Watch Baby Octopuses Hatch from a Surprising Deep-Sea Nursery | Hacker News Reader

Watch Baby Octopuses Hatch from a Surprising Deep-Sea Nursery

scientificamerican.com

129 pointsgmays54 comments

Interesting how the mind wants to maintain continuity by not challenging assumptions.

The researchers saw brooding octopuses at a warm vent. Since prevailing wisdom said they hatch only in cold water, they went away.

Only when they came back (for other reasons) they realized that they discovered something.

I noticed this myself when running over warning signs that were obvious in hindsight. Haven’t found a way to fully avoid this without becoming overly suspicious and slow down decisions.

And: aren’t those tiny octopuses adorable?

I like to imagine the sound of them being born is pop pop pop

I wonder if this sound is picked up by the hydrophone monitoring system, but never explored because of the pecking order of the organizations that operate them.

> never explored because of the pecking order of the organizations that operate them.

INAMB (I'm not a marine biologist), but one of my best friends is. And I can say that the profession is refreshingly light hearted. At least, compared to other scientific disciplines. Here you can hear actual marine biologists in real time discovering a new species at the bottom of the ocean:

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

They sound like 5 year olds who have just found an abandoned kitten at the park, don't they? Can you see this kind of people withholding measurements because of pecking order issues?

I’m not sure it is possible given that there are too many edge cases in life.

> I noticed this myself when running over warning signs that were obvious in hindsight. Haven’t found a way to fully avoid this without becoming overly suspicious and slow down decisions.

When I was in the military the military has courses that I think subtly teach you to do this. You learn a bunch of academic stuff, then they go through some what I would call dry run exercises, then finally you're put in an immersive exercise. They do this with things like combat and medical trauma that often require making the right decisions at the right time and considering counter-decisions or seeing consequences into the future. Anecdotally when my base was attacked I almost saw myself performing actions that I'd rehearsed. Of course, situations changed rapidly and at times I let myself have a moment of awe in what I was in, but then it was back to doing things I knew.

In this way, I think speedy, correct decision making is the result of familiarity. Also yes, I'd like to sleep on a bed of baby octopuses carrying me through the sea.

A lab my wife worked in had an octopus who laid eggs in the tank. We watched them hatch and all eat each other until a few were dominate and then they separated them.

I always wondered if this was the natural order or if it was because they were stuck in a confined areas.

Regardless, was a pretty incredible and exceedingly rare event (most octopus don’t lay eggs in captivity).

Both. Cannibalism is normal "fair game" in the species. Is a main obstacle in octopus farms

"Nobody knows how much they take to hatch but is probably several years" is just another example of wild bad extrapolation.

Have they found the Megalodon yet?

Yes, I suspect both. Cannibalism is an efficient way to divert resources to the offspring with the highest chance of survival for some species. But many animals also practice cannibalism only in captivity, and the increased stress and density both seem like they would promote that.

I notice this with the spiders in my house. There will be loads of the little spindly ones in my bathroom. Some are quite close to each other. Then one morning I'll go in and suddenly there will be half as many and the ones remaining will be suspiciously larger.

I learned this from Seaman lol https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/198567-seaman/faqs/8...

“During your next visit, you will find that your Gillmen begin to use the antennae on their heads to suck the blood of the other Gillmen. While this may seem harsh, it is nature's way- survival of the fittest- and provides another step for Seaman to cross in its evolution. At first, they will probably only kill eachother until 4 are left, but in anotherday only 2 will be left from natural selection.”

I'm reminded of my kids' Triops experiments. Its a joy to watch them hatch - not so much to watch them eat each other over a week or two, until .. finally .. there is only one Big Fat One remaining in the tank ..

Valuable life lessons, that one.

I had Triops as a kid and never observed cannibalism. Is your tank big enough?

Yes it was quite big enough, was the kit that included the 'large tank', and I'm very surprised you didn't observe it because we have done the experiment a number of times and always get a Big Fat One at the end. The banana- and fairy- shrimp population is harvested first, but when they are gone the Triops turn on each other like some kind of damp gladiator orgy. Its really wild to watch.

We've moved on to Hydrae now, they are also quite battle-worn organisms in our house-hold.

I think back in the day it was recommended to have at least 5 liters per adult triops. My tank was around 100l and I usually had at least a handful of them. Always females only; the males somehow never made it. They would only get eaten by their peers once they died of other causes. Maybe yours were lacking some protein in their diet?

First time I hear of anybody keeping Hydrae as pets.

We fed them pretty well; I've never heard of Triops that weren't cannibalistic.

The Hydrae are exceptionally interesting, we just collect glass jars of lake water and watch them grow over a few weeks before releasing them .. its quite an adventure watching the budding occur, seeing the growth, watching the nematodes being chomped on ..

Maybe I need to refresh my memory. I should have some eggs lying around still.

The nematodes also come with the lake water?

>The nematodes also come with the lake water?

In our hydrae experiments, yes, they came with the lake water .. you can see some pictures here if you're interested, there's a video of the battle between nematode and hydra as well - I did this experiment with my kids many times over the years, its always fascinating to see what grows and what eats and what stays behind ..

https://imgur.com/user/waterplusalgaeequalshydra

Bonus retro-computing stuff there too.. ;)

>Triops eggs

Let me know how it goes! I love the Triops arena ..

It's probably also because Octopus is delicious.

reminds me how I always get a kick out of people that draw their line at what they will eat based off of that thing’s intelligence.

They’ll loudly proclaim the rest of us are just anthropomorphizing until specific institutions tell them that a particular animal is intelligent. And then they’re like “I cant eat that” and assume the rest of us a) didn't know and b) were operating by the same consumptive standards

farcical, since their super late enlightenment makes them the dumb ones

So you get a kick out of judging people being open-minded and listening to scientists?

I get a kick out of them needing that to dictate how they choose to collaborate with other beings

When the rest of us didn’t need that

I love how you think you're representative of the "rest of us". A phrase you've used twice now.

Clearly you don't talk to other people and think your views are in the majority rather than a tiny minority.

Cute.

yeah I don't talk to any other people

do you have a specific rebuttal to this? "I get a kick out of them needing that to dictate how they choose to collaborate with other beings"

Yeah, go into any tapas restaurant and watch tons of people order octopus.

Are you really this unobservant and poorly informed about the other humans you share the world with? Or do you just enjoy being contrarian on forums?

We're normalized to eating meat and there's a lot of subtle social pressure to not "rock the boat" on things that are widely considered normal and acceptable.

I have a lot of sympathy for individuals trying to reconcile these flashes from their conscience with "normal" social behavior, and struggling through the cognitive dissonance that results from it.

I have very little for just taking open glee in the emotional distress people experience while going through that process? Or calming your own dissonance by nihilistically avoiding the question? Better a late and compromised enlightenment then a proudly never one.

am I projecting? I don’t think so,

I think we can make fun of people that just watched an Octopus documentary on Netflix and act like the rest of us didn’t know they’re whole body is neurons

I don't see how this is dissonant to you? I will occasionally eat beef, I'll never eat octopus.

I helped my farm friends raise calves for 4H in junior high. They're dumb as bricks, don't think they knew they were food even on the way to slaughter. So on the whole, as long as you take care of them, they enjoy life and you enjoy a burger, minimal suffering.

If something is intelligent and understands it's going to be food, and that causes it to suffer for its entire life, it tips the scales quite significantly. You already live by this assumption if you are vegan; you choose to eat things with no brain over things with a brain. Being an asshole over people drawing the same line as you but in a slightly different spot just makes you sound like the fool.

If a person is going to consume animal protein, trying to minimize the pain/suffering of the animals being consumed doesn't strike me as "farcical". And it seems reasonable to posit that a smart animal is more likely to suffer than a dumb animal (for whatever definitions of smart and dumb).

My only issue with this is the more we learn about both animals and plants, the more complex they both appear to be. Reductio ad absurdum - we can't eat anything because everything is smarter than we thought. The only truly safe answer is to bio-engineer humans to use photosynthesis.

> Reductio ad absurdum - we can't eat anything because everything is smarter than we thought.

Which is my leading criticism of the idea.

If I'm like "hey that being is clearly reacting to stimuli that could hamper its self preservation and it is aiming to avoid that" and it takes another decade for Neil Degrasse Tyson or somebody you respect to tell that person the same thing about, say... plants, then what's the point of listening to that person ever?

Like, we were allll eating plants - in this example - with the same observation that the anti-suffering person willingly ignored and lorded over us, and now they move their own goal post while acting like we're only eating plants because we're oblivious to their reactions to harmful stimuli. again, example. replace plants with octopus if you need to.

but its an ideological line that doesn't seem based in anything except an arbitrary line. I can go along with desiring sustainable practices. no factory farming but preservation and keeping populations stable. but "omg it can think and feel!?" just isn't something I can be surprised about to draw a line at that. amoebas avoid negative stimuli. there's no need to gain consensus species by species.

More video of the octopuses here: https://schmidtocean.photoshelter.com/galleries/C0000HRWFfu1... The actual hatching is the clip from the article, unfortunately no additional hatching video at above link.

Is it possible to keep this place a secret or now does that mean humans will somehow intervene and ruin things? I feel like when these sensitive things such as this are discovered it's almost better to keep it a secret - though we (general public) would be robbed of the marvel of these creatures. I understand its deep but I can't help thinking this will get exploited in some way. Hope not

I understand the pessimism especially in regards to human-marine relations, but I can't see droves of tourists being shipped out to witness something happening deep underwater.

Not tourists but some other way in which humans somehow negatively impact it. I agree pessimistic - though over our history we haven't been great preservationists, it's not our natural playbook :) .

Tell that to Stockton Rush's ghost.

It’s Chinese fishing that is the concern.

Chinese fishing near Costa Rica? Way to defect blame from Westerners. I guarantee you we're capable of overfishing, oil spills and other environmental disasters all by ourselves.

China has fishing fleets all over the world, and the pacific coast of south and central America in particular:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/26/world/asia/ch....

I don't think you've been paying much attention to the seas my friend.

It is also possible for ecotourism to be a net good for biodiversity. See Costa Rica for instance.

> No one yet knows how long it takes for these octopus eggs to hatch, but it is likely several years

That's crazy, anyone know why it would take that long?

This gives me some vague hope that if humans do succeed in boiling the atmosphere and destroying ourselves, intelligent life might still find a way to survive at the bottom of the oceans.

Life during the Dinosaurs era was harsh by today's measures (high temperatures, high CO2, etc..) humans would not be able to survive under these conditions.

+10 degrees will kill us but will not kill life and will probably create different kinds of species.

My read on the climate threat is more civilizational than extinctional, small numbers of people can survive even the "global nuclear war over resources" endgame of climate change. It's still a pretty horrible endpoint because so many of the easily accessible resources you'd need to kickstart another high tech civilization are already exploited and inaccessible in deeper mines but I have doubts even the worst outcomes would be human extinction.

Wouldn't there be tons of resources in the civilizational remains? Landfill mining would be incredible at least for a while.

For some things but rust will really destroy a lot of the valuable metals like iron as it decays then scatters, a lot of how useful that will stay will depend on how long and deep the collapse is. One of the main things will be energy as so much of the surface coal and easily accessible oil have been exploited. The best bet is probably recovering and refurbishing electric motors to rig generators but there's a lot of infrastructure around turning that into reliable power that would also be tough to recover.

As we ravage the natural world, one of the thoughts that has been able to keep me from being truly depressed is the certainty that we won't extinct all life. As beautiful as our biodiverse world is, I believe it will be differently and beautifully biodiverse in a couple hundred thousand years if we mess it all up.

I am very interested in octopuses as amazing creatures, and I think that octopuses missed the opportunity to become higher creatures like humans at some point in the evolutionary path, because everything has more evolutionary possibilities in the initial stage, and when it evolves to a certain extent, it can only offset the decrease in its existence by enhancing its own properties.

Maybe the heat protects the brood from other hazards - creatures that eat eggs are kept away? A clear adaptation advantage.

I'd suspect the reverse: perhaps higher temperate would generally be preferable but usually the breeding is in colder regions because the warmer ones have too many predators, but those vents don't share that predator problem. Maybe the warmth outlier is too small to sustain the particular kind of warm-water predators they evade.

I love this.

I won't eat octopi anymore. They're just too smart. I've seen examples in person.

"You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."

OK. We've all tolerated this abuse for years now, and there's no excuse for it to continue. If we can't post, THE REPLY BUTTON SHOULD BE DISABLED. It's inexcusably rude to insult users by deliberately STEALING FROM THEM. Wasting our time is STEALING. Nobody should get a free pass on that. Ever. KNOCK IT OFF.

"abuse" "stealing", you're cheapening these words using them for things like this

You're cheapening yourself by tolerating things like this.

Maybe your time is free. That's sad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com