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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

It's so sad that these terribly intelligent creatures die so young. Imagine what they could learn if they lived a few decades.

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Fun fact from Wikipedia:

>Octopus reproductive organs mature due to the hormonal influence of the optic gland but result in the inactivation of their digestive glands, typically causing the octopus to die from starvation. Experimental removal of both optic glands after spawning was found to result in the cessation of broodiness, the resumption of feeding, increased growth, and greatly extended lifespans.

Pains of not being a mammal. Turns out if your children's lives don't depend on your filtered blood, protection and teaching skills, evolution doesn't optimize for you not starving after your reproductive organs mature. Fascinating.

I've always imagined if they lived a few decades they would have long ago invented a breathing apparatus that would allow them to survive on land and eliminated humans from competing with them at the top of the food chain.

Bad news for us, on the other hand, Mars would probably be colonized by now.

What would that look like? So like, some chimps see a monolith and then start using bones as blunt weapons - fast forward some millions of years and we’ve got machine guns. What is the octopus breathing apparatus version of that? Maybe that they carry shells with water in them to extend their time on the surface ever so slightly? They’d design rigid exoskeletons somehow, yeah? Out of shells, barnacles, something like that? Rigid exoskeletons with little shell-cups of water for short periods on the surface.

After that, they’re pretty much on track, no?

(Taking things too seriously)

I think the major obstacle facing octopi is that they're solitary. When an ape invents something, a dozen others in its troop learn it too, and maybe refine it a little, and teach it to their children who refine it some more. A tech-savvy modern human isn't much smarter than the earliest homo sapiens, but we have 200,000 years of R&D behind us. Octopi don't have those social bonds, and no one individual--however brilliant--can invent advanced tech alone, from first principles.

The other major obstacle is their reproductive cycle. Octopodes breed once, then die shortly afterwards. They don't live to pass knowledge on to their children, and there's no reproductive "reward" for individuals that are more successful in life -- so long as they survive to breed, that's it.

Yeah, that's part of the same thing, for sure. They don't share knowledge with other adults or with their own children, so nothing gets passed on.

They recently found an 'octopus city' .. wherein there seem to be social patterns emerging.

What's interesting to me is, what if Octopus suddenly evolve in the next 100 or so years, because of some input we humans gave them? That'd be neat.

Wouldn't they just dominate the seas? Being in the water would give them more real estate and would let them work with higher volumes, therefore growing/evolving faster. And since we are going there as result of 'out-teching' land people they would flood everything (by melting ice) and colonize land space.

I would say that they have their own mindset and culture distinct from ours. Who's to say that they would want to invent air breathing devices to explore the land, eliminate humans, or explore space if they were smarter or more organized?

There are two extant genera of cephalopods able to live for a few decades in fact. Ironically they are the 'dumbest' (but are elusive and keep still a lot of secrets, so maybe this point of view could change in the future).

I find it sad that we eat so many intelligent creatures, including octopus. Alas, B12 and certain other nutrients are only gotten from meat.

I find it reasonable to limit meat consumption to animals that were bred for that purpose, and I am satisfied with few types of meat and have no need for the more capricious varieties (eating things like horse is unnecessary. I'll stick with chicken).

This video is what triggered this thought process for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqAmR1lEN0I (EDIT: I'd linked the wrong video)

I will certainly never eat octopus.

Just a tangent, but it might make your life easier (and other being's lives, too): You get B12s not only from meat, fish, eggs and milk but also from fermented food like sauerkraut, kimchi, tempeh, kombucha, some seaweeds and fermented tea.

You're right about animal products like milk, eggs, etc, it slipped my mind because I've unfortunately been unable to eat those things for a long time (food intolerances).

I'm skeptical about the B12 in fermented foods - whether it's bioavailable and a usable form.

There's no reason to believe vegetarian B12 supplements don't provide the necessary health benefits.

>Alas, B12 and certain other nutrients are only gotten from meat.

There are alternative sources of B12 and every other nutrient we're aware of. Even if you doubt plant-derived/synthetic analogues, that still leaves dairy and eggs. There is very clearly no requirement for humans to consume meat.

>I find it reasonable to limit meat consumption to animals that were bred for that purpose[...]

Why is that? Is seems much more reasonable to me that, if you are going to eat animals, you would eat the ones that are not raised specifically for that purpose. Animals raised specifically for consumption have absurdly short lifespans (chickens for instance go from egg to slaughter in about 7 weeks) with most of them having little to no chance to lead anything resembling a normal, stimulating life. Is it not more reasonable to eat hunted animals who had the opportunity to experience real lives?

"Vitamin B12 is not made by plants or animals but by microbes that blanket the earth."

From: https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/vitamin-b12/

I eat food that is fortified with B12 and sometimes I take supplements. Blood work came back positive - not B12 deficient.

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