[HN Gopher] Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each o...
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Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
Author : hhs
Score : 325 points
Date : 2022-11-10 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| z9znz wrote:
| > "The environment for these specific octopuses is such that they
| have this interaction between individuals," she says. "It's
| communication, in a way."
|
| It seems naive to assume they don't have communication (more
| frequent and more complex), even though we may not have noticed
| or been able to detect it.
| [deleted]
| iAm25626 wrote:
| Children of Ruin - Adrian Tchaikovsky interesting read on
| cephalopods in a sci-fi/evolution context
| lzooz wrote:
| Related: https://www.spainfoodsherpas.com/pulpo-a-la-gallega-
| recipe-t...
| gaudat wrote:
| Splatoon 4 is looking good huh
| pvaldes wrote:
| Fetch, little Octavius, Fetch!
| tshaddox wrote:
| Have been _caught_ throwing things at each other. Like it's
| illegal!
|
| https://youtu.be/sivmld0X8eE
| rojobuffalo wrote:
| it's interesting how the constraint of being in water limits
| inhabitants from developing technologies like fire and throwing
| projectiles for hunting. octopuses seem like they have the
| physiology and neurology to figure out projectiles and even
| grinding a sharp point, but that strategy wouldn't give them the
| same boost it did early humans because of the drag of water.
| construction and engineering is also made difficult by tides and
| erosion so they don't take it much farther than piling up some
| shells and rocks for a little sleep spot.
| intrasight wrote:
| It's interesting then to contemplate what kind of society we
| would have if we had developed our level of sentience but done
| so under water. Anybody know of any good sci-fi that explores
| that?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Octopus species just don't live long enough to develop much
| intelligence or culture. Most of them only live a year and die
| after reproducing.
| intrasight wrote:
| Some live to five years. Long enough to get clever.
| eshack94 wrote:
| I wonder what it's like to be an octopus. What kind of thoughts
| do they think? How do they perceive the world?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Social networking in a clam shell.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm reading Children of Ruin, that's how it starts.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Also very relevant and literally just published a few weeks ago
| (and a very good read):
|
| https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374605957/themountaininth...
| FredPret wrote:
| I find Star Trek's aliens so human-like that it ruins the whole
| thing for me. But Children of Ruin is so much better!
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| My head-canon for this has always been the universal
| translator also translated the physical appearance of beings
| so that you could read their body language. This explains why
| everyone looks like humans with a slightly different color
| and head shape. In some cases, like energy beings and giant
| slimes, it simply cannot translate anything and displays the
| original being.
|
| This head-canon melts in the face of the actual lore, but it
| helps me suspend disbelief.
| svachalek wrote:
| There's official canon for it, summarized here (spoilers)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Star_Trek:_The_Nex
| t...
| citrusynapse wrote:
| Steven King's lesser known _From A Buick 8_ is a surprisingly
| good slow-burner that has one of my favorite depictions of
| extradimensional creatures to date.
| tarentel wrote:
| The third and final? book, Children of Memory, is coming out
| next year.
| yitchelle wrote:
| For some reason, I imagined it would use its eight appendages and
| throw things like you see in a cartoon. Maybe I am watching too
| many cartoons. :-)
| euroderf wrote:
| I would LOVE to see the octopus version of Road Runner
| cartoons. The part of Wile E Coyote would have to be recast.
| excalibur wrote:
| No you're onto something, "throw" seems like it might not be
| the most appropriate verb here. This is more akin to blowing or
| spitting.
| mod wrote:
| Like those wiz-kids on the arcade basketball machines?
| somecommit wrote:
| Interesting open-space dynamic
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods
| interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness
| which is a recurring topic in these circles:
|
| Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of
| Consciousness
|
| My only critique is that the plural spelling is _octopuses_ and
| not _octopi_ , just like the article. _Octopuses_ just looks
| wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that it
| 's not a Latin word.
| mc32 wrote:
| English plural vs Latin vs Greek. Since its origin is Greek I'd
| take the anglicized plural or the original plural over the
| superimposed Latin plural which makes absolutely no sense to
| me.
| bananarchist wrote:
| No, the plural is octopodes, just like cactus->cactodes,
| virus->virodes and surplus-surplodes (my favorite)
| DFHippie wrote:
| _Virus_ is the only neuter second declension Latin noun in
| _-us_ (as opposed to _-um_ ). It means "poison" in Latin. I
| assume this was all meant tongue-in-cheek, but in case anyone
| is curious, the Latin plural is not _virodes_.
|
| All of this is recalled from my high school Latin, which was
| a long time ago.
| mc32 wrote:
| I always thought it was virus and virus given its root.
| adrian_b wrote:
| All the attested uses of the word virus in Latin are only
| in the singular number.
|
| Nevertheless, the correct plural would have been "virora",
| like tempus => tempora (time => times) or corpus => corpora
| (body => bodies), or perhaps "virera", like pondus =>
| pondera (weight => weights) or genus => genera (kind =>
| kinds), depending on the original quality of the final
| vowel in the stem.
|
| (Originally it would have been visos => visosa, but the
| final vowel in virus has become closed, while the
| intervocalic s has become r due to rhotacism.)
|
| You have been thinking at the masculine words whose stem
| ends in -u, like fructu (fruit), where the singular is
| fructus and the plural is fructuus. There -s is not part of
| the stem but it is a marker of the singular masculine
| nominative case.
|
| In virus and the other neuter nouns that end in -s, the -s
| is a part of the stem of the word, not a case marker. There
| are also masculine word where the stem ends in -s, like
| muus (mouse), in which the -s must also not be confused
| with the marker of the nominative case that is applied to
| some of the words with other kinds of stems.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > the correct plural would have been "virora", like
| tempus => tempora
|
| This would be true if _virus_ were a third declension
| noun. It it is second declension noun. Its genitive is
| _viri_ , not _viroris_.
| [deleted]
| adrian_b wrote:
| It is true that there are a few cases of a word "viri",
| which might have been the genitive of "virus".
|
| Nevertheless, the meaning of the word is not certain, at
| least in the examples that I have seen.
|
| Even if the word "viri" was really intended as the
| genitive of "virus", that is just another example of many
| cases when even the native speakers of Latin were not
| certain about the gender and declination class of certain
| seldom used words.
|
| Whoever has used "viri" as the genitive of "virus" was
| believing that it is a _masculine_ word of the 2nd
| declension. Most attested uses of virus are consistent
| with it being a _neuter_ of the 3rd declension (i.e.
| "virus" was used for the accusative case). The word virus
| cannot be a neuter of the 2nd declension (in that case it
| would have been "virum").
|
| Actually it is possible that in very old Latin the word
| virus was indeed a masculine of the 2nd declension, like
| its cognate word in Greek, but due to its meaning as a
| name of a substance it was transferred to the neuter
| gender in the 3rd declension.
|
| Such interconversions of the words ending in -us between
| 2nd declension masculine, 3rd declension neuter and 4th
| declension masculine have happened for many words during
| the history of the Latin language, because even some
| native speakers guessed wrong the word class after
| hearing a rare word just a few times, and then others
| imitated them.
| DFHippie wrote:
| That all makes sense. What I know of _virus_ is all from
| books like Allen and Greenough 's New Latin Grammar,
| which is basically a 19th century understanding:
| languages have particular rules one can enumerate and
| deviations from these rules are errors.
| smeagull wrote:
| Actually we're speaking English, and not Greek or Latin, so
| we add an 's' or 'es'.
|
| Just because some English professor assholes wanted to show
| off their knowledge of foreign languages in the 17-19th
| centuries, doesn't mean we should follow those rules now.
| They are responsible for a lot of the confusion and horrible
| English rules that users of English now have to deal with. I
| say shit on their horrible legacy.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Not so fast.
|
| "virus" is a nonstandard Latin mass noun. It's neuter, but
| uses the 2nd declension masculine nominative, and being a
| mass noun it had no plural form in classical Latin. However
| if you wanted to give it a plural form, the grammatically
| correct plural would be "vira". This construction would be
| analogous to "fishes" or "waters" in English.
|
| "surplus" comes to us via Old French, so its plural perhaps
| should be whatever plurals were in Old French. However it
| also originates in Latin as "superplus", which is the prefix
| "super" + the adjective "plus". The word "plus" itself is
| also irregular. Its masculine or feminine nominative plural
| is "plures", and its neuter nominative plural is "plura".
|
| I admit that "superplodes" is pretty fun to say.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| In latin the word virus does not have an attested plural[1]
| but if we model it from the other neuter nouns of the second
| declension it would be "vira".
|
| [1]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/virus#Declension_4
|
| The plural of surplus is surpluses[2]. It would be
| *surplures/surplura in latin, so it is an English/French
| original. It doesn't make sense from an historical linguistic
| perspective to have a stem in dental "d" when in latin was in
| liquid "r": plus, pluris[3].
|
| [2]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/surplus#Noun
| [3]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plus#Declension
|
| Cactus is a masculine name from the second declension: its
| latin plural is "cacti"[4]. Again, it would be unexplainable
| how that stem in dental would appear in a second declension
| name (stem in "o").
|
| [4]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cactus#Latin
|
| Octopus is right, given that it's a third declension name
| with a dental stem.[5]
|
| [5]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octopus#Latin
| bananarchist wrote:
| Your surplodes of evidence will never sway me and my
| linguistodes degree
| euroderf wrote:
| I tried to pursue this topic to the antipodes but I only
| found an antipus.
| cph123 wrote:
| I googled "cactodes" and this comment was the 7th result on
| the first page.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's 6th for me, and no adverts. How does this get
| monetised?
| orangepurple wrote:
| Something something pr0n
| ant6n wrote:
| 7th result on the first page? Sounds like an authoritative
| source to me!
| pessimizer wrote:
| Google it a few more times, google will start feeding it
| back to people who will also google it in disbelief; two
| years from now they're using it in NYT headlines.
| knaekhoved wrote:
| Impressive indexing speed.
| valarauko wrote:
| 8th for me on Kagi
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It's 6th now.
| jl6 wrote:
| abacus->abacodes
|
| nautilus->nautilodes
|
| anus->anodes
|
| ?!
| barrenko wrote:
| Isn't it virii (joke)?
| daveslash wrote:
| It may be a word like "fishes". I once saw "fishes" on an
| interpretive sign at an aquarium and some folks were mocking
| such and obvious grammatical error. Turns out, "fish" is the
| correct way to refer to multiple individual fish as a group,
| whereas "fishes" is the correct way to refer to multiple
| species of fish.
|
| I wonder if "octopi" might refer to multiple octopus without
| making any indication as to weather they are or are not the
| same species, whereas 'octopodes' deliberately speaks across
| speciation? I dunno... I'm just spit-balling here. I probably
| should have done more research before commenting. Downvote if
| I'm way off base. :)
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| octopi arises because people have learned Latin 2nd
| declension masculine nouns, by accident or repetition,
| where pluralizing (nominative case) turns the -us to -i.
|
| It's a pattern matching phenomenon.
|
| It would be less weird if there were not spelling
| irregularities, since the -pus is meant to be foot (like
| pes, pedes...in Latin, or pos, podes,... in Greek).
|
| Basically, the spelling irregularity triggers a sensible
| pattern match, which happens to of course not honor the
| spelling irregularity.
|
| And then nerds like me write too much about such, but i had
| years of Latin (and a little Greek) for something!
| daveslash wrote:
| Ironically, when not used as a word _ending_ , but as a
| single word... "I" is a singular way to talk about a
| person (namely, oneself), where as "us" is a plural way
| to talk about multiple people.
| jacobmartin wrote:
| Maddeningly, it doesn't even apply to all Latin -us
| nouns. For instance, the plural of apparatus should be
| apparatus if we're applying the Latin rules. Apparati, as
| it might seem, makes no sense! So even when the pattern
| match correctly identifies the language, it can be
| misleading.
|
| --fellow Latin nerd
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| 4th or 5th declension esoterica ftw!
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Mass noun is the term for that. Octopus is generally only a
| mass noun if talking about their meat.
|
| As far as the plural goes, it is just a weird corner of the
| language where there is no consensus on what the right word
| is. merriam-webster lists all three variants as plurals.
| hanoz wrote:
| _> ...whereas "fishes" is the correct way to refer to
| multiple species of fish._
|
| What about the fishes of bread and fishes fame?
| colechristensen wrote:
| There's no right way. Octopus is a word created in modern
| scientific latin by nonnative (scientific) speakers out of
| greek parts brought into English. There are no real rules
| there.
|
| It is not a loanword from Greek, it was meant to be a
| scientific latin origin word, but not native latin like
| other Latin words that have -us as endings for nouns.
|
| It's a mess, there's no answer, pluralize as you like but
| don't go telling anyone there's a right way because there
| isn't. It's a greek, latin, and english word, but also none
| of them. No usage is standard or ultimately correct.
| euroderf wrote:
| > Octopus is a word created in modern scientific latin by
| nonnative (scientific) speakers out of greek parts
| brought into English. There are no real rules there.
|
| I recall reading that back in the day, there were
| criticisms that the neologism "television" would never
| catch on ... because it combined Greek and Latin roots.
| anthk wrote:
| >because it combined Greek and Latin roots.
|
| Romances in a nutshell.
| cnelsenmilt wrote:
| Personally I've always preferred to muddy the waters by
| treating it as a fourth-declension noun, so that its
| plural would be _octopus_.
| cupofpython wrote:
| so then we are free to allow any convention to take hold.
|
| so why not use the multiple different potential
| pluralities to differentiate between same species,
| different species, and unknown species? I think the
| following would be the most intuitive!
|
| Octopuses seems most intuitive and already assumes
| unknown species (ie used by children who dont even know
| what a species is)
|
| Octopi sounds similar to a singular entity (no trailing
| s), so a group from a single species
|
| Octopodes then could explicitly refer to multiple species
| together, as it changes the spelling a bit and also adds
| an s
|
| Of course, conventions are not decided upon by a single
| persons thought process in a random internet forum - so
| I'm not sure why I wrote this out
| [deleted]
| smcl wrote:
| I feel like there has to be one of those "galaxy brain"
| progression memes for Octopuses -> Octopi -> Octopodes
| JohnKacz wrote:
| Love it. This is now my convention. So it's at least
| _TWO_ people in a random internet forum!
| permo-w wrote:
| one that I often hear foreign speakers struggling with is
| "hair". 1 hair, 2 hairs, a whole head of hair. seemingly,
| if it's countable it follows normal rules, if it's not, it
| goes back to singular form. but then it could be absolutely
| correct to say "the many hairs on my head", an uncountable
| which retains the plural.
|
| English is an absolute mess
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| Japanese is worse. You count "1 thing", "2 thing", "3
| thing", except the word for "thing" changes depending on
| the shape of the thing you are counting.
|
| So thin flat things like paper or shirts are 1 mai, 2
| mai, 3 mai, while to count books you say 1 satsu, 2
| satsu, 3 satsu.
|
| Long round things like pencils or umbrellas go 1 pon, 2
| hon, 3 bon, 4 hon, 5 hon, 6 pon, etc (yeah you read that
| right).
|
| There are different counter words for different kinds of
| animals, small things, vehicles, shoes, drinks, people,
| etc.
|
| https://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese-
| numbers-co...
| permo-w wrote:
| christ that is horrendous, especially pon hon bon hon hon
| pon. is there some kind of historical logic behind it?
| sheepdestroyer wrote:
| It's for a better sounding liaison depending on the
| preceding number
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| ippon nihon sanbon yonhon gohon roppon
| a1369209993 wrote:
| That's just consonant mutation[0][1], like how english
| speakers say "a pencil" but "an umbrella"[2]. (Ie, "hon",
| "pon", and "bon" are all the same word, just pronounced
| differently due to environment.) The fact that ho bo po
| (ho bo po) are all the same underlying letter, just with
| different diacritics, kind of hints at this.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant_mutation
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku
|
| 2: Of course, _English_ pretty much only does the
| conspicous verson of this for that one word, because
| English.
| autoexec wrote:
| > it's countable it follows normal rules, if it's not, it
| goes back to singular form.
|
| You'd have a hard time counting all the stars, but "sky
| of star" doesn't work like "head of hair" does. I love
| how expressive English is, but it's got issues for sure.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| All languages are a mess. Imagine instead of specific
| noun rules, every single noun had a rule by way of a
| gender. And to conjugate "boat" or "table" you need to
| know its arbitrary gender.
| permo-w wrote:
| English, unlike a lot of the big European languages,
| doesn't have a central controlling body and hasn't gone
| through powerful standardisation efforts - beyond
| dictionaries (i.e. consistent spelling and meaning). many
| (most?) European languages follow pretty consistent
| conjugation and pronunciation rules. yeah there are a few
| exceptions in each case, but nowhere near the scale of
| English.
|
| grammatical gender is in most cases only really as hard
| as learning the words themselves
| staplung wrote:
| The correct form is to sum up the legs involved. So two of
| the eight-legged creatures whose plural is in doubt would be
| hexadecapods. And if you have an octopus eating a kangaroo
| you'd then have a decapod, and so on.
| bmitc wrote:
| Either is fine. Octopuses or octopodes. The latter is the
| technical answer, but the former is acceptable and probably
| even more common. Although it is based on a Greek word,
| English isn't Greek.
| lalos wrote:
| what is the plural for campus?
| tokai wrote:
| >The Latinate plural form campi is sometimes used,
| particularly with respect to colleges or universities;
| however, it is sometimes frowned upon. By contrast, the
| common plural form campuses is universally accepted.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/campus#Etymology
| smeagull wrote:
| For pedants it's octopodes because its a Greek root, but the
| sort of people who think that way are the worst and are
| responsible for screwing up English a lot, so fuck those nerds.
|
| If you're speaking English then you just add an s or es. So
| Octopuses is right.
| LightG wrote:
| Octopussies, natch.
| mike10921 wrote:
| If someone at a party complained to me that octopuses is wrong
| and it should be octopi, I would most likely be moving on to
| the next table..
| space_ghost wrote:
| And I would happily jump in your vacant seat and enjoy hours
| of pedantic discussions on the vagaries of silly English
| words.
| dmichulke wrote:
| Pro tip: invite him for for pizzae
| flyingfences wrote:
| Dialectically, "pizza" is an uncountable and "pie(s)" is
| the unit.
| Moissanite wrote:
| And you'd be right to do so - life is too short for spending
| time with people who are wrong:
| https://oceanconservancy.org/blog/2022/02/01/plural-octopus/
| the__alchemist wrote:
| See Also: _Children of Ruin_.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| The plural spelling is whatever plural people generally use.
| Why wouldn't it be?
| pmb_ wrote:
| I'd have to give an anti-recommendation to this book. The
| author never explains his thesis and the book reads like his
| thesis was "Octopuses are cool" and spends the entire time
| listing fun facts and interesting stories about his
| interactions with cephalopods.
|
| He spends very little time drawing connections to consciousness
| or speaking about what octopus life can tell us about
| consciousness. There is a whole chapter where he talks about
| the influence of language in human action (like self-talk), and
| then ends the chapter by with something like "and octopuses
| don't have this ability". What was the point of that whole
| chapter then?
|
| Maybe my expectations were miscalibrated, and I thought he
| would spend more time drawing connections between octopuses and
| humans, and what those similarities could tell us about
| consciousness. Instead of that, the writing about consciousness
| in this book is quite shallow.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > the book reads like his thesis was "Octopuses are cool" and
| spends the entire time listing fun facts and interesting
| stories about his interactions with cephalopods.
|
| That sounds like a recommendation to me!
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Agreed! My curiosity was piqued by OP, but this description
| is what actually convinced me to buy the book.
| xcambar wrote:
| Is there a book or resource you would recommend then?
| pmb_ wrote:
| If you're just curious about octopuses, I think you can
| probably learn much more in much less time by doing your
| own research and finding articles like this.
|
| If you're more interested in consciousness a good place to
| start is "Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental
| Mystery of the Mind" by Annaka Harris.
| Matumio wrote:
| Having read that book, yes, "Octopuses are cool" is a pretty
| good summary. It's worth reading it for that.
|
| On the biology part, if you never have heard of terms like
| "efference copy" it will be interesting food for thought
| about what consciousness might be, but no "solution" really.
| And you'll learn that an octopus is a ten megapixel screen,
| but that's just the first point again. If you only want that
| first point, there is also a "My Octopus Teacher" on Netflix,
| which is great in its own way.
|
| If you wanted to read about human intelligence, I suggest
| "The Secret of Our Success" by Henrich instead.
| comboy wrote:
| Same. I had huge expectations. Basically what you learn is
| that octopuses are intelligent and for a long time we didn't
| realize because they are smart enough to know they are in
| custody when we catch them and they're pretty social. I mean,
| it's OK, but the whole book feels a bit like a preface to the
| thing which never came.
| hbarka wrote:
| I mean even for humans consciousness has been a mystery. I
| throw, therefore I am.
| jtchang wrote:
| Actually you are slightly wrong (but only if you are british).
| Per the merriam webster editor:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s166nC_hiZ0&ab_channel=Sebas...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Yes yes I know that it's not a Latin word.
|
| It came into English from scientific (not classical) latin, so
| it kind of is.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| some recent speculative sci-fi on same subject, The Mountain in
| the Sea by Ray Nayler set in near future Vietnam.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| IIRC on QI they said it's _octopodes_ , the -pus becoming
| -podes in the plural as foot to feet
| kennend3 wrote:
| The Octopus is my favourite animal (second is the Camel).
|
| For others who may find them interesting check out "My Octopus
| Teacher"
| joeconway wrote:
| Also this https://www.scribd.com/book/317091083/The-Soul-of-an-
| Octopus...
| pacaro wrote:
| Or you can choose not to use the inflectional morphology of
| another language on a loanword. Especially in a case like
| octopus where it (arguably) isn't a loanword
| dharmab wrote:
| If you want to get really pedantic, use Octopodes :)
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > If you want to get really pedantic
|
| Well _that_ certainly got our attention. Please, continue.
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-
| plura...
|
| The full thing is worth a read, but when you steal a word
| from one language that it also stole from a third, the
| pluralization rules are pretty much anything goes.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Octopoda is the order, better not mix both terms
| euroderf wrote:
| Is this a niche where I could use "octopodibus" ?
| lolc wrote:
| > "The environment for these specific octopuses is such that they
| have this interaction between individuals," she says. "It's
| communication, in a way."
|
| Watching it, I immediately classify the behavior as aggression.
| Why they would stop at "communication" is not clear to me.
| smileybarry wrote:
| Reminds me of that video of the two fish spitting sand at each
| other. One is digging a hole by spitting sand out, the other
| spits sand _back_ at it just because.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePH6Ky0YWZA
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| That reminds me of that video of Hunter S. Thompson shooting at
| his neighbor with a lugar.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| "What's that they're flinging at us!?"
|
| "Oh, dear Lord, all over the Dean!"
| plasma_beam wrote:
| Really cool, though a reminder(?) of how we don't give other life
| forms enough credit for their thinking ability. I looked out in
| my backyard the other week and saw two foxes playing together
| with my kids' volleyball they left in the yard. Like grasping it
| with mouth, tossing it, going to get it, wrestling each other.
| Amusing stuff.
| 101008 wrote:
| I adopted a dog (for the first time in my life!) a few months
| ago and I am surprised in how she learns some stuff and how she
| behaves, reacts to triggers and inputs, etc. Of course, _it is
| only a dog_, but it is also a living thing with reduced
| communication skills and still she absorbs and learns a lot,
| and remembers, etc. Animals are truly amazing.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Ah, if only Gary Larson was still writing _The Far Side_
| comics...
| Jun8 wrote:
| When I first read the title for some reason I envisioned the
| throw to look like a sentinel throwing a bomb in _The Matrix_.
| Nothing like that, obviously.
|
| My question is: was it throwing the shells out since it's done
| eating them or in response to the other octopus that's sort of
| messing with it?
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| The shells throwing example wasn't as convincing as the silt
| throwing example.
| test1235 wrote:
| "... although some of the time it seemed that they were just
| throwing away debris or food leftovers, it did sometimes appear
| that they were throwing things at each other."
|
| That one instance is kinda hard to tell, but it sounds like
| they saw similar behaviour across observations.
| FrameworkFred wrote:
| "I'm glad there was no internet to record MY behavior when I was
| growing up!" --an old octopus, 11/10/2022
| [deleted]
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| As a counterpoint, The Atlantic ran an interesting article[0]
| yesterday suggesting that it's not really clear what the
| Octopuses' aims are when they do this, and that we do really like
| to anthropomorphize them.
|
| [0] -
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/11/gloomy-o...
| addaon wrote:
| They really like being anthropomorphized.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Thank you for this. Perfect joke.
| curious_cat_163 wrote:
| Maybe they are just confused about the whole thing, you know.
| :)
| schkolne wrote:
| tx for sharing love this quote:
|
| What looks intentional to one observer may seem accidental to
| another. "A lot of animal-behavior analysts would look at the
| same sequence of behavior and give a different interpretation,"
| chmod775 wrote:
| Engaging in play is not unique to humans, so assuming an animal
| is just fooling around is not anthropomorphizing anything.
| jdironman wrote:
| It makes me wonder if they engage in "play" does it evoke
| some "emotion" in them such as joy etc? some reward maybe?
| and if it does does other scenarios evoke other emotions we
| consider to be human centric. Anyone have a link to a good
| paper regarding it?
| [deleted]
| klabb3 wrote:
| > we do really like to anthropomorphize them.
|
| Yes, people tend to over-anthropormphize in the sense they map
| to specific human concepts. But otoh, we tend to greatly
| underestimate the _complexity_ of animal behavior. Sometimes
| people mix these up. So, just because an anthropomorphization
| isn 't correct, doesn't mean that the behavior isn't complex.
|
| Even animals like spiders and ants demonstratw incredible
| complex behavior, for social, hunting, sanitation purposes etc.
| So don't feel bad about anthropomorphizing, as long as you are
| aware it's just fun speculation. There are infinite mysteries
| in animal behavior and it's absolutely fascinating. There is so
| much left to explore.
| mentalpiracy wrote:
| It seems quite easy to conflate complexity with
| anthropomorphism, because we see ourselves as the apex, of
| sorts.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| It's as much as the article says:
|
| > "We weren't able to try and assess what the reasons might
| be,"
| Makobado1 wrote:
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