What happens when an octopus engages with art? | Hacker News Reader

What happens when an octopus engages with art?

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68 pointsrobinhouston46 comments

Octopus are fascinating creatures who developed their intelligence quite separately from us (our last common ancestor was a flatworm). They have a very different nervous system to us - much more distributed. And they are an outlier in that pretty much all other creatures exhibiting high intelligence are long-lived and social, whereas octopus are generally short-lived and solitary.

If you want to learn more about them, I recommend: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Soul_of_an_Octopu...

Also, the charming film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Octopus_Teacher

Sadly, some people see them only as food. And there are proposals to intensively farm them in the EU. This seems particularly cruel for an intelligent, solitary animal. The intended method of killing them using cold water also seems cruel and inhumane.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64814781

That they are not social is questioned more and more. Instead they seem to interact both within their species and with completely different species.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/watch-octopuses-te...

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

They are not completely asocial. But they don't generally live and move in groups the way many other species do.

Reminder that pigs are also intelligent creatures.

I don't eat them either.

They would rise up and go to war against human if their life spans are just a bit longer to civilize and if their parents can live long enough to teach their young. But , for now , they eat hermitcrabs for lunch :P .

Minor factual correction. Octopuses are not color blind, they only have a single photo receptor opsin but likely reconstruct color using chromatic aberration in combination with diffraction caused by their pupil shape to infer spectral properties of light (i.e. color). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1524578113

Wild, thanks for sharing. My degree is in digital imaging and I spent years battling CA, interesting to imagine that something uses it to see colour, wonder what it would look like. Continuous spectral differentiation via CA vs "bins" of color from separate photoreceptor types, I'd guess they might be capable of seeing subtle spectral nuances differently or even more sensitively in certain conditions than traditional multichannel systems like ours...also from this paper it seems the SA is extremely well corrected, if the lens GRIN is perfectly tuned radially to correct SA at one wavelength (say green @ 550), the radial profile that minimizes SA at one wavelength likely misalign SA correction at another wavelength. It seems this SA/CA system would produce a very unique multidimensional preception of space + a super unique colour gamut?

I have spent many days entertaining myself by feeding octopus, showing them shiny things, luring them out of the tidal pools and reef shelves I find them in .. I've seen them use bait to lure stupid white fish closer for attack, I've seen them playfully boop snorkellers on the mask and run away, as if to try to initiate a tag, or perhaps take the piss out of the clumsy beings from another realm that seem so incompetent in their eyes.

To me, they are among the most intelligent creatures on the planet, and I yearn for a day when we gain the ability to communicate with them. I think there will come a time that happens - they are just so darn smart.

You might enjoy Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's an imagination of what a spacefaring civilisation of octopuses might look like.

I won't hype it to the moon. I enjoyed Children Of Ruin more, which centres on spiders. But it's a decent read if you like SF.

Clearing up the mix-up here. Children of Time is the first book in the series that centers on a spider civilization while Children of Ruin is about octopus.

I haven't read Children of Ruin yet, but I've consistently heard from people that they enjoyed Children of Time more.

If octopi could live up to 20 years of age and have several births,if they can teach their young , we would be seeing another intelligent civilization in earth. It lead me to wonder are there ancient ancestors of octopi that are more intelligent or lives longer than octopi? Are there deep ocean unknown species of octopi exist hundreds of millions years ago and if they have a civilization Will we ever know since octopi rarely leave fossil due to their soft,boneless bodies? What if octopi were just less intelligence species of something more intelligent - like difference between chimps vs human?

Maybe octopi are Best candidate for Silurian hypothesis?

I share your enthusiasm for all of these questions .. as a fellow octopus enthusiast, are you familiar with the recently discovered octopus civilization?

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

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

We may just simply be overlooking the obvious examples of their civilized behaviour in our rush to add them to our dining table ..

Yes I had seen that not too long ago. Very amazing. That's why I wonder , what if we have a civilization of ancestor or sub species of Octopuses living deep where we haven't explored. Also looks like octopi are more space faring capable than human due to their body adapted to zero gravity situations.

Dumbo Octopus have been discovered 7km deep:

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-a-dumbo-octopus.html

Building a technological civilization underwater would be quite a challenge though!

There has also been an 'octopus nursery' (social behaviour) discovered in the deep sea, which sort of re-wrote the rules on the 'solitary octopus' hypothesis:

https://schmidtocean.org/scientists-discover-new-deep-sea-oc...

I think there is a lot more to be learned about these wonderful creatures, and I avidly await all such discoveries ..

thats very intresting. i just want them to live longer.

Its all relative. Maybe they evolved the life spans they have, for reasons we humans cannot yet comprehend.

Some already started to civilize. But what if theirs longer living octopi ancestors existed back in Cambrian period and had a functional civilization ? we will never know. Looking at what they are building at Octopolis and Octlantis they had reached what human did 200k years ago.

I like to think that being able to recognize intelligence in others is an intelligence test for us, and same goes for recognizing civilization.

> we would be seeing another intelligent civilization in earth

Technically ants already have a civilization. (Tool use, farming, etc.)

Turns out you don't need generalized intelligence for civilization.

True , but ant civilization requires evolutionary adaptations , instincts. For octopus they have hobbies , they have curiosity , they are inventive - not out of need for food or survival , but because that is something they are interested to do.

> evolutionary adaptations , instincts

Not really. Ants analyze their environment and make decisions. They have some sort of psychological internal processes too - they can clearly experience stress and mental illness.

(AFAIK if you keep ants as pets mental illness is realistically the only way to mistreat them. Everything else they can handle on their own if you provide a source of food and water.)

I agree, yeah ants are more than instincts and actual intelligence factor in them but the farming ant species have different evolutionary adaptation .

Mold – A Sci-Fi Short Story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8URdhSigzjs

TIL the word octopus is not from Latin origin, it's Greek and it's plural is octopodes, but somewhere along the history of the English language, people decided to accept octopuses as the most common and correct plural of octopus. Therefor, octopi is considered incorrect.

It's the same with sheep. Many people believe, falsely, that the plural of sheep is sheeps. Just ask any drunk. Those with a classical education incorporating proto-Germanic literature, or a marketing degree, may feel an urge to amend this to sheepą and sheepō. Persnickety biologists may hide behind ovis which is problematic under any of the greco-latin declensions because sheep are mammals. I myself have adapted latterly to an abundance mindset and will refer in the plural simply to a flock and it follows that the singular of sheep is, quite naturally, monoflock. And I'm experimenting with a numerical trailer to express the cardinality, thus, flock(2)

It is considered incorrect, but it also sounds nice and forms a part of a growing number of terms being pluralized using -i, radiating out from cacti, it seems. I expect this trend will continue.

It doesn't sound nice to those who had at least a lick of Latin and Greek - so most Europeans.

The Romans conquered the Greeks militarily, but the Greeks conquered the Romans culturally. Saying "octopi" indirectly attempts to not acknowledge that.

On incorrect language use, I have long been a fan of Stephen Fry's take, with kinetic typography as a fun backdrop:

https://youtu.be/J7E-aoXLZGY?si=2D27LKx73o0UOXoo

In short, context, convention, and circumstance are all. Long live the solitary octopi.

I used to spell octopuses but someone corrected me to use octopi , now we are back to octopuses or octopodes ?

I would say "octopuses" personally. "Octopodes" is more etymologically correct but you run the risk of not being understood, and "octopi", while in common usage, is etymologically wrong and people who are aware of this might look down on you slightly.

"Octopuses" is both understandable and correct etymologically since "octopus" is a normal English word.

I sometimes say octopods.

Octopi is correct, in that it is an english language plural for octopus. It is not etymologically sound, certainly, as it's a latinate plural on a greek root.

So anyone telling you that any other form is wrong and insuating that 'octopi' is more correct is certainly asking to be mocked. But as we don't really do '-podes' in english, and "Octopusses" is a bit of a mouthful, I think we can accept any and all as more or less equally cromulent.

We still say "antipodes", and "gastropods" might count.

Not to argue against this, I'm just wondering how many Greek -foot words I can think of.

You're not wrong, though antipodes tends to pluralise antipode, rather than antipus!

That said, wikipedia mentions antipus or antipous may have been correct before the 16th century, and antipode is likely a sort of reverse de-pluralisation.

I can't say I'm familiar with many of the other -podes words: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordfinder/classic/ends/all/...

They seem largely to be part of scientific species names. 'pods' is more natural feeling. Tripods, bipods, gastropods, cephalopods!

Tbh I'd understand it if you used all three forms. Octopuses is also etymologically incorrect, but the general public found it ok to use and it got generally accepted because people liked it. I don't see any reason for this to happen again with octopi, although now it might be more difficult.

Personally I'll use octopuses, just because I once confused octopi as a word for another species of the family octopodes belong to. Now I know it's a common plural, but it didn't sound like a plural to me back then.

I'd prefer to use octopodes, but I feel like this can too be confused with another species, and I don't want to sound all smart in saying it's actually a plural. Octopuses bypasses all that confusion, and probably everyone will understand that it's the plural of octopus, albeit some might have doubts whether it's the correct form or not.

Would that be stressed on the last syllable? (octopodés? Don't know how to formally mark stress, sorry)

your choice of

https://ipa-reader.com/?text=%C9%92kˈt%C9%92p%C9%99di%CB%90z

and

https://ipa-reader.com/?text=%C9%92kˈt%C9%99%CA%8Ap%C9%99di%...

> “They have a curiosity,” he said. “For some other animals, it’s only about eating and making love. But I think octopuses have time to wander — time for hobbies.”

Book reco - Raph Koster's Theory of Fun - how Play leads to knowledge formation. Octopuses love to play.

I've seen them playing, and whenever I visit the coastal tidal pools of my youth back home in southwest Australia, I make it a habit of sparing a gold coin for the task of luring them out of their cubbies wherever I find them .. I once played 'fetch' with an octopus for an hour, over and over just throwing a gold coin into the area outside its lair, having it come out and chase the glinting disc as it sinks deeper, discover it is inedible, toss it aside for me to retrieve, and repeat over and over until I eventually got bored.

I've often seen 'middens' containing dregs of the local fishermen, lures and hooks and sinkers and other shiny trash, collected in a pile, and in my youth I'd often catch an octopus tending to such treasures.

They are truly beautiful creatures, and I hope to see more and more interaction between our species, and less harvesting for food (at least on our side of the diplomatic table...)

Oof.. that hit me right in the bellyfeels..

Of all the intelligent genuses, these guys must realize they have the shortest time on earth

Imagine being taken from your environment, maybe on a spaceship and get to see, among other things, a human market, where parts of humans are sold.

I'm sure that octopus has a UFO kidnaping story.

*hahaha* shudders

I recently watched a decent natgeo series on Octopus

Ep. 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WepnzaNLLMI

Ep. 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah8U0-fV6k8

Ep. 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0RLERl3TmU

Hyper fascinating projects. How did the ambassador react/ behave after his visit? Did he try to "write" it down as cave scribbles for posterity.

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