[HN Gopher] Sleeping octopuses may have dreams, but they're prob...
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Sleeping octopuses may have dreams, but they're probably brief
Author : gmays
Score : 92 points
Date : 2021-03-29 14:58 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| DickingAround wrote:
| They are practically aliens to us, having such a very long ago
| common ancestor. We can learn a lot about ourselves by studying
| this alien species and that convergent evolution they have with
| ours (e.g. sleep). A good, deeper book on this is "Other Minds".
| dvh wrote:
| It's been a while since I have parakeet but I think birds also
| dream.
| rodcoelho wrote:
| Not to shoot down the findings but anyone with a dog knows that
| other sentient creatures also dream
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Not once is it claimed that they are unique in this ability,
| infact the first line of the article:
|
| > Octopuses have alternating periods of "quiet" and "active"
| sleep that make their rest similar to that of mammals, despite
| being separated by more than 500 million years of evolution.
| stuntkite wrote:
| How this is being reported annoys me. I read the abstract of the
| paper. I do not believe the scientists studying this take such a
| surprised perspective, but are studying extremely technical
| specifics. I get the need to push the paper out to get some
| clicks but science journalism needs to be better.
|
| "May dream!" Sheesh. I don't have a dog anymore, but I've had a
| couple that clearly dream. I have several cats that also clearly
| dream. I suspect my leopard geckos dream because they definitely
| take a lot of naps. I'm all for this type of study and it appears
| to be rigorous and interesting. I also believe cephalopods have
| complex social, spatial, and possibly symbolic dreams like humans
| have that cats and dogs may not have. But if it sleeps, it
| dreams.
|
| The idea that humans are so far from animals that we can't allow
| them complex lives full of the same wonder that we allow
| ourselves is a stupid separation that inhibits understanding and
| reporting that doesn't equate animal and human consciousness is a
| stepping stone to determining which humans are human, which
| historically has worked out poorly.
|
| A human exclusive understanding of consciousness is a great way
| to never be able to talk to our resident or extra-planetary dream
| having compatriots. The article isn't explicitly surprised, but
| it really is worded like a feigned surprise when it could be
| framed in a less annoying way.
|
| Maybe I just need a nap.
| r00fus wrote:
| On one hand I agree that the human-exceptional bias that seems
| to pervade society is sad, and we should be over it given how
| well we know our pets.
|
| On the other hand, it's nice to see more news exposure of views
| that animals _are_ similar to humans.
|
| On the gripping hand, there's a reason for this bias - it's
| inherent part of human (and possibly animal) nature - to
| justify our superiority. It's also useful for certain groups in
| power to keep these biases strong.
| DethNinja wrote:
| Agreed, also to add I got a dog and a hamster and I'm 99% sure
| even my hamster dreams regularly.
|
| I think humanity is making a mistake by thinking there is a
| huge difference between consciousness of other animals and
| humans.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I had a biology professor I college quite adamant the dogs
| definitely did not dream. _"Their brains aren't complex
| enough"._ I asked if he had any pets, he said no. That was
| the end of that conversation for me.
| the_local_host wrote:
| I think it would be fairly shocking to find that something like
| dreaming would evolve in two species whose most recent common
| ancestor didn't dream.
|
| To have two non-closely related species implement sophisticated
| cognition in a way that overlaps so much suggests that
| intelligence and consciousness, or at least the kinds that we
| experience, doesn't or can't take a wide variety of forms.
|
| It's not surprising that a dog dreams; there's a dog analogue
| for most human things, right down to the eyebrows. But an
| octopus? Wow.
| croshan wrote:
| I can't find the article saying that the most recent common
| ancestor between humans and octopi doesn't dream. I think
| that'd be quite hard to prove, since that species is likely
| extinct.
| fikama wrote:
| From what I remember Our common ancestor lived 500 milion
| years ago. It was rather a realy simple creature. With not
| many neurons and I think this is some kind of estimation.
| Of course we can't be sure but we never can be sure.
|
| I hope you can understand me my english isn't very good
| kkylin wrote:
| Cephalopods are protostomes
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protostome), vertebrates
| are deuterostomes
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterostome). I'd think
| with our current understanding of bilaterian evolution,
| one would expect the last common ancestor to be something
| relatively simple (a worm-like animal?) with a
| rudimentary nervous system.
|
| But, not a biologist. Happy to be corrected!
| adrian_b wrote:
| The protostomes are a monophyletic group, i.e. they
| include all the descendants of some animal that lived a
| short time before the beginning of Cambrian, probably
| around 550 million years ago.
|
| On the other hand the deuterostomes might be or might not
| be a monophyletic group, it is not known yet with
| certainty, so it is still possible that the word
| "deuterostomes" might be invalid, if there exists no such
| group.
|
| The name "deuterostomes" is used for the ensemble of 2
| groups, the chordates (including us) and a group composed
| of echinoderms and hemichordates (Ambulacralia).
|
| These 2 groups share one character present in their
| ancestors, the existence of some openings that connect
| the pharynx with the exterior (e.g. the ears in humans or
| the gills in fish).
|
| However, there is a chance that this character also
| existed in the ancestor of the protostomes, but it was
| then lost, in which case it would not be a proof of a
| closer relation between chordates and
| echinoderms+hemichordates.
|
| The ancestor of the protostomes and the ancestor of the
| chordates both had a rather complex nervous system, while
| the ancestor of the echinoderms+hemichordates had a much
| simpler nervous system, similar to that of many of the
| cnidarians (but even some jellyfish have a more complex
| nervous system than that).
|
| If it will be proven in the future that in fact the
| protostomes are more closely related to the chordates
| than the echinoderms(+hemichordates), then their common
| ancestor would already have had a complex nervous system.
|
| In this case, the similarities between octopuses and
| mammals, while still greatly increased by convergent
| evolution, would be far less surprising, because there
| would be much more features of the nervous system that
| would be inherited from the common ancestor.
|
| While there are many genetic similarities between
| echinoderms+hemichordates and chordates (i.e. us), most
| of those are also present in cnidarians, so they must be
| older than the separation between chordates and
| protostomes. The chordates retained them but the
| protostomes lost those features, so they are not a
| definitive proof of relationship.
|
| Which is the closest relative of the chordates is one of
| the most important questions of the animal phylogeny and
| there are chances that the answer that was believed true
| for more than a century is in fact wrong.
|
| The correct answer to that question has consequences
| mainly for understanding the evolution of the nervous
| system and for the applicability of some things that we
| can learn about the brains of protostomes (like the
| octopuses) to our own brain.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Yes, this last common ancestor has humans and octopi
| among its descendants, but also limpets, clams, and sea
| squirts. If it also dreamed, if dreaming isn't a product
| of convergent evolution, that is also amazing.
|
| Your English is excellent, by the way, what little of it
| I've read.
| stuntkite wrote:
| I fully admit that I didn't read the first line of the
| article because I need a nap, but I stand by the fact that I
| think all things that sleep dream. I would not be surprised
| if we find out one day if we are around for a bit longer that
| trees dream. They definitely sleep and I've heard them say
| they make plans.
|
| In all seriousness though, I like Douglas Hofstadter's
| consciousness cone. If it is life, it has a mirage of
| consciousness. I think his term "mirage" doesn't fully
| illustrate the holographic nature of it, but I don't quite
| have a better grip on it than that myself. If it has a rest
| period likely where it sorts what it's done and turns that
| into new patterns... well, that's a dream to me. I think we
| will see dreaming things anywhere we find life in the cosmos.
| I think it goes all the way down and is fundamental.
|
| The results from this paper are very exciting to me in that
| context. They illustrate my assumptions. I think it's
| important research for sure. I watched octopus sleep and
| change color in person at an aquarium in Seattle. A great
| pacific octopus. I've also been there when they were awake
| just before feeding and had one all wadded up watching me
| through the glass waiting for their feeder. They are
| incredible.
| DickingAround wrote:
| Do trees actually 'sleep'? Like they don't have neural
| centers that we consider to be brain-like, that I know of.
| Further, just defining the concept of sleep is a little
| tricky and I'm not aware of anything like sleep-ish brain
| waves, or not moving for a long period of time that we
| consider sleep-like in trees.
|
| So this idea of sleep evolving in two different species
| whose ancestor didn't sleep is very interesting.
| stuntkite wrote:
| Trees definitely sleep nightly and hibernate in winter
| [0]. Their root system and the mycelial network that
| interoperates with them is astoundingly complex and looks
| very similar to a brain as we faster moving life are
| blessed with on top.
|
| Here is a lady talking about some of Paul Stamets'
| research. [1] I also recommend this talk by him. [2]
|
| Mushrooms interacting with plant roots look similar to a
| brain and we are just beginning to grok how deep that
| goes.
|
| [0] https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/trees-sleep-
| night
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q0un2GPsSQ
|
| [2] https://q.sustainability.illinois.edu/a-fungal-
| estrangement/
| everdrive wrote:
| >Trees definitely sleep nightly
|
| We're equivocating the term "sleep" here. Trees have a
| nightly cycle, but it's not sleep in the sense that I go
| to sleep at night.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| I don't necessarily buy that this is equivocating
| anything. How else would you define sleep scientifically
| other than as a nightly cycle that follows a circadian
| rhythm and propagates metabolic and hormonal changes
| throughout the body?
|
| If you're trying to argue that it needs to have a "rest"
| component to it, I would remind you that during night
| time, trees do not photosynthesise and also the human
| brain is not at all at rest during sleep in terms of
| objective neurochemical activity. Consciousness is lost
| (except even this is a hazy cut off thanks to dreams) but
| there is a lot going on still in the brain and body.
| tayo42 wrote:
| How do you expect plants to photosynthesize at night
| without light. I don't think that holds up
| vimacs2 wrote:
| That's a fair rebuttal, my bad. However, one thing that
| plants do more during the night without any bio-
| mechanical necessity attached to it is the release of
| auxin which is the flora analogue to growth hormone, just
| like animals do during sleep.
| stuntkite wrote:
| I guess you're catching up on the conversation. I don't
| think you know that much about tree sleep.
| musingsole wrote:
| > So this idea of sleep evolving in two different species
|
| You're assuming sleep comes after consciousness. Whatever
| sleep and dreams are, it's entirely possible they are the
| precursor to consciousness, not an evolutionary step off
| of consciousness.
| stuntkite wrote:
| Very concise. ^^ This guy dreams ^^
| vimacs2 wrote:
| While I agree that it's silly to pretend like dreams are
| something exclusive to humans (especially considering that
| our prefrontal cortex is largely deactivated during them
| anyway), I think it can be misleading to categorise all
| animals as having similar experiences to humans in their
| dreams.
|
| Take Dolphins for example. They need to keep one hemisphere
| active at all times to keep themselves swimming and
| breathing while the other rests so at some point in their
| sleep, the hemisphere that's resting swaps over. This is
| going to give their dreams a very different feel to ours,
| possibly something in between a lucid and regular dream,
| and those are fellow mammals!
|
| Imagine how different the experience of even birds must be
| never mind Octopuses which are 600 million years removed
| from us in terms of evolution and have a neural structure
| that is far more distributed than our own. Perhaps
| individual octopi legs have their own separate stream of
| consciousness distinct from the animal as a whole.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Thank you for these pre-nap contributions. They are the
| best things I've read all week.
|
| If agreeing with you makes me eccentric then count me in.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Emerging evidence suggests that basically everything has a
| "sleep-like" state (lowered activity, periodic,
| homeostatically regulated, increased arousal threshold,
| necessary for good health).
|
| In most things with good experimental models for learning and
| memory, this sleep-like state supports formation of long term
| memories, e.g. [0] in nematode worms and [1] in honeybees.
|
| So really the rate limiting step is the discovery of how to
| interrogate/characterize behavior, learning and memory in
| weird little critters that don't sense or behave like
| mammals.
|
| Of course there is also the philosophical question re: qualia
| of memory-reconsolidation-associated processes in sleep and
| whether they feels the same to a human or nematode - Probably
| not, as everything else probably feels pretty different to
| them too! But from a behavioralist perspective they're pretty
| much the same modulo the behavioral range of a human or a
| worm.
|
| [0] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.24.395228
| v2.... [1] https://jeb.biologists.org/content/215/22/3981
| monster_group wrote:
| Agreed. I once read a "science article" on whales. The article
| claimed "since whales are not humans, they cannot be lonely and
| therefore..." blah blah. I closed the article, immediately
| after I read that statement. Pretentiousness of humans is mind
| boggling.
| stuntkite wrote:
| Like giant mammals that have something close to the internet
| via aquatic sound transmission since before we got out of
| trees can't be a beautiful and complex psychic profusion.
| They must be chumps! These assholes didn't even invent money!
| Something something Star Trek IV.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| If they had the internet before us, they could have just
| skipped the metal and paper money steps and skipped right
| to a group maintained ledger.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Who says they didn't? Maybe it's so decentralized that
| humans can't even see it!
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| My problem is more so that "being lonely" or "dreaming" is
| not something that has an actual definition.
|
| In research, various different _ad hoc_ definitions may be
| provided that are then measured, but these definitions run
| apart in different research that deals with it, and so all
| measure a different thing.
|
| I once read research that defined "level of attractiveness"
| _ad hoc_ as "the distance at which the participants place
| their chairs next to each other when asked to sit next to
| each other", ehh, yes well...
|
| For the sake of research, dreaming in humans is often purely
| defined as the stage of r.e.m. sleep, whatever the
| experiences the human may tell might be.
|
| The other problem is, of course, that very often, the _ad
| hoc_ definition chosen, can very easily be so chosen in
| support of the conclusion that the research wishes emerge.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I think you may need a nap. First line of the article:
|
| > Octopuses have alternating periods of "quiet" and "active"
| sleep that make their rest similar to that of mammals, despite
| being separated by more than 500 million years of evolution.
|
| The article is aware that cats and dogs and other mammals
| dream. The fact that cephalapods, who are obviously very alien
| compared to us, do is the new bit.
| stuntkite wrote:
| Fair. I am actually a dog and have not fully learned to read.
| I apologize for my bullshit.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Is this a new paradigm that we've discovered? Software devs
| are dogs and lawyers are cats (despite their insistence
| they are not)?
| stuntkite wrote:
| Who told you I write software? The cats are definitely
| liars.... I mean lawyers. Whatever, but they always get
| me on technicalities.
| erulabs wrote:
| I fully believe that discovering the function of sleep and of
| dreams will go extremely far to understanding the function of
| consciousness. Evolutionary psychology ("genetic epistemology")
| is increasingly becoming the most interesting thing I've ever
| read about. Particularly the work of Jean Piaget. Everyone knows
| plenty of animals dream, so I'm looking forward to having the
| time to read the actual whitepaper here!
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Do cephalapods dream of aquatic sheep?
|
| Would this imply that dreams developed some 500 millions years
| ago or that the different trees of the animal kingdom both
| developed the ability?
| xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote:
| >Would this imply that dreams developed some 500 millions years
| ago or that the different trees of the animal kingdom both
| developed the ability?
|
| Cephalopods have much, much more complex brains than the other
| mollusks (such as gastropods or bivalves), so the latter is
| more likely.
| scythmic_waves wrote:
| Convergent evolution [1] is a pretty fascinating phenomenon!
| Crazy to think it could happen for something as specific as a
| brain process like dreaming. Though I guess we all sleep so
| maybe it's not that crazy.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| It really is, especially considering how different the rest
| of the organism turned out to be.
| unfunco wrote:
| Many trees/plants have dimethyltryptamine in them, the human
| experience of taking that chemical is often described as being
| close to dream-like, I'm not sure if it's relevant though.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| not only did they convergently develop an eye similar to ours.
| It lacks a major flaw that exists in the mammalian version.
| Theirs has no blind spot!
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| We have color vision thanks our 3 types of cone cells (RGB)
| while they only one type of cone cell so they see in black
| and white.
|
| Since they can change skin color to match their environment
| there must be a way they can "see" color.
|
| One theory says that their weirdly shaped pupils and brain
| make up for this deficiency by figuring out the wavelengths
| of the light in their environment by using chromatic
| aberration effect.
| phcordner wrote:
| The human-octopus most recent common ancestor was an ancient
| organism from hundreds of million years ago. It would have been
| one of the earlier organisms to have bilateral symmetry and an
| embryonic development characterized by the three germ layers we
| have today.
|
| If you have a dog and have been to the aquarium you're likely to
| already intuit that octopuses do something that looks a lot like
| sleeping and that animals all the way down the family tree have
| periods of quiet and active sleep as well. The researchers here
| use a combination of observational techniques to suggest that the
| octopus sleep states observed are analogous to sleep in the
| vertebrate.
|
| The research paper as published does not explicitly mention
| dreaming, rather it is one of a host of processes implied when
| the researchers analogize the 'active sleep' behavior observed in
| the octopus to animal REM sleep patterns. The conclusion spells
| out the possible connection to the 'metabolic detoxification' and
| 'cognitive processing' functions of vertebrate REM sleep but does
| not state them definitively.
|
| The general media news article and the research paper have some
| slight differences because of their different intended audiences,
| but litigating that divide is best left to those already doing
| it: the esteemed scholars of the Dunning-Krueger Institute at
| Wikipedia University.
| [deleted]
| coss wrote:
| I watched My Octopus Teacher and it really opened my eyes to how
| smart they are. Watching the Octopus play with the fish
| conducting a symphony was so beautiful to watch. Was on the edge
| of my seat when it was evading the predator as well.
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