destructive for their reproduction and species health.
Eat them after they reproduced then, they only do that once in their life.
They typically die after reproducing. Mothers use their remaining energy to help their offspring survive, fathers sometimes do but not all - if you could somehow capture only post-mating male octopuses from species that don't sacrifice themselves for their offspring then sure, but that seems like an unrealistic expectation.
I suspect that would not be good eat'n. Female ocotopuses that have laid their eggs start to fall apart - you can see the skin peeling off of them. The females stay with the eggs until about when they're ready to hatch and then they just sort of go to pieces. The males, I suspect, suffer a similar fate after they've mated.
except the mother has to care for her eggs until they hatch. So I guess we'd be fine only eating the males...
Anyone who likes the sound of that should check out Adrian Tchaikovksy's Children of Time trilogy, particularly the second one.
A female octopus will try to eat the male octopus, so the intelligence is not at empathy or morality levels.
Empathy/morality isn't necessarily a requirement for intelligence, nor are the definitions of either easy to nail down.
It is hard to extend morality between species. The idea of parents sacrificing themselves for their children seems to resonate as highly moral, and is also a common pattern in biology.
But how it plays out, from humans where the male can provide more by continuing to live and "hunt/protect/teach"-- but at the risk that the "hunt/protect" might end his life, to spiders where (some species) the male gives his body to provide nutrition for the child,
well, who am I to say which is more moral?
Okay, but maybe they deserve it? Hard for me to tell since I’m not an octopus
The males die shortly after mating.. it's hypothesized that the males may even offer their body as nutrition...as a way to maximize their offspring's success.
So this adds another layer of wtf.
Doesn't really help moralize human behavior though.
Naybe a way for sustainable farming?
Breed octopuses, take the dead males who succesfully bred, and offer their meat with zero harm to the animal.
The Oatmeal talks about the male Angler fish: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler
To be fair, it's not at the empathy or morality levels of humans that a lot of people consider "smart", either.
As for the female octopus trying to eat the male octopus, did I ever tell ya the one about my ex wife? Huh? Huh? crickets
Excellent point, but a truly intelligent octopus species would set up a parliament and make laws that the male octopus must provide 10 fish per week to the female after mating instead of cannibalism.
Or perhaps the octopus regard us as under-evolved for having done similar
I was reading a fairly forgettable SF series, where one of the alien species is this giant centipede, that switches between “cooperative,” mode, and “competitive” mode.
When “cooperative,” they are your best buddy.
When “competitive,” you are fresh meat.
And you can’t tell when they switch.
Oh man, wait till you hear what humans do to each other.
are you sure? maybe they feel really bad about it after
> Video shows octopuses punching their companion fish to keep them on task and contributing to the hunt.
What a wonderful combination of words.
I can already see the motivation posters in a performace-oriented companies: "Be the octopus in your team!"
The octopuses I spoke to strenuously deny the fish abuse accusations.
"It's true that our innovative management technique - Continuous Tactile Feedback - can look a little rough to the untrained eye, but our Food Collection Engineers are actually very well treated."
Yes but I've read the reports in the Annals of Oceanography and the sub-director General of Fishing Affairs said it is happening and the only reason they haven't been able to pursue it is that the dolphins keep vetoing any real measures at every yearly convention. It's a bit of a fishy subject.
And that's why it's important to vote! #BlueWhale2024
I can't wait for OctoPunch, the turn-based combat video game! You play as the octopus, of course, and build your party from a selection of fishy characters, each with their own personality and special hunting skills.
I feel like I've played that game before.
Octopuses are practically alien.
They can:
- shape shift into so many different forms and shapes.
- "invisibility", by instantanously changing colors & it's own skin texture, to match surrounds.
- can regrow entire body parts if cut off (like arms)
- have 9 brains (localized)
- and are ridiculous intelligent
And they might have dreams!
One of the coolest things I've encountered at an aquarium was a sleeping octopus wildly shifting its colors. It seems truly alien to behold -- like it shouldn't be possible.
My googling after the fact says that who knows why they actually do it or what's going on, but, I really like the thought of them having little octopus dreams.
And yet like us they have two eyes. I wonder if we meet aliens from another star-orbiting planet if their light-sensors will look anything like ours.
Well, I'm not sure there'd be much benefit to spending energy on a 3rd eye. You can already achieve stereoscopic vision with just two eyes, why waste the energy on a third? It probably doesn't increase fitness enough to be worth the energy spend.
Seems like they're reading a lot into why the Octopus is punching those fish that are just hanging around them.
I agree, and one thing that makes me skeptical is that for it to be effective, the fish being punched would presumably have to understand that the octopus wants it to act in a certain way - i.e., the hypothesis seems to imply that the fish has a theory of mind with respect to the octopus. Similarly, it seems to imply that the octopus has a theory of mind about the fish - it believes that the fish will understand why the octopus is punching it.
I'm not saying that this is impossible, but it is a very big claim. Furthermore, it is not clear from the video that the punching has the outcome implied by this hypothesis. It seems at least as plausible, at least from the video alone, that the octopus is just keeping the fish away from stealing an anticipated meal.
Theory of mind is not necessary for the fish. I think conditioning should be enough, and conditioning works on pigeons.
Fair point.
On looking at it again, I think the reporter and/or editor have introduced unnecessarily teleological language. The researchers themselves describe the octopus behavior as though it is a matter of herding the fish - presumably, I suppose, to where it feels there are more prey to be found.
Could it not be like dogs herding sheep?
They're just flexin' for the cameras.
aside: me after reading the headline: Shouldn't that be Octopii?
But no! "The plural form octopii is doubly incorrect. Firstly, octopus derives from Greek, not Latin; its etymologically-consistent plural form is octopodes. Secondly, even if octopus were a second-declension Latin noun, the plural form would be octopi; in the correct plurals radii and gladii, with which octopii is analogous, the first ‘i’s are part of the words’ stems (radi- and gladi-), and not their case endings — for octopii to be the plural, *octopius would need to be the singular."
Thanks wikipedia.
TIL!
While I'm all for a history lesson (and the double-I octopii is indeed simply incorrect) I take issue with anyone insisting that "octopi" is wrong:
1. Language is neither static nor a series of rules to be blindly followed. The way a word was pluralized 1400 years ago has limited relevance today.
2. As noted just about everywhere, "octopodes" looks insane in any modern English sentence because we don't pluralize any other word that way. It also moves the emphasis to the second syllable. Thus it manages to make everybody's life harder for no benefit, a favorite pastime of the sort of people who would suggest this pluralization.
3. "Octopuses" feels stilted, and while it is correct, I thoroughly empathize with anyone uninterested in using a four-syllable word with three consecutive unstressed syllables in a sentence. Therefore it makes sense to create a shorter pluralization, and we can do this by analogy to other English words!
3a. We are not speaking Latin. If "-us" to "-i" is a valid pluralization of other English words, then it makes sense for it to be a valid pluralization of this word. While this pattern can be used irresponsibly ("bus" -> "bi"), using it for the three-syllable "octopus" is non-destructive. It preserves the structure (and the meter!) and thus makes a lot of sense.
4. To come back to "double-I octopii is simply incorrect": It's wrong because it's trying to be pedantic but uses the rules wrong (as noted in the wikipedia reference above). If, in 700 years, I were still alive, English were still spoken, and some band of idiots had managed to make "octopii" the most common pluralization, then I would begrudgingly accept it per point 1 above, but until then, no.
This is a strange argument to make against "octopuses". Break from our history; use the English standard; we are not speaking Latin ... therefore it should be octopi!? What? How about this: it's OK to use the traditional form if it's still commonly understood, but otherwise let's try to use a "standard English" form. Those are your choices: traditional for the word, or standard. Since "octopodes" is awkward and not really ever used, we say "octopuses". Why would you convert to a false-traditional version?
The best plural is simply keeping the word the same as the singular. I.e. "octopus". There are many animals using this form, e.g. fish, deer, elk, salmon, buffalo.
E.g. Look at all those octopus.
All the divers I know say it this way, easy to say, understand, doesn't make you sound like an asshole.
That's hardly 'the best'. Recognizable plural is a useful language feature.
This is what I would say.
It does beg the question though, how’d we come up with the list of animals to pluralize like that? Why “five birds” but not “five deers?”
It raises the question - begging the question is something else.
As for the question, it probably has to do with the gender of the noun. I bet 'deer' derives from a neuter-gendered word in Anglo-Saxon, while 'bird' does not.
Noun gender is the system used by many languages to categorize words that have different declension rules. It's atrophied in English, but is implicitly still present in the various "inconsistencies" that pop up.
I think it was done just to make it harder for those languages that do not have a concept of plural. Of course I'm kidding, but it has to be super frustrating trying to learn it as ESL.
Note that those are animal we generally hunt/eat. I'd bet this is tied to the language of the ruling/hunting classes of England, back when they spoke French more than English.
There are also some middle-ground words like "Shark". One goes fishing for "shark" like they would "fish" but it is more common to say "several sharks" using a plural as opposed to "several fish" using the singular. But "fishes" is still a word, which likely goes back to ruling classes who ate fish but generally did not hunt them as they would have deer.
"Fishes" is a plural of a plural. You wouldn't likely say "two fishes", but you might say "all the fishes in the sea", referring to many groups of fish (much as you might refer to the "peoples of the world" referring to many cultures). Aside from that, I bet you're onto something.
> 3a. We are not speaking Latin.
This is why I would prefer say axises, basises, indexes, and matrixes. I mean as plurals of their respective singulars, not as plurals of octopus.
> As noted just about everywhere, "octopodes" looks insane in any modern English sentence because we don't pluralize any other word that way.
I'm guessing "platypodes" doesn't count.
> 2... It also moves the emphasis to the second syllable.
Octopods - 8 times better than regular pods.
I would prefer "octopoden"
There's "antipodes" though.
Which implies that while the whole of ‘Australia and New Zealand’ can be referred to as ‘the antipodes’, Australia or New Zealand alone should be called ‘an antipus’.
"Antipous" has been used as a singular form of the word in some 19th-century works [0].
But octopi is also trying to be pedantically latin, octopodes though it could be pedantic is at least correct, and entirely descriptive. In practice I wouldn't expect someone to say octopi to my face, but writing weird words online is another matter.
> Language is neither static nor a series of rules to be blindly followed.
It's also not open to arbitrary subjective opinion. There are rules, this is not 'Nam. :) Languages evolve, but you can't just claim something is correct because you think so or you'd love it to be so. It's incorrect in English language, today. Maybe in the future, when more people start using the plural "octopi", it will be correct.
Fun fact: Oxford dictionary changed the definition of "literally" to also mean "figuratively". https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/misuse-of-literally
> Maybe in the future, when more people start using the plural "octopi", it will be correct.
The future is now. "Octopi" is considered the correct plural by a significant plurality of US adults, and a plurality of all age groups.
> It's also not open to arbitrary subjective opinion. There are rules
> Conversations follow rules of etiquette because conversations are social interactions, and therefore depend on social convention. Specific rules for conversation arise from the cooperative principle. Failure to adhere to these rules causes the conversation to deteriorate or eventually to end. Contributions to a conversation are responses to what has previously been said.
Both parties must agree on those rules. There is no mandate that one must follow another's rules, in the initial engagement. This is helpful to understand, in modern online discourse. If someone doesn't want to play by some basic rules, further engagement is likely futile and unproductive.
3. “Octopuses” sounds like what a child or English as Second Language speaker would say. Not sure what is stilted about being a novice to the language.
And a child or ESL speaker will often use constructions that sound stilted. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
"Stilted" is a bit of a judgy word, but it's not a value judgment of anyone else's intelligence. Some English speech sounds stilted. So it goes. That's why I don't prefer that pluralization in my own speech.
Lord knows I sound weird enough at times; I'm not here to throw stones from glass houses.
Incidentally, if, as per etymology, we consider the tentacles as feet, then the headline is wrong as the Octopodes are technically kicking the fishes.
Technically speaking, Octopuses don't have tentacles at all. Those are arms. The morphology of "Octopus" is actually a really great example case for demonstrating paraconsistent logic.
Hmm so the name must be corrected to be 8-armed in Greek. Oktobratso? Oktooplizo? Oktocheiro?
It goes deeper than that! According to wikipedia, the tentacles, or appendages, are indeed called "arms", but they evolved from what in other molluscs is called a "foot"!
Deeper still, one of those arms on males contains their sexual organs call the hectocotylus.
It's a house of cards, people!
yes, something is ... afoot.
This whole thing is built on lies!
But more generally, enough generations have passed that "octopus" is no longer a foreign word, it's now just part of the English lexicon, and so you're free to pluralize it in the standard English manner. "Octopuses" is correct by that reasoning.
Note that this is the same process that we eventually apply to every other loanword; next time you talk to a German, watch them cringe at "delicatessens" as the plural to "delicatessen".
Delicatessen itself is a French loanword (délicatesse) in German that's wrongly pluralized, it should be délicatesses not delicatessen.
So it's like doubly wrong.
I'm waiting for myself to one day muster the courage to order "dos expressis" at a restaurant in Italy. But I fear the repercussions.
Every time you order an "expresso", an Italian falls off a vespa.
But according to Wikipedia, the French délicatesse is an Italian loanword (delicatezza)...
It's loan words all the way down. We just don't have enough info about prehistory to complete the chain all the way back to local variants of caveman speak.
Cavemen would really hate our quintuple pluralization.
Touché!
I wonder why it is that "octopuses" just kind of sounds wrong?
Is it the repeated "s" at the end? But we have no problem saying "buses" or "rebuses".
Is it something to do with the plural of "fish" just being "fish"? But we have no problem making whales and dolphins plural with an -s.
Is it that "-puses" sounds slightly vulgar, like we're talking about multiple female genitalia?
I genuinely don't know. All I know is that "octopuses" just sounds wrong for some reason I can't put my finger on. And that "octopii" somehow "feels" much better, even if everything about it is logically wrong.
I'll still say "octopuses", but I know I always want to say "octopii" instead. (And spell it that way too, because "octopi" feels like it would rhyme with "canopy".)
Because it turns it into a four-syllable word with three consecutive unstressed syllables. It has bad meter and ruins the meter of almost any sentence constructed around it.
I hadn’t thought about that, but that explanation suits me as to why “octopuses” comes off… I don’t know, muddy?… while the 1983 James Bond film named for the vulgar pun rolls off the tongue, even though they use virtually the same phonemes: it’s that the latter emphasizes the third syllable, making it metrical again.
Thank you for a nifty insight, whose effects I’d noticed but whose mechanism had never occurred to me before today!
But "teleporters" or "marathoners" or tons of other words follow the same pattern of stress and sound fine. "Photocopiers" extends it to four unstressed syllables and sounds fine.
We treat words like they have a single stressed syllable and everything else is unstressed, and that's a useful abstraction sometimes, but that's not actually true. "Photocopiers" has primary stress on the first syllable but secondary on the third - PHO-to-CO-pi-ers. The same goes for "teleporters" and "marathoners".
But that also goes for "octopuses", so what gives? Seems like there's something else going on that my brain hasn't accounted for yet. It's probably that the plosives (stop consonants) are hugely unbalanced, with all of them coming in the first half of the word. Plosives, as the word implies, can add quite a bit of oomph to a word, even if they aren't reflected in the stress pattern. So "octopuses" seems to just peter out halfway through the word.
All of these words have informal 3rd syllable stress so work fine.
In that case I say we go with oc-TO-pusses (as in photograph vs. photography).
The pronunciation of the word is already on the boundaries between "awk-toe-poos", "awk-tuh-puhs", and "awk-tah-piss" depending on your region just in America.
So adding an additional "-es" that can be "-ehhs" or "-iz" gives at least six possible pronunciations.
> I wonder why it is that "octopuses" just kind of sounds wrong?
There are some Latin words ending -us in English, that keep their Latin plurals. For octopuses, both plurals are common and acceptable.
> I wonder why it is that "octopuses" just kind of sounds wrong?
Because of the english words with taboo meanings that coincidentally share the phonetic structure p-s-
The plural of fish is fish, but the plural of type of fish is fishes
> I'll still say "octopuses", but I know I always want to say "octopii" instead. (And spell it that way too, because "octopi" feels like it would rhyme with "canopy".)
There's a restaurant near here called Octapas.
I’m sure I read a sci-fi novel some years back where one of the main characters selectively breeds octopuses for intelligence before dropping them on a terraformed planet and there was a small bit about how he didn’t like octopuses either and so called them octopii.
I’m in his boat ;)
fun book, forgot the name.
But not as cool as "Whales on Stilts"
Could it be "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky?
(ht Claude)
it sounds more like the sequel "children of ruin" children of time primarily involves spiders.
> Could it be "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky?
Currently reading that one and there is no octopuses (only read half so far though) but a lot of spiders, ants and space-faring primates :)
Right. They are talking about the sequel, Children of Ruin.
Children of Time!
Children of Ruin.
I think what you cited missed the spelling aberration, since the -pus is a mistake, as it should have been -pous,-podes (singular,plural, nominative). the word is just a chimera.
also, the reality is
#define octopi octopodes
#define octopuses octopodes
and so on is what's more or less going on...whereas in English octopodes is a mouthful.
So the plural of virus, if it wouldn't have been viruses, would be viri, not virii? I think for octopus I'd have intuitively thought octopi, but for virus I'd have thought virii.
Virus actually is a latin word, but the plural is vira.
The plural of the Latin virus is vira (second declension etc etc). However viri means "men"
It is in fact "viri".
Yes, but always remember the plural of applepus is apple pie
I am using octopodes from now on!
Thought exactly the same!
The fish are able to gather food from the sand which the octopus moves. It happend to me too in the ocean where fish around my feet followed along the spots in the sand I touched. Therefore I was hunting together with fish!?
Yes, you just aren't as good at it as the octopus. Maybe if you practiced more?
Maybe if he punched the fish...
This reminds me of that Triassic Kraken hypothesis: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2013AM/webprogram/Handout/Paper23...
Disneyfication of octopuses. In that video you'll see, exactly anything that you want to see.
Would justify perfectly an: "in the video the octopus is seen trying to avoid being stolen its food by all the other fishes", that is the same behavior that you'll see if you break a crab or an urchin underwater. Many coastal fishes from rocky bottoms will come to steal any food scrap available. They don't cooperate with other fishes on any way.
Or maybe they are playing "rock, paper, tentacle", but to me the message more probable here is "this is my food, go away". If you look the video carefully the fishes seem trying to swim near the mouth of the octopus, where the probability of stealing a scrape is higher.
In the one short video you do see what you want to see. Meanwhile the researchers have hundreds of hours into this...
Probably shouldn't base your entire opinion of the study on a 17 second video or a fluff article.
Literally a sucker punch. It doesn't seem like true cooperation as they don't share in the catch. I also didn't see any measurements of how much they caught versus hunting alone.
In the NPR article on it, the researcher says it is most likely beneficial for the fish because the octopus can pull prey out of crevices that the fish can't usually reach, so there is more food than either would have alone.
Wait... so we have an octopus lording over fishy underlings? Like... a mob boss?
Audio found? https://youtu.be/sAoiwGjBmZs
Octopuses are much more intelligent than many give them credit for, but sadly I also love takoyaki (but then again, eating horse and whale is also culturally acceptable in Japan, one of the few countries that allow it; I've tried both as well, they're pretty good).
Horse meat is really good. Not sure why we still forbid it in the United States considering how we eat plenty of cows and horseback riding is more or less a hobby now.
I'm intrigued by your statement "horseback riding is more or less a hobby now". Are you implying that a ban on horse meat in the USA was originally intended to ensure an adequate supply of riding horses during the time when they were still widely used? All of the breeds that Wikipedia lists as bred for consumption are related to draught horses rather than riding horses, although for that matter the list doesn't include any American breeds at all.
I think it's a fair assumption that the taboo against eating horse-meat is related to using horses for transport. Historically, armies wouldn't eat their horses unless they were in an extremely dire situation, etc.
It’s taboo like eating dog. I don’t even know that’s it illegal
Not in all states (it is illegal in some), but there's no mechanism for USDA inspection of the horse, which means you can't sell it.
If you slaughtered and ate your own horse, it would probably be legal (and, at personal scale, probably would not be noticed even if it were not). But ask a lawyer.
horse meat is allowed in plenty of countries, in northeast italy you can find a lot of horse (and donkey) meat dishes. It is a delicacy though, and more expensive than "regular" meat.
We do see a lot of horses standing around on the acres lately but this is pets. They get medicin as all other pets and are not safe to eat for humans. The horse meat we eat is especially bred to be eaten.
Not sure about today but when I was a kid horse meat was in every grocery store in France.
Also pretty common in Sicily.
This article quotes a post-doc researcher:
"In terms of sentience, they are at a very close level or closer than we think toward us."
That's different than intelligence though, right? Or are they two sides of the same coin? Can you have a very intelligent but low sentience or stupid but high sentience animal?
I think you can even eat raw horse meat in France.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/inside-frances-fading-love-a...
I believe it's typically eaten raw in Japan too.
Most European countries do have horse meat.
There have been corruption scandals where a portion of beef being sold in the EU was partially horse meat (nearly always minced or packaged foods) would be difficult to do with a steak or at least much more difficult. So people may be inadvertently eating small amounts of horse without knowing.
I've had horse in France and Belgium, it's not bad, though not as good as reindeer which I had in Finland (of course).
Reindeer is also available in other places, a bit further south :)
Except Tesco lasagna.
nothing personal against you, but it's funny that as a species we see "interesting fact about an animal" and we're like "hey, I eat that!"
Somewhat related, "Octopuses are building small “cities” off the coast of Australia (2017)":
How much of a leap is it to say that octopuses have effectively domesticated fish, the way early humans might have turned docile wolves into hunting companions?
It depends on your definition of domestication. One could easily argue that ants have domesticated aphids so I don’t think the concept depends on the intelligence of the domesticator so much as the symbiotic relationship between species.
However the usual definition of domestication is specific to humans. The aforementioned aphid farming and the octopodes in TFA are technically in mutualistic relationships.
I don't think there is scholarly consensus on whether ant behavior can/should be considered domestication, but, per [0]:
> The best-studied insect-associated domestication is that of the attine ants...and the majority cultivate parasol mushrooms in the Leucocoprineae [58]. The ants plant sessile fungal cultivars, manage growth conditions by regulating temperature and moisture and fertilizing the fungal gardens, protect their crop from other herbivores, parasites, and disease, and harvest the cultivated fungi for food [4,58]. This coevolved domestication system has turned ants into obligate fungivores, as experimental removal of the fungal crop results in reduced reproduction and increased mortality among ants [58]. For the fungi, the ants increase their fitness relative to the free-living state by increasing their proportion across generations, providing for geographic dispersal and protecting the fungi against parasites and pathogens [58]. In the higher attine ants, the fungal cultivars are obligate mutualists and cannot grow in a free-living state [58]. It should be noted that fungi may not be the only ant domesticates; some ants tend to hemipteran insects like aphids and treehoppers in a system reminiscent of human animal husbandry [4,10].
I would call this domestication, full stop.
[0] https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169...
"Partners"? "Companions"? More like slave drivers.
I'm just slightly disturbed that someone thinks a rich social life is defined by punching your co-workers
I feel like my life would of been enriched a few times had that been a viable legal option to pursue :P
So are Octopuses really intelligent if they are in management?
and is punching an effective management tool?
For the octopus it is. Of course, they have many more arms to punch with so this might not translate well to management of humans.
Eight direct reports.
my boss seems to think so.
...and buried in this discussion of octopus management technique, we find the TRUE reason behind the wave of return to office requirements
Even if they are intelligent, they are spineless opportunistic predators who will squeeze their way into anything. Just like octopuses.
given how the octopus uses camoflauge, operating on their environment by using other fish as a distraction to their prey is logical. punching the still predator fish to keep them moving removes competition and keeps them moving as a part of the noise distraction.
longevity research for cephalopods seems like it could be really fruitful.
Very cool!
> “I think sociality, or at least attention to social information, is way more deep-rooted in the evolutionary tree than we might think,”
Maybe, or maybe the neural power required to move all of those limbs is good enough at processing that they developed their own sophisticated behavior.
Well, given the overwhelming emerging evidence of social attention and behavior in plants, and given that it makes evolutionary sense that "social attention" would provide a fitness advantage in any environment where there are other actors,
the only reason to doubt it would be an assumption that "attention to social information" can only happen in creatures with an complex central nervous systems. Which requires rather constrained definitions of "attention", "social", and "information"
ok, there is another reason to doubt it. inertia. We've been taught/told that a complex CNS is what makes intelligence, and it is hard to get away from that idea.
I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus's garden in the shade.
So? I can punch a fish too.
Call me when they’re hyping a product they know is trash - then we’ll know they’re at human intelligence.