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Giant Pacific Octopus

nationalgeographic.com

221 pointssimonebrunozzi190 comments

When I was a kid, my father used to raise octopi in our basement in NYC as a hobby. He had about six 55-gallon tanks arranged in two rows.

Every day, he'd come home from work, throw his hat and tie on the coatrack, and immediately head to the basement to play with them. If you didn't play with them, they'd die of boredom, he said.

Their favorite game was "jar." He's put empty Gerber and Ball jars in the tanks, with lids, and they'd swim in and out and in and out of the open jars. Eventually, they'd learn to open the closed jars. And then they'd spend hours swimming inside the jars, and closing the lids behind them, and trying different sized lids to see which ones worked on which jars. It was all very fulfilling to my father.

I don't know what happened to the octopi when they got mature. My guess is that he sold them to pet stores or restaurants or something.

Probably living happily on a farm...

I thought only my pet rabbits and turtles went there

They have a gland or something that kills them before they live longer than a few years. The specifics probably vary.

whats the evolutionary reason (i know there doesnt have to be one) for something like that?!

I googled "why do octopuses die so young" and came up with this article: https://www.sciencealert.com/mother-octopus-senescence-death...

> The maturation of the reproductive organs appears to be driven by secretions from the optic gland. These same secretions, it seems, inactivate the digestive and salivary glands, which leads to the octopus starving to death.

> In 1977, researchers removed this gland and found that the octopus' mothering instincts disappeared. She abandoned her eggs, started feeding again, and went on to live a much longer life.

As a reproductive strategy for an (arguably) intelligent animal ... this makes me feel sad. However there's plenty of octopuses around so in evolutionary terms it's a strategy that works.

As for the males - and this is the point at which my anthropomorphic 'yuk' reflex goes into overdrive - they die soon after their first successful sexual encounter. Males store sperm in one of their arms. For some species, 'sex' involves detaching that arm and giving it to the female to keep for later use. Then they wander off and die. Possibly from disappointment.

I think octopuses are a good counter-example to the concept of Intelligent design.

edit: to clarify, they're MAGNIFICENT creatures, and are a testament to the unfeeling unemotional beauty of actual Evolution - it has no plan. It is random. It only works because of odds. That some traits get selected for more frequently ON AVERAGE.

Sometimes that can lead to some interesting places...octopus, platypus, narwals. Hell, most animals are RIDICULOUS when you get down close.

But this curse of the octopus's intelligence being severely artificially limited so they can't progress and evolve.

Maybe the meaning of life is for us to use our technology and medicine to help the Octopuses live long and fulfilling lives and put them on a path to continuing evolution and together the human and octopuses species are meant to conquer the galaxy.

Alas, in this dimension, we fucked up and destroyed their habitat instead.

You'd love Children of Ruin.

There's a Radiolab episode about this. An Octopus mother brooding her eggs for month on end and then dying just when the eggs hatched. Episode title is Octomom.

And that, people, is how you tell a joke on HN.

How is this different from human reproductive cycle?

Asking for friend.

Har har.

Sounds like female octopus with the gland removed could be a good pet. It's like spaying a cat.

megablast, you might have missed the possibility that it allows the octomom to not die immediately after tending the eggs.

Sure, lets disable animals for your amusement.

I suppose it's true that spaying and neutering is technically disabling an animal. I guess not having pets would be the best solution for people who consider spay/neuter harmful. But for people who are okay with the idea of pets, and who do not wish to breed their pets, many find the control of breeding instincts and behavior helpful, not to mention the long term health benefits for the pets.

i mean.. i feel for all my octopus brothers. i would too.

I think that sexual tentacles from males can regenerate, but I'm not sure at this moment.

Male octopuses will often be eaten by the female after copulating.

Only the good die young

>> whats the evolutionary reason for something like that?!

You can never really know the reason with evolution because every plausible effect is in play and part of the optimization process. Having said that, one reason for adults to die may be to conserve resources (food) for the young in times/areas of scarcity. Another may be to prevent excess breeding by an individual, which may reduce genetic diversity. There are probably other viable reasons as well.

> Another may be to prevent excess breeding by an individual, which may reduce genetic diversity.

That sounds like group selectionism. In what circumstance would this be deleterious to the propagation of that individual's genes?

Lesser genetic diversity is always bad for survival: with clonal species like the bananas we cultivate, for instance, a single pathogen can endanger the whole population.

The less diverse the population, the less likely timely mutations will help protect it. Incidentally, our modern society is pretty diverse, especially as we protect those who couldn't otherwise survive without modern medicine.

No disagreements there, but adaptations that are advantageous for the population as a whole won't necessarily spread through a population.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QsMJQSFj7WfoTMNgW/the-traged...

Ah, I better see your point. Well, that adaptation has to be selected for at some point of course.

Among a single species, with a 50/50 split of a genetically diverse and homogeneous population, if you eliminate 10% of the former and 75% of the latter, the split becomes 80/20. If that distinction stemmed from genetic factors, you have selected for diversity.

Genetic diversity isn't only advantageous to the population. It's advantageous for the individuals that carry it, depending on the circumstances. Therefore it can easily be selected for.

Surely if genetic variation is introduced primarily by the breeding process, any factors which have a effect against like (competing for food, less genetic variation), etc, are going to get selected against? I have always thought this was the reason behind human lifespans - in neolithic times, up to 33 years. Just enough time to mate and raise another individual to maturity.

No, medium 33, some could get old. Just not most. And median and medium got dragged by high child mortality.

What is "medium"? I know median and mean.

Ok, that's just mean. Medium I mean, in my native language, is mean.

Teleology != Ontology

There doesn't have to be a use for an evolutionary trait. It can be an utterly useless feature. The fact that it persists in this fleeting moment we co-exist with it in this particular million years, only shows that a feature hasn't been rendered extinct. Yet.

But of course, I believe that biologists can construct a cladistic tree that can calibrate how long a particular trait might have been around.

Odds are it continues to serve some useful purpose though. Us humans have a whole lot of useful organs, and only one vestigial appendix.

The appendix has a purpose:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-funct...

And another suspected purpose:

https://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/news/20071012/appe...

The cool thing about the Internet is there are people of all different levels of knowledge about a subject writing comments on that subject.

I've heard a theory that they are cannibals and would eat their young.....

I read an entire book on this! It’s because their expected time-to-predation is very short. Genes that are deleterious to long life-span aren’t selected against and, thus, accumulate. (“Other Minds” by Peter Smith.)

Now I have to figure out how to work "expected time to predation" into a sentence. Maybe the next time I eat the last cookie.

Are whales their primary predators?

I know sharks are a significant predator where I live and in places I’ve seen in documentaries. I’d assume that’s the case around all of the oceans since sharks and octopuses occur together everywhere. I’m not sure if that’s the case in the deep sea, though.

Probably not. I had found a few octopus in cetacean's stomachs, but they prefer squids. Gregarious and much more convenient to hunt.

Seals on the other time... Yup; I can tell you than monk seals definitely eat octopus.

The octopuses the author studied were shallow-water reef dwellers. They were predated by fish, mostly.

One other evolutionary reason is that octopuses lay 20-100 thousand eggs that one time. They really don't need to carry on and produce another batch. Of course, most of those larva are eaten before they make it to maturity, just like many other sea creatures..

Octopi are easily damaged. Perhaps to keep the population fit, by frequently turning over older (damaged) members.

This is a pretty incredible story - thanks for sharing it!

unfortunately and to shatter your dreams, as mine were, it is and has always been:

octopuses*

tis mixage of greik and latin eytymologies and wyll not bey allowed

by the way is your dad thomas pynchon?

Languages, especially English, are democracies - if enough people say octopi, it eventually will be (and may already be) octopi.

> Languages [...] are democracies

I think the French would like to have a word!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_Française

(On the other hand, rules aren't binding, so it's more like a "will of the people (if the people's will is large enough)"?)

According to my one semester intro course, this is referred to in linguistics as either a "prescriptive" or "descriptive" approach to language. As I think you alluded to, while the prescriptive approach defines people's attitudes regarding how certain approaches to the language are viewed ("this is right/wrong"), it rarely ends up actually changing how the language(s) themselves get used and develop.

I took a French class last year, and the teacher spent a lot of time identifying differences between academy French and how people actually talk. Things like "Je ne sais pas" => "Chais pas," which sounded like "shay pa." It seemed like the people still had a lot to say about how French should unofficially be written and spoken, even if it couldn't be used in formal settings.

Well, thus is, strictly speaking, the difference between "I don't know' and "I dunno". Speakers know this is a colloquial saying.

There might be a few areas where official bodies are lagging behind usage ("postuler à" being one I have in mind), but I'd say that grammar nazis and teachers alike are actually somewhat effective IMO.

> but I'd say that grammar nazis and teachers alike are actually somewhat effective IMO.

We have no evidence this is true. Certainly historically we know it isn't the case, there very strong evidence surrounding how languages drift over time that exist alongside contemporary pendants later proving to have not made a difference. But we also haven't really had a society with near universal literacy before so maybe that changes the dynamic.

> "postuler à"

Today I learned that I used it "wrong" all my life.

I know, right? Languagetool brought it to my attention the other day. "postuler" == "to candidate" seems absent from the dictionary, though it's in common use.

http://www.academie-francaise.fr/postuler-postuler-pour

That's neat the teacher brought up the 'tiers' of formality. As an american kid in France growing up, the 'vous-voyez' was instilled early on along with evaluations over the years in written and oral style. You probably remember 'liaisons'? It's as though in the same way a vowel at the beginning of a word causes the last consonant of the previous word to be pronounced, as familiarity increases and formality decreases, the words themselves begin to blend. Somewhere between your examples there'd be "j'ne sais pas" and then if your a high school kid in 2005, "Saich aps"

The French verlan is a prime demonstration that, in point of fact, King Canute cannot stop the tide from turning.

"The Oxford English Dictionary lists octopi, octopuses and octopodes (in that order)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_in...

Does it?

octopus

(ˈɒktəpəs, ɒkˈtəʊpəs)Pl. octopodes (ɒkˈtəʊpədiːz), anglicized octopuses.[mod.L. octōpus, a. Gr. ὀκτώπους, acc. ὀκτώποδ-α eight-footed, f. ὀκτώ eight + πούς, πόδ- foot.]

octopus

A genus of cephalopod molluscs, characterized by eight `arms' surrounding the mouth and provided with suckers; an individual of this genus (esp. one of the larger and more formidable species).

1758: Baker in Phil. Trans. L. 778 “The Polypus, particularly so called, the Octopus, Preke, or Pour-contrel.”

1835: Kirby Hab. & Inst. Anim. I. x. 308 “The body of the octopus is small, it has legs sometimes a foot and a half in length, with about two hundred and forty suckers on each leg.”

1880: Browning Pietro of Abano 401 “Help! The old magician clings like an octopus!”

1884: H. M. Leathes Rough Notes Nat. Hist. 46 “Saying that enormous octopuses existed on the western side of Panama, in the Pacific Ocean.”

octopus

b. fig.; usually applied to an organized power having extended ramifications and far-reaching influence, esp. harmful or destructive.

1882: Greg Misc. Ess. ii. 37 “We are the very octopus of nations.”

1893: Boston (Mass.) Jrnl. 25 Mar. 2/1 “The electric octopus. Formal organization of the New England Street Railway Company.”

1894: Westm. Gaz. 12 Mar. 2/1 “He was an administrative octopus, a cormorant of toil.”

octopus

c. attrib. and Comb.

1880: G. Meredith Tragic Com. (1881) 206 “Then they laid octopus-limbs on her.”

1894: Outing (U.S.) XXIV. 460/1 “An octopus power sought to tear the human limpet from its clinging place.”

1898: P. Manson Trop. Diseases i. 9 “A strange-looking octopus-like creature.”

Person with Volume X (Moul-Ovum) of the second edition OED in front of them here..

a simple reply to this would be that in no dictionary 'pu' comes before 'po' :)

granted, octopodes comes under the heading of octopus, as it's plural, so it is technically after.

but following the loose nature of the quote in hand, it is also in fact true that octopi comes before octopuses, it just so happens to be attached to the full word 'octopian' - suggestive of an octopus

By that logic shouldn't it be octopodes? That way we're consistently greek.

Yes. I volunteered at an aquarium for several years, and we spent a surprising amount of time learning octopus etymology. It was a top 10 question for adults to ask.

Octopus entomology? I think you meant etymology.

Octopus entomology sounds a lot more interesting

You have to admit though, octopus entomology /would/ be surprising.

Yes, whoops!

yes, they are almost the same

the greek d was actually a hard th sound iirc, Δελτα being pronounced 'thelta' as opposed to 'delta'.

hopefully that clarifies (and is actually accurate) how octopuses and octopodes are connected

I don't know, but I kind of like "i" being the plural of "us". It makes all my decisions seem unanimous.

Shouldn't that be unanimi?

unanimoi?

(pronounced "yew-nan-i-mwa" as in French "me")

;)

unanimata

sometimes the plural of a word ending on 'us' ends on 'i'. Sometimes it does not. Even if the origin is Latin, it varies (lupus vs fructus). However when borrowing words from another language, things become interesting and subject to ignorance and fashion (not necessarily in that order).

Pro tip: Pizza Pepperoni (Italy vs US)

octopuses

Like "Vaxen?"

Octopaxen.

That story took a turn.

Italian neighborhood. As a kid, I don't think I ever had a restaurant meal that didn't have octopus somewhere on the table.

The plural for octopus is not octopi, but octopuses [0].

I am telling you not to be pedantic, but because I would appreciate to be corrected. Hope you feel the same. :)

[0]: https://qz.com/1446229/let-us-finally-resolve-the-octopuses-....

Another point of view:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-plura...

Octopi, octopuses, and octipodes have all been used. I personally think octopi rolls more smoothly off the tongue than either of the other two, so that's what I tend to use.

I find the arguments regarding Greek or Latin purity to be unconvincing- we are speaking neither language. We're speaking English, which is a head-on collision between the two, with Germanic trappings gluing it all together. I happily mix and mash whatever prefix, root, infix or suffix I like. If others like it and use it, success! Whether a theoretical Roman from centuries past would agree does not enter the calculation.

Your argument is that all words are made up?

You could say this about any language and of course, it still holds true.

No. My argument is that applying rules from other languages as if we are speaking them, and not English, should not hold sway. Rather, we should pay attention to sound and flow in English when deciding how to pluralize, etc.

Whichever one you use, most people will understand you, so ultimately it doesn’t matter. English is full of loan words and they’re often used in different ways than their source languages. There isn’t a settled plural in English, though many people have strong opinions about one or another being right.

No need to apologize. I used "octopi" because that's what my father always said. I have no opinion on the matter.

Interestingly enough, octopus has multiple pluralizations, the other being octopodes

Wow, that is an incredible story. One day, when / if I have a big enough house I'll build my own octopus aquarium :)

This reminds me of the beginning of Children of Ruin, the second book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series.

Your dad reminds me of someone I know named Senkovi. :P

If you find the topic of non-human intelligence, esp. octopus intelligence interesting, you may find Adrian Tchaikovsky's children of Ruin series worth your time. The 2nd book, without ruining too much of the story, has octopii as one of the central characters. [1]

Going out further afield, exploring forms of intelligence & cognition that are very different from humans, Peter Watt's blindsight (firefall) series is an idea-filled, dense, very satisfying read. [2]

[1]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40376072-children-of-rui...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48484.Blindsight

I STRONGLY suggest you first read Children of Time and only then Children of Ruin, you'd miss a ton of pieces and some parts of the story wouldn't be clear at all.

I'd really like to hear the feedback from those in AI-complete or cognitive science research about Blindsight and especially Watts' notes [1], and if we could implement "merely" sentient AI with no consciousness, or if sentience backed by human-capacity reasoning and learning somehow lead to sapience. Because Watts makes an effective argument with his copious bibliography that "only" sentience can Accomplish A Hell Of A Lot.

Could a "merely" sentient software-driven but not conscious/self-aware robot be built that washes my dishes / cutlery and puts them away, keeps my permaculture garden tended/weeded, separates recyclables, washes, hang dries when feasible / conventional-dries when not, folds, puts away clothes / towels / fabric products, dusts, vacuums, puts away clutter, etc.?

[1] https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#Notes

IANACognititive scientist, but:

Yes, I don't think anyone in AI research believes human-style self-awareness is needed for those tasks. Well, putting away clutter might be tricky, just in getting human definitions of "put away". Most of the rest of them are just high-level pattern matching.

I think consciousness is worthwhile for communicating useful thought patterns to your peers. This is consistent with the modern perspective that "consciousness is just stories you tell yourself" and even the Watts perspective that it's inefficient. Those stories about yourself are in fact useful if they make your tribemates more effective, and (as anyone knows who has thought about communication overhead in a large organization) the individual inefficiency is offset by the power to harness a hundred or a million individuals to the same task.

> Could a "merely" sentient software-driven but not conscious/self-aware robot be built that washes my dishes / cutlery and puts them away, keeps my permaculture garden tended/weeded, separates recyclables, washes, hang dries when feasible / conventional-dries when not, folds, puts away clothes / towels / fabric products, dusts, vacuums, puts away clutter, etc.?

Probably. It could also probably convincingly portray itself as conscious if set to that task, for versimilitude's sake. Whether it is set to that task will probably depend on whether that seems to be the shortest path out of the uncanny valley.

At which point... I'm not sure there is any difference left worth talking about.

The Children of Ruin series is somewhere between an homage and a rip-off of the "Zones of Thought" series, they're similar quality though in my opinion, I'd read the originals first just 'cause.

It's been a while since I've read Fire Upon the Deep, but while they have similar sci-fi themes, the plot and antagonists are way different.

Read the sequel (if you haven't ;) )

Related recommendation:

Ted Chiang's tiny gem of a novella - "The Great Silence"

Second that. What a beautiful and inspiring story. My favorite of all in Exhalation.

Ha! I just finished reading Children of Time and am reading CoR right now. Humanity eerily reflects the current state of the US in those books.

I like to imagine that the gland in octopuses which causes them to have short lifespans unless surgically removed, was an artificial limiter designed to give terrestrials a chance.

Extremely random factoid, but the world is tiny, so I once ended up in a WoW guild with Adrian, for a time. Cool guy. Horde, of course.

The short life span always interested me, especially being high intelligence. It lives long enough to breed, serving it's short singular purpose.

I'd love to see a comparison of the life spans of various animals/species. It would make for a good graphic/visualization. I'm guessing this sort of lifespan is more common than not, compared to say whales living ~50yrs.

Edit: I found two good infographicy examples, although Id love something far more in depth

https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/13/443926/6626429/ANIM...

https://www.alansfactoryoutlet.com/how-long-animals-live-the...

Peter Godfrey Smith has a great summary of this in "Other Minds":

> Why should an organism devote all its resources to one brood, or one breeding season? Much depends, again, on the risk of death by predation and other external causes—especially on how this risk changes over an animal’s lifetime. Suppose in some animal the juvenile stage is risky, but once you get to be an adult, you can expect to live for a while without being eaten. Then it makes sense for adults to reproduce more than once. That applies to fish and many mammals. If, on the other hand, the adult life stage is very risky, it might make more sense to “go for broke” as soon as you get to a stage where you can breed. Seasons also play a role. There might be a good season for laying eggs, or for hatching. That will determine a timetable within each year; perhaps it makes sense to mate in spring, or in winter. Then the question becomes: During how many years should you try to reproduce? Initially it might seem obvious that there is no harm in leaving it open, at least, that you will be around for another couple of years. You might make it through. Why fall apart in the meantime? But here the Williams argument returns, along with the need to think about these evolutionary questions by considering vast numbers of individuals and many generations. In the abstract, you would like to live and mate forever—at least from an evolutionary point of view. But who will leave more descendants, an organism which spends everything on one mating season, or a rival which spends less now in the hope of reproducing again later? If you spend less now to save something for later, that will do you no good if animals of your kind have little chance of making it to the next breeding season. In that case, it is better to put everything into one mating season, embracing all the options which give you an advantage now, even at the cost of breakdown once the season is done.

Such a great book! I thought the whole section on why we age was compelling. The idea that nature can select for mutations which may be beneficial earlier on but have harmful effects after a given time period was new to me.

Given their intelligence, one wonders what they would be like if they lived say 20 years? Would they be ruling the oceans?

Especially true since living longer often means helping to raise and teach children - passing on knowledge.

Many land animals are intelligent and raise children so it's not clearly the only requirement for advanced development.

....they do certainly have the finger like dexterity for fine object control though.

If you like sci-fi, Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky plays with this concept. It's the second book in a series though, first being Children of Time.

Super imaginative and well written, I really liked them.

I've wondered this, too. If they lived long enough after the new generation is born, they might've developed language or some other communication system.

I thought they communicated via semaphore? Their cousins the cuttlefish certainly do.

One researcher has seen "communication" in one species of octopus, but it's mostly looking big and dark to drive away others, or small and light before being driven away[0]. It's a very primitive communication, like rattlesnakes do to scare away dangers. Not the kind of complex system I was thinking of.

I'm being very human-centric, though. It just seems like if they're intelligent enough to recognize individual faces, use tools, and learn from what other octopi do, a complex language would be inevitable. And from there they'd accrue oral histories and localized cultures.

[0] https://www.livescience.com/53514-octopuses-lead-social-live...

Their reproduction strategy would have to change, when you produce 100,000 eggs and die taking care of them there’s not much chance to develop culture.

I highly recommend the Netflix documentary ’My Octopus Teacher‘. This is the story of a photographer diving everyday for a year, and developing a two way bond with an octopus.

maybe self destroy their own species and so only the short lived one persist

I find this amusing as this is an inherently human emotional evaluation. Perhaps that is not the point in the grand scheme of things?

Octopuses have survived for 500+ millions of years and I would say more intelligent and peaceful than humans who 'ruled' or savaged their own species for... what benefit actually?

A viable chance at getting off this rock.

500+ million years is a blink of an eye on a cosmic scale. Humans are the only species we’ve observed that has a viable chance or surviving on cosmic time scales; and we will likely bring other life along with us for that ride.

Short of another human-equivalent species evolving, or a hyper resilient organism that can piggy back on space debris, humans are literally the only shot life on Earth has.

> 500+ million years is a blink of an eye on a cosmic scale.

How so? It’s 1/8 of the lifespan of the planet and about 3.5% of the age of the universe.

That is not “a blink of an eye”, that’s a pretty impressive innings by any definition.

Humans will be lucky if we make 1 million years at this rate.

Well, according to the Big Freeze theory (seems to be the most probable) 500 million years is less than a blink of an eye when compared to the time the universe will consume until it cannot anymore.

Why does that matter? Why are humans so special? I 'feel' like octopuses are the better candidate :) putting aside trivial human aspirations....

When they successfully escape earths orbit, get back to me.

Until then, all odds are stacked against them. They’re going to go extinct in an instant on a cosmic timescale. Unless, of course, humans choose to bring them along and save them from that fate.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but it's interesting to me that in our many hundred thousand year history as a species, the "point" of our intelligence (by your measure) wasn't even a suggestion until maybe 120 years ago, and only a dream until maybe 60 years ago. What are the chances?

Perhaps a scholar in 320 AD would also have been surprised by how remarkable it was that the true purpose of human intelligence had only been so recently discovered.

Bingo.

This is the chasm that needs to be crossed. Its not just the immediate advantage your species gets from intelligence. It’s cultivating that to a point where you realize all life on this planet is default extinct. Then getting your species to the point where you even have a _chance_ of changing that default.

Humans are still default extinct. We are on a path to changing that default.

No we're not, at best we're just changing the timeline. You're still either time bound by the death of the universe best case scenario or resource bound before that happens (if the universe can "end"). Extinction is inevitable at any timescale.

Well the whole point of the game of life is to keep the game going for as long as possible.

to follow up on the point above, how do you know that leaving earth is the only way to escape extinction? that's only what you can imagine given the technology available, just like someone living in 320 couldn't conceive of space travel.

I agree that the ultimate purpose of any species is to continue to exist. I'm just skeptical because your definition of that is so related to modern science fiction

I mean eventually the sun will lose energy and hell, a planet destroying asteroid could hit at any time.

One response from the Christian tradition is that humans are creatures made in the image of God with rational, moral, and spiritual faculties. Other animals lack these faculties. Furthermore, we are decreed to be stewards over the created order by divine command.

Christianity decrees its followers to be stewards over the created order, but outside of some small groups, there's no major tradition of vegetarianism in Christianity, nor any particular care for ecology and sustainability as is practiced in many other religions.

Because stewardship of the earth got translated into dominion over it and that became the dominant narrative in a dominant branch of Christianity in most of the world (Evangelicalism).

Dinosaurs perished to become oil to power our technology, they deserve some credit.

It was mostly the plant species alive in that time, not dinosaurs per se.

> viable chance or surviving on cosmic time scales

how incredibly arrogant.

Arrogant is a tremendous understatement. There's a chance that 10 million years ago on some other planet existed a far more advanced civilization than humans could ever imagine, but they died out after 1 million years. So they would have had 1 million years of advancement, which is still 50 times more advancement than the 2000 or so years of scientific progress we've had, and even that would be but a tiny tiny tiny fraction of a blink of an eye in space and time. To think that "humans have a viable chance of surviving cosmic time" is incredulous if you know even rudimentary physics.

I would prefer ambitious.

I'm not sure about the 'peaceful' claim, that seems to me to be something of a romanticism. It's called the 'law of the jungle' for a reason, after all, e.g. -

https://www.livescience.com/47982-octopus-cannibalism-video-...

But I think it's true that human intelligence has made us have a greater impact on the world, both for good and for evil.

I've been wondering if their short lifespan is in any way related to cephalopods' recently discovered use of RNA editing techniques[1].

[1] https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6

I have often wondered about this aspect of lifespan. Octopuses are amazing.

Perhaps their relatively short lifespan and lifecycle after mating is somehow correlated with them being around for 500+ million years. Somehow I find that more fascinating.

I feel like humans are inherently lower on this scale: we definitely live longer but I wonder as a species if we would be better off with shorter lifespan (and life cycle) like octopuses that helps the entire human species survive (peacefully?) as opposed to an optimization around single individual lifespan.

That seems rather bleak and somewhat Malthusian. I'm further perplexed by the idea that anti-individualism or some sort of collectivism would be "better for us". Historically, collectivist thinking hasn't been positive for anyone who's interests fall outside of the narrow interests of those in power.

Definitely collectivism is not good for anyone not following the goals of the collective. The idea that collectivism is "better for us" is a collective point of view, that doing something optimal for the most of us is better than doing something suboptimal for all of us. Collective thinking has many positive and negative examples, often both in the same example. One with a high positive side is the rise from devastation of post-Korean War South Korea to the powerhouse it is today in about 50 years, and this considering that South Korea has very few natural resources, so the only resource they can count on was manpower.

> Historically, collectivist thinking hasn't been positive for anyone who's interests fall outside of the narrow interests of those in power.

Doesn't that really depend on your choice of examples? I could for example point to the Montreal protocol as a highly successful example of collectivist thinking that has been hugely positive for basically everyone, perhaps outside of a narrow few in the refrigerants industry.

The Montreal protocol is really narrow, and addresses the commons in a way that benefits everyone everywhere in a narrow and specific way (reduced ozone depletion), while only requiring a switch to a slightly more expensive/less efficient replacements for CFC and HFCs.

I'm clearly not arguing against environmental protection. Im arguing against the nebulous idea of "the good of society (species as in the grandparent post)" vs protection of individual rights.

There are degrees of collectivism and collective action though.

The mere fact we roughly agree (via cultural norms moreso than law) to more or less respect a core set of individual rights is itself a collective act. We don't live in Hobbsian war-of-all after all.

And pretty much every human society at this point has governments that tax in order to provide services for the "good of society" (granted with many different degrees of success).

I still wouldn't want to live in a fascist or soviet style state though, if that is your point. Fully subsuming the will of the individual to the goals of the state is personally abhorrent to me and my values, but I can certainly imagine other value-sets where a more collectivists society is better able to achieve those values.

And yet firms collect individuals together to extract the surplus profit from them for those in power.

Human life spans are driven by the fact that newborn humans need the support of their parents to survive until they reach sexual maturity. So there is selective pressure on humans to live just long enough to see their grandchildren born and not much longer. Octopi don't have that constraint. They just need to reproduce, then they're done.

Actually not. Octopuses (female) breed their young for months without eating and then die off. Seems like they have perfected this system over millenia via evolution?

Humans being of the few animals that go through menopause is strong evidence that grandmothers contribute to the survival of their grandchildren.

One thing that occurs to me is for a social creature, a long life span allows knowledge that is passed on. But if an intelligent species wasn't a social species, then it's hard to see the value of a long life span.

I wonder if animals are aware of their own mortality. How would you test this?

I imagine it's a very small number, likely including elephants and great apes. However, even I struggle to grasp the concept of my own mortality. I feel like most people are in the same situation. They can tell you they're going to die one day, like they're reciting lines from a book, but they don't seem to truly grasp what it means.

Elephants could easily be aware of their own mortality. They are social, long-lived, and have been filmed interacting in an interesting way with elephant bones. There was a nice article on elephants posted here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828113

One way is to see which animals have self-awareness or have a sense of self. But that test is difficult because we can only rely upon our human-biased perspective and hence any test we developed will be skewed towards our way of thinking/being. For example the mirror test works well for humans, but what about animals that rely mostly on smell, sound, etc?

But even if they are self-aware it doesn't necessarily mean they would be aware of their own mortality. It's assumed that most, if not all animals, live "in the moment". So it's hard to imagine an animal that always lives in the moment to think about their own mortality.

It's mostly likely that most animals aren't aware of their mortality and they don't even have the capacity to even consider it. It would be like wondering whether an ant understands calculus. They simply lack the capacity.

And finally, what evolutionary benefit does the awareness of their mortality confer on any animal? In nature, where competition is fierce and unforgiving, I doubt animals who dwell upon their own mortality outcompete those that live in the moment.

I just finished watching a Netflix documentary about an octopus. The kids loved it.

It was probably one of the most fascinating documentaries I have ever seen. What a story & some amazing footage. I could not help but think that octopus are very intelligent.

“My Octopus Teacher”

Edit: spoiler alert on the link. Watch it without reading Wikipedia. The twists and turns are part of the experience.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Octopus_Teacher

+1 for this documentary. Really interesting relationship and some incredible footage.

It was such a beautiful story with a great underwater video to go along. I have a hard time imagining filming that footage with just snorkels. Amazing!

I second and third this - It's such a beautiful and amazing story - and shot really really nicely too!

HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

I highly recommend the book "Other Minds", a fascinating and very accessible book about the octupus and cuttlefish. They are amazing creatures.

https://www.amazon.com/Other-Minds-Octopus-Origins-Conscious...

Great book.

I love octopus. They are one of my top favourite life forms.

Did you know that we are discovering they are a bit more social than we thought?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/octopus-city-obser...

How about these sleepy heads, eh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHR70lVy79Y

One wonders just what sort of other crazy hijinx they get up to, personally .. I once watched a reef occy lure some dumb fish into his lair with an old crayfish carcass, it amused me for hours watching him/her lazy fishing from a hole ..

If you ever find yourself in occy territory, i.e. on a tidal Rockpool, and you suspect there might be one in a hole somewhere, flash some coins and direct sunlight into the depths .. I often find they can't resist the opportunity to add some shiny to their middens ..

Highly recommend the documentary My Octopus Teacher on Netflix. Beautiful story of how a free diver forms a friendship of sorts with an octopus.

Preview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0LTDhqe5A

I also highly recommend My octopus teacher.

Very beautiful and sad in a “circle of life” kind of way.

Related: Giant Pacific Tree Octopus https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

(one of the classics of the early internet)

This was our introduction to "not everything on the internet is true, even if it's presented nicely" circa middle school. Glad to see it's still up and running!

How old?

Hearing about the Giant Pacific Octopus always reminds me of the story about the guy who found a novel way to go Octopus hunting when hunting them was illegal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/magazine/the-octopus-that...

I really enjoyed that article, thanks for sharing!

A clarification: from what I can tell reading the article, hunting octopus was not illegal, but there were restrictions against big commercial style net and pot fishing of octopus.

I liked how the article juxtaposed the (presumed good) hip locavore restaurant vs the (presumed bad) redneck that just wades in and engages in octafisticuffs.

I still don't get why the article elevated what was essentially an illegal hunt by a teen idiot.

Nothing novel about it. Just breaking rules and conventions to kill a creature for food.

I think we read a different article. It made it clear it was a legal hunt by a teen who did some homework on it.

Did you read the comments? The locals knew that octopus. The octopus was an attraction for nearby divers.

He killed it and doomed its babies.

The article was written by someone clearly amoral about the whole issue.

That added context makes it sad, but does not make it illegal, which is what you are responding to.

He found a legal way to destroy a highly intelligent living organism for no f* reason at all except his enjoyment. Nothing wrong with that.

Octopuses are so fascinating. We scour other planets and galaxies for life / mystical aliens sending aimless signals in search of reciprocation or even acknowledgement.

I wonder how amazing it would be if we had a similar grand undertaking in our oceans... With just octopuses (without interfering with them)?

They are perfect aliens we are seemingly looking for in the skies but living right alongside us....

A new documentary on Netflix called, "My Octopus Teacher" is worth checking out.

"An unusual friendship develops between a filmmaker and an octopus living in a South African kelp forest that shares the mysteries of its world."

https://www.netflix.com/watch/81045007

I highly recommend a documentary on Netflix named, “My Octopus Teacher”. It’s really beautifully made. A man becomes “friends” with an octopus and goes to meet and observe every day for a year until she mates and dies. It’s amazing.

Until clicking I didn't know if this was going to be a software product or an animal ;)

Does their brain consciously drive the control of their cell pigment/color ability, or is it something more subconscious/reactive/instinctive? Seems like the brain has to be involved to coordinate...

I wonder what the closest thing like that would be for humans? Would it be akin to me thinking “i want to be more tan” and somehow my cells get the signal to be more tan?

Obviously we will likely never know, but there is some leap here I wish we understood better. (Or do we and I’m just unaware?)

Edit: thinking about it more... i don’t know what happens when i think to “make a fist” and yet it happens, so maybe it is something more at that level...

I think more like moving your body. You can do it when you want to, you can do it on autopilot with varying degrees and axes of control, or do it while asleep. You don't need to subvocalize it, you think more about the result, next intentions, etc.

Thanks! That does make sense, and it’s entirely fascinating to think about!

Does anyone know what this area of study is called?

Look into cognition vs consciousness.

A baby can feed themselves holding a spoon, but they lack object permanence (the ball went behind the couch, it's vanished from this universe forever), and certainly aren't aware of stuff like their own mortality, their favorite color, or if they even should have a favorite color, etc

Child development is a lot more studied than I thought it was, and opens a lot of doors to exploring the answers to some of these questions.

I'm not sure if it's still alive, but if you're in Toronto, Ripley's Aquarium has one. Though, it's kept in the 'Canadian Waters' gallery for...reasons.

"Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada is home to a giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini). This species of octopus is the largest of 300+ known octopus species. There is a huge variation in size that depends on the individual, but the average for this species is considered around 15-18kg (33-40lb), with an arm span around 4m(12-14ft) when stretched out. Of course, we can’t talk about size without mentioning the world record – OVER 130kg (300lb) and 9m (30ft) wide! There has also been the occasional “fisherman’s tale” of even larger individuals, but the proof isn’t quite there yet.

The giant Pacific octopus can live to be about four years old, with both males and females dying soon after breeding. Females live long enough to tend to their eggs, but they do not eat during this months-long brooding period, and usually die soon afterwards."

https://www.ripleyaquariums.com/canada/tag/qa/

> The size record is held by a specimen that was 30 feet across and weighed more than 600 pounds

What?!? That's incredible! It would be so incredibly terrifying to see one of those in its natural habitat.

I tried searching for more information about the largest one found, but I didn't find much. The only information I could find was that it was found on a beach in British Columbia. I was really hoping for a picture of it.

There's a nice little Ted talk by David Gallo about life in the ocean. Most of it is about what cephalopods can do. It's really amazing: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_gallo_underwater_astonishmen...

My first concept of octopi as a highly intelligent species came from this essay: https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/ Highly recommend it to anyone who likes these creatures.

If you're interested in human octopus interactions I recommend Sy Montgomery's Soul Of An Octopus.

http://symontgomery.com/soul-of-an-octopus/

The sheer alien-ness of cephalopod intelligence reminds me of the current conversation about AI and whether they are "truly" thinking or just mechanistic. It's easier to see an octopus as executing a highly advanced algorithm than it is to see ourselves that way. And we can look at them and appreciate their sophistication yet have no way of understanding their internal experience.

If you like octopusses I highly recommend the EV Nautilus channel on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbHjs9A7sis

They livestream ocean exploration with remote controlled submarine, it produces wonderful footage.

On the subject of octopuses, Radiolab did a neat "octomom" episode that's worth a listen.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/octom...

FTA:

> They live to be about four years old, with both males and females dying soon after breeding.

> Highly intelligent creatures, giant Pacific octopuses have learned to open jars, mimic other octopuses, and solve mazes in lab tests.

What would be the point of evolving to be so intelligent if the lifespan is so short. Seems strange to me.

Speedrunning the wheel of reincarnation?

Bonus multifilm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkdhJWyzFR8&t=37

Reminds me of octopus wrestling in the PNW back in the 60's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_wrestling

The coolest creatures. I love them!

They only live for 4 years?

I wonder why people keep ignoring standards and use feets, pounds etc even on quite international resources. I understand it is convenient on local market to buy some food, but in this kind of scientific articles makes no sense to me.

> even on quite international resources.

By that, are you referring to National Geographic? :)

It doesn't ignore standards.

The imperial system of measurement is quite as exact as SI.

It's... wacky, I'll grant you. But it is in fact a standard, promulgated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

I think you have a point. SI units should be at least in parentheses.

Most science textbooks in the U.S. use SI units (as well as imperial).

LOL. It's an American publication, writing for an overwhelmingly American audience, so...

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