Octopus genome holds clues to uncanny intelligence | Hacker News Reader

Octopus genome holds clues to uncanny intelligence

nature.com

I've seen a few octopus while scuba diving in tropical waters. They are the most interesting species underwater. You can look at them for five minutes and it's absolutely fascinating. The way their skin changes texture and color is mesmerizing. It really feels like an alien life form because nothing else looks or behaves like that.

Indeed! I've had a few similar experiences out diving too, and you reminded me of the time I was out in shallow water with just a snorkel, and saw a little octopus darting around .. it seemed as interested in me as I was in it! I lost track of it and swam around a bit more, and eventually went back to the beach to get my tank on .. as I pulled the straps up, I thought there was something not quite right and reached around on my back to see what it was - it was the little octopus! It had hitched a ride on my back, which I didn't feel because of my wetsuit, and had managed to get up on the beach with me .. wow, that was great! Took it gently off my back, put it in the water, it scurried away .. but for the rest of the day as I explored the reef I couldn't help but feel it was still following me.. delightful creatures, and one of the beautiful things you should always try to see in person, in the ocean one day ..

And just think...that little guy will always remember the day he left his universe for the strange Dry Lands on the back of the giant he rode. Quite a story to tell his friends.

Yes it must have been quite a trip for him, it was truly a delightful experience for me .. I guess we have to repeat it a few million times before evolution does its thing and we all get to keep a pet octopus in our armpits or something. One can dream .. ;)

His friends are going to ink themselves when they hear it!

And the ladies will allow his tentacular "exploration" a bit more than usual. Unless he was a she, or one of the Kardashians.

i've had similar experiences with stingrays, some will get curious and come up from the bottom to say hello. i have a gopro video of this somewhere.

Cool .. would love to see it! Nothing quite like being checked out by an inquisitive animal when you're in their territory ..

https://youtu.be/tXoD4TTOHW0

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing that .. my kids loved it.

I am a huge fan of octopuses. I recall many a day spent in my youth on Australian beaches, looking through crack and crevice for these delightful - and sometimes dangerous - creatures. (Blue Ring Octopus: delightful, and deadly.)

I've seen them doing all sorts of things, and learned a few tricks for how to deal with them. One very important thing for an octopus lover to understand is that they are absolutely entranced by the bright and shiny - I have yet to meet an Australian octopus I couldn't entice out of its shelter with the flash of a gold coin .. just get the sun angle right, shine the coin in the hole, and out they come .. be prepared to leave the reef poor, because once that coin gets grabbed, its all over! Somewhere in the holes of Yanchep, there's a small pile of coins .. I'm quite sure. (At least $5.)

I've seen octopus fishing! That is to say I've seen them using tools! I once spent hours watching a small reef specimen sitting in its little hole, one long tentacle stretched out, the carcass of a crayfish held lazily at the end, swaying in the current gently, tempting those stupid whitefish to come just a little closer for .. one last little feed on the crayfish before .. WHAM .. out comes another tentacle like light, to drag the stupid whitefish in .. a few minutes later, back comes the crayfish shell, and on it goes. I spent almost a whole day watching this process, it was fascinating .. and I dare say the little octopus even knew I was there and put on an extra special show for me - it really felt like it. (Okay, I'm projecting, but .. wow. A fishing octopus, using a lure!)

I hope one day we get a chance to understand these awesome creatures better - and it certainly seems like we're closer now than ever to understanding just how intelligent they can be.

There's an octopus I visit regularly at the local aquarium, here in middle-Europe .. it looks so sad. I like to talk to it when I visit, and I've gotten a response a few times .. out it comes, swimming from its little spot, to saunter all over the glass of its tank, looking me right in the eye. That is a delight, as sad as it is to see. I know how it feels, so far from the ocean, so that's why I like to tell it nice things.

Definitely my favourite creature. Anyone got octopus tales to tell? I'd love to hear them. I'd also love to hear from anyone who has managed to keep one in captivity - much as I understand it to be a cruel exercise, the idea of having a pet octopus appeals to me greatly. I'd never do it though - to take such a delightful being from its ocean is beyond my means.

They're fascinatingly smart.

If they weren't aggressively solitary and if they lived for more than a couple of years they'd rule the oceans.

If they lived on land as well we'd have serious competition.

I was listening to a story on the local NPR station about Octopuses the other week. The guest was a biologist and she had studied them for the past few years.

One (of many) interesting comments she made was that Octopuses can live quite a few years long if they're "fixed" (even right after reproducing). It does something to normalize their physiology so whatever makes them want to die after reproduction is nullified.

I was a great interview though if you're interesting in animal intelligence.

http://radio.wosu.org/post/consciousness-and-intelligence-oc...

Thanks for that! I'll be listening to it today ..

I've never kept one, but from what I hear, they're extremely good at getting out of their cages... especially into nearby tanks full of fish.

My one and only experience with them happened in Belize. I had been snorkelling and turning over rocks when all of the sudden, before I even noticed it, there was a cloud of black ink and a little octopus darted away. Now as an adult I would just let the poor terrified creature escape, but at that age I was absolutely hellbent on finding it. The process of turning over random rocks and being inked was repeated a few more times before I finally cornered it and managed to grab it. My cousins and I dug a hole in the sand with water in the bottom, and observed the octopus changing colors. I remember it shifting through shades of translucent blue and red.

My cousin caught a trunk fish with his bare hands that same day too. Another weird creature, though surely not nearly as intelligent as an octopus.

Thanks for sharing your story - they are indeed special creatures. I look forward to introducing my kids to them in the wild one day ..

Link to actual paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v524/n7564/full/nature1...

Funny and informative video about the octopus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st8-EY71K84

recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10050582

I may be pescatarian but still I don't eat octopus. They are really smart!

I thought I was the only one :)

What's almost as amazing as the octopus in that video are the fish swimming backwards at 1:58. That must be some kind of defensive behavior they've evolved to confuse the octopus.

It looks like the video is just reversed.

That octopus looked pretty confused to me!

If humans didn't evolve to be the dominant species on earth, perhaps the octopus would have taken things over given a million more years of evolution.

There's nothing but anthropocentrism to imply we're it. Another technological species may emerge at any time, especially if we nuke ourselves or are overtaken by antibiotic-immune pandemic/s. It would likely happen gradually as a species diverges from one of the social apex predators. There would probably be several overlapping species competing and interbreeding.

I'm pretty sure that currently being the only species that has any hope of stopping an Earth-killing asteroid makes us the dominant species.

As long as humans are around I think it's unlikely that another species will develop technology unless we engineer it to do so.

Absolutely wrong. No species engineered us, that was natural selection. If it can happen once, it can happen again.

Can it happen under our noses? Will humans interfere and destroy the process, or will we help it happen.

I share your scepticism about anthropocentrism.

> [...] or are overtaken by antibiotic-immune pandemic/s [...]

Unlikely. Even without any antibiotics, pandemics might kill in the order of 50% of the population (see black death in Europe for example), but as long as a few thousand immune people survive they can rebuild.

That makes a big assumption that all pandemics are not 100%. A total extinction event could be something else: long-lived radiation beam or large impact. Furthermore, some event need not kill all humans but only enough to allow another species room to master its environment and begin to develop technologies.

I always get hungry when I see squid or octopus, they sure are intelligent, and tasty too

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