[HN Gopher] Octopuses seen hunting together with fish, punching ...
___________________________________________________________________
Octopuses seen hunting together with fish, punching those that
don't cooperate
Author : ceejayoz
Score : 281 points
Date : 2024-09-23 20:03 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nbcnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nbcnews.com)
| e40 wrote:
| > Video shows octopuses punching their companion fish to keep
| them on task and contributing to the hunt.
|
| What a wonderful combination of words.
| imp0cat wrote:
| I can already see the motivation posters in a performace-
| oriented companies: "Be the octopus in your team!"
| sparrish wrote:
| Seems like they're reading a lot into why the Octopus is punching
| those fish that are just hanging around them.
| krunck wrote:
| They're just flexin' for the cameras.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I agree, and one thing that makes me skeptical is that for it
| to be effective, the fish being punched would presumably have
| to understand that the octopus wants it to act in a certain way
| - i.e., the hypothesis seems to imply that the fish has a
| theory of mind with respect to the octopus. Similarly, it seems
| to imply that the octopus has a theory of mind about the fish -
| it believes that the fish will understand why the octopus is
| punching it.
|
| I'm not saying that this is impossible, but it is a very big
| claim. Furthermore, it is not clear from the video that the
| punching has the outcome implied by this hypothesis. It seems
| at least as plausible, at least from the video alone, that the
| octopus is just keeping the fish away from stealing an
| anticipated meal.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Theory of mind is not necessary for the fish. I think
| conditioning should be enough, and conditioning works on
| pigeons.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Fair point.
|
| On looking at it again, I think the reporter and/or editor
| have introduced unnecessarily teleological language. The
| researchers themselves describe the octopus behavior as
| though it is a matter of herding the fish - presumably, I
| suppose, to where it feels there are more prey to be found.
| bbqfog wrote:
| Could it not be like dogs herding sheep?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Octopuses are much more intelligent than many give them credit
| for, but sadly I also love takoyaki (but then again, eating horse
| and whale is also culturally acceptable in Japan, one of the few
| countries that allow it; I've tried both as well, they're pretty
| good).
| ravenstine wrote:
| Horse meat is really good. Not sure why we still forbid it in
| the United States considering how we eat plenty of cows and
| horseback riding is more or less a hobby now.
| edgyquant wrote:
| It's taboo like eating dog. I don't even know that's it
| illegal
| devilbunny wrote:
| Not in all states (it is illegal in some), but there's no
| mechanism for USDA inspection of the horse, which means you
| can't sell it.
|
| If you slaughtered and ate your own horse, it would
| probably be legal (and, at personal scale, probably would
| not be noticed even if it were not). But ask a lawyer.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I'm intrigued by your statement "horseback riding is more or
| less a hobby now". Are you implying that a ban on horse meat
| in the USA was originally intended to ensure an adequate
| supply of riding horses during the time when they were still
| widely used? All of the breeds that Wikipedia lists as bred
| for consumption are related to draught horses rather than
| riding horses, although for that matter the list doesn't
| include any American breeds at all.
| mewse-hn wrote:
| I think it's a fair assumption that the taboo against
| eating horse-meat is related to using horses for transport.
| Historically, armies wouldn't eat their horses unless they
| were in an extremely dire situation, etc.
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| horse meat is allowed in plenty of countries, in northeast
| italy you can find a lot of horse (and donkey) meat dishes. It
| is a delicacy though, and more expensive than "regular" meat.
| burkaman wrote:
| Also pretty common in Sicily.
| Moru wrote:
| We do see a lot of horses standing around on the acres lately
| but this is pets. They get medicin as all other pets and are
| not safe to eat for humans. The horse meat we eat is
| especially bred to be eaten.
| dboreham wrote:
| Not sure about today but when I was a kid horse meat was in
| every grocery store in France.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Most European countries do have horse meat.
| s_dev wrote:
| There have been corruption scandals where a portion of beef
| being sold in the EU was partially horse meat (nearly always
| minced or packaged foods) would be difficult to do with a
| steak or at least much more difficult. So people may be
| inadvertently eating small amounts of horse without knowing.
| dboreham wrote:
| Except Tesco lasagna.
| drcongo wrote:
| I've had horse in France and Belgium, it's not bad, though
| not as good as reindeer which I had in Finland (of course).
| pjmlp wrote:
| Reindeer is also available in other places, a bit further
| south :)
| willyt wrote:
| I think you can even eat raw horse meat in France.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/inside-frances-fading-love-a...
| bbqfog wrote:
| I believe it's typically eaten raw in Japan too.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| nothing personal against you, but it's funny that as a species
| we see "interesting fact about an animal" and we're like "hey,
| I eat that!"
| criddell wrote:
| This article quotes a post-doc researcher:
|
| "In terms of sentience, they are at a very close level or
| closer than we think toward us."
|
| That's different than intelligence though, right? Or are they
| two sides of the same coin? Can you have a very intelligent but
| low sentience or stupid but high sentience animal?
| davidashe wrote:
| So? I can punch a fish too.
|
| Call me when they're hyping a product they know is trash - then
| we'll know they're at human intelligence.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| So are Octopuses really intelligent if they are in management?
| ActionHank wrote:
| and is punching an effective management tool?
| WJW wrote:
| For the octopus it is. Of course, they have many more arms to
| punch with so this might not translate well to management of
| humans.
| blipvert wrote:
| Eight direct reports.
| WJW wrote:
| Could humans get up to four reports if we learn how to
| efficiently kick as well as punch? :thinking_face:
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| my boss seems to think so.
| charlieo88 wrote:
| ...and buried in this discussion of octopus management
| technique, we find the TRUE reason behind the wave of return
| to office requirements
| jjk166 wrote:
| Even if they are intelligent, they are spineless opportunistic
| predators who will squeeze their way into anything. Just like
| octopuses.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Literally a sucker punch. It doesn't seem like true cooperation
| as they don't share in the catch. I also didn't see any
| measurements of how much they caught versus hunting alone.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| In the NPR article on it, the researcher says it is most likely
| beneficial for the fish because the octopus can pull prey out
| of crevices that the fish can't usually reach, so there is more
| food than either would have alone.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The article doesn't say that the octopus shares the catch
| though. Maybe the fish don't benefit.
| Qem wrote:
| This reminds me of that Triassic Kraken hypothesis:
| https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2013AM/webprogram/Handout/Paper23...
| jpm_sd wrote:
| I can't wait for OctoPunch, the turn-based combat video game! You
| play as the octopus, of course, and build your party from a
| selection of fishy characters, each with their own personality
| and special hunting skills.
| excalibur wrote:
| I feel like I've played that game before.
|
| https://splatoon.nintendo.com/
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I used to love eating octopus, but since I've learned so much
| about their intelligence, I have not been able to bring myself to
| do so, anymore.
|
| I have the luxury of choice. There are many, in this world, that
| do not.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| They only live for 3 years or so, just eat them when they're
| close to kicking the bucket.
|
| This short lifetime combined with their intelligence does raise
| the question how far an octopus could get if it were able to
| reach our age. Would they continue learning and adapting,
| leading to a race of superintelligent molluscs or would they
| plateau in their first year and just coast along?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Anyone who likes the sound of that should check out Adrian
| Tchaikovksy's Children of Time trilogy, particularly the
| second one.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Typically octopuses produce offspring only near the end of
| their life, so eating them at any point is destructive for
| their reproduction and species health.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Eat them after they reproduced then, they only do that once
| in their life.
| mellavora wrote:
| except the mother has to care for her eggs until they
| hatch. So I guess we'd be fine only eating the males...
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| They typically die after reproducing. Mothers use their
| remaining energy to help their offspring survive, fathers
| sometimes do but not all - if you could _somehow_ capture
| only post-mating male octopuses from species that don 't
| sacrifice themselves for their offspring then sure, but
| that seems like an unrealistic expectation.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I suspect that would not be good eat'n. Female ocotopuses
| that have laid their eggs start to fall apart - you can
| see the skin peeling off of them. The females stay with
| the eggs until about when they're ready to hatch and then
| they just sort of go to pieces. The males, I suspect,
| suffer a similar fate after they've mated.
| kaxllca wrote:
| A female octopus will try to eat the male octopus, so the
| intelligence is not at empathy or morality levels.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Empathy/morality isn't necessarily a requirement for
| intelligence, nor are the definitions of either easy to nail
| down.
| webkike wrote:
| Okay, but maybe they deserve it? Hard for me to tell since
| I'm not an octopus
| drooby wrote:
| The males die shortly after mating.. it's hypothesized that
| the males may even offer their body as nutrition...as a way
| to maximize their offspring's success.
|
| So this adds another layer of wtf.
|
| Doesn't really help moralize human behavior though.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Naybe a way for sustainable farming?
|
| Breed octopuses, take the dead males who succesfully
| bred, and offer their meat with zero harm to the animal.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| are you sure? maybe they feel really bad about it after
| lenerdenator wrote:
| To be fair, it's not at the empathy or morality levels of
| humans that a lot of people consider "smart", either.
|
| As for the female octopus trying to eat the male octopus, did
| I ever tell ya the one about my ex wife? Huh? Huh? _crickets_
| kadgh wrote:
| Excellent point, but a truly intelligent octopus species
| would set up a parliament and make laws that the male
| octopus must provide 10 fish per week to the female after
| mating instead of cannibalism.
| bmelton wrote:
| Or perhaps the octopus regard us as under-evolved for
| having done similar
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I was reading a fairly forgettable SF series, where one of
| the alien species is this giant centipede, that switches
| between "cooperative," mode, and "competitive" mode.
|
| When "cooperative," they are your best buddy.
|
| When "competitive," you are fresh meat.
|
| And you can't tell when they switch.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The Oatmeal talks about the male Angler fish:
| https://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler
| mellavora wrote:
| It is hard to extend morality between species. The idea of
| parents sacrificing themselves for their children seems to
| resonate as highly moral, and is also a common pattern in
| biology.
|
| But how it plays out, from humans where the male can provide
| more by continuing to live and "hunt/protect/teach"-- but at
| the risk that the "hunt/protect" might end his life, to
| spiders where (some species) the male gives his body to
| provide nutrition for the child,
|
| well, who am I to say which is more moral?
| roughly wrote:
| Oh man, wait till you hear what humans do to each other.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| Same here
| nerdponx wrote:
| Consider the intelligence of pigs as well. Even if cows, sheep,
| deer, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, et al. all sit below the "I
| don't want to eat you" cutoff point, pigs should probably be
| above it.
| jdhzzz wrote:
| Not doing that is why future generations will loathe me and
| my generation.
| squigz wrote:
| If you're referring to not choosing to eat meat, I sort of
| doubt future generations will 'loathe' you - just as I
| don't 'loathe' members of previous generations who did
| things we've since learned better about.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Yeah, generally when you see historical figures talked
| about like that it's people who were standout bad and
| criticized even in their own times, like Christopher
| Columbus.
| dhosek wrote:
| I've been able to give up eating cephalopods, but pigs are
| too delicious to give up.
| ep103 wrote:
| I try to eat meat to minimize the formula of:
|
| cruelty_cow = IntModifier * Animal_Intelligence
| /(AmountOfProvidedMeat/Deaths) *
| FrequencyOfEatingThisAnimal
|
| Solve for:
|
| Min (cruelty_cow + cruelty_pig + cruelty_octopus + ...)
|
| Where AmountOfProvidedMeat > NeededMeatForHealthyDiet
|
| And Cost * AmountOfProvidedMeat < Food_Budget
|
| I've generally found that maximizing on Fish, Chicken, and
| Cow (in that order) seems to be the best bet. I tend not to
| touch veal, lamb, or octopus.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| A single walrus eats 4500 clams a day so let's hope they
| are low on pain awareness.
| nerdponx wrote:
| One thing to consider about veal is that it's an
| unavoidable byproduct of the dairy industry. Veal calves
| do not need to be mistreated to become veal, but the
| plain fact is that they are also not going to be kept
| alive either. A male cattle that is not a breeding bull
| has no economic value until its corpse is processed,
| barring entertainment uses like rodeo.
|
| If you refuse to eat even humane veal (free to roam and
| milk-fed), then IMO you should refuse dairy entirely.
|
| It might also be worth considering that the entire
| concept of humane dairy is questionable. It depends on
| separating mothers from calves, and either eating the
| latter or weaning them at far too young an age, or both.
| Cows are dumb, but they're not _that_ dumb, and more
| importantly they are prey mammals with strong "familial"
| instincts. The process is fundamentally at least somewhat
| cruel.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Modulo some planning and adjusting of recipes, meat is
| unnecessary for a healthy diet, and a vegan diet tends
| towards 0 cruelty.
| rickydroll wrote:
| It all depends on the definition of a healthy diet. I
| have type II diabetes, and I eat low-carb as much as
| reasonably possible. A friend with A-fib and gets the
| best results from the low-fat vegan diet. I have a friend
| whose partner accumulates iron in her blood, so she does
| best with a vegetarian diet. If you have kidney disease,
| you need a diet with specific types of protein and a
| bioavailability level that you can't entirely get from
| plants.
|
| The human body is an amazing thing that is simultaneously
| a fucking pain in the ass. There is no "one truth" for
| food.
| rickydroll wrote:
| I decided on pigs as the smart threshold because they were as
| smart as my dogs, and I would never eat my dog. Mutton, lamb,
| or chicken is no problem whatsoever. You grab them by the
| neck, stare deep into their eyes, and you will see the back
| of their skull.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| I feel that way about some people.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| My wife is grossed out if I eat anything other than chicken
| or fish. She says that cow, goat, and pig feel too
| "present" to eat.
|
| I begrudgingly agree.
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| just because something is intelligent is no reason not to eat
| it imho
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is an honest question, I'm not making a joke.
|
| Why shouldn't we eat _you_ then?
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| while i do keep in shape and i'd certainly make for a juicy
| steak or filet, i doubt this culinary experience is worth
| ten years to life in prison.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Ok, one step up then, why should it be illegal?
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| i find your questions a little funny as i had this sort
| of conversation already dozens of times and i know where
| this is coming from and where it's going. i mean i've
| been a vegetarian myself for more than a decade (am not
| anymore) and i took pleasure in leading people who
| initiated discussions around it ad absurdum.
|
| in germany there was a case of cannibalism many years ago
| where a guy known by the name Armin Meiwes slaughtered
| and ate another guy called Bernd-Jurgen Armando Brandes.
| never got the panic around it given that the whole deal
| was consensual. other than that you know yourself that
| society comes up with rules to ensure its stability and
| survival. eating each other wouldn't fly well from that
| perspective.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You could restate the golden rule as "treat others
| sufficiently like myself the way I'd like to be treated",
| not so long ago this wasn't applied to other humans who
| didn't look the same, but now it just seems reasonable to
| expand who the golden rule applies to beyond just species
| into... beings within a certain threshold of human
| intelligence. It is somewhat of a fundamental of
| morality, beings which are sufficiently intelligence
| deserve the same rights as I want for myself.
|
| If you remove intelligence (or something quite similar)
| as the criteria, what do you have instead?
| csomar wrote:
| It is not. It's illegal to kill the OP though.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| The main reason for humans not eating one another is in-
| species nepotism, I believe. It's not very principled, but
| probably closest to the truth.
|
| There is also don't mess with the effectively most powerful
| species on the planet whose members have collectively
| decided that (for _somewhat_ principled reasons) none of
| them should be eaten.
| aeonik wrote:
| Disease is actually the main reason.
|
| Any parasite, bacteria, virus, and especially prions
| spread much much more easily the closer the food is to
| your own biology.
|
| Cannibalistic tribes have had issues with this in even
| the recent past.
| mock-possum wrote:
| prion disease _shudders_
| csomar wrote:
| Cannibalism is rare even among animals. That's probably why
| people don't eat other people. Otherwise, saying we can't
| eat animals because they are smart is dangerous. Some
| humans are not smart...
| qup wrote:
| Things will eat me, if I let them.
| energy123 wrote:
| Eating a carcass isn't a problem, throwing it into boiling
| water while it's still alive or clubbing it to death is the
| objectionable thing.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I doubt there are many people in the world whose diets rely on
| eating octopuses. You'd need either an environment that had
| octopuses in abundance despite having little of everything
| else, or a selective method of fishing that primarily caught
| octopuses.
| diggan wrote:
| > I doubt there are many people in the world whose diets rely
| on eating octopuses
|
| Probably right (about the relying part), but eating octopuses
| is fairly common around the Mediterranean, at least the West
| side of it. Most restaurants have at least one item on the
| menu involving octopuses in some form or shape./
| folmar wrote:
| Octopuses are usually specifically fished [Cephalopods.
| Ecology and Fisheries, Peter Boyle, Paul Rodhouse. Chapter
| 16].
| rimeice wrote:
| I know enough people who have made this exact same choice
| (myself included) for this to have its own name. Octoparian?
| vasco wrote:
| You should try Polvo a Lagareiro or Pulpo a la Gallega, life is
| too short to not eat good food.
| marliechiller wrote:
| You should try eating young children, life is too short to
| not eat good food. That's what that sounds like to someone
| that opts not to eat something on the basis of its
| intelligence
| drawkward wrote:
| well, except for the switch to cannibalism.
| jjk166 wrote:
| There are a lot of second order benefits to eating irish
| children, I think most would consider such a proposal
| modest.
| vasco wrote:
| If my parents and everyone around me for thousands of years
| ate young children and they all told me it was legal and
| tasty and good for you, I probably would. But since it's
| not it'd seem you're making a false equivalency from the
| top of your horse.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| They already said they used to love eating octopus. You reply
| they should try eating octopus because it's tasty. They
| already tried it before and decided to give it up for reasons
| beyond how it tastes.
| vasco wrote:
| Yeah but in case they didn't try the best dishes they might
| not know the extent of what they are missing.
| neerajk wrote:
| aside: me after reading the headline: Shouldn't that be Octopii?
|
| But no! "The plural form _octopii is doubly incorrect. Firstly,
| octopus derives from Greek, not Latin; its etymologically-
| consistent plural form is octopodes. Secondly, even if octopus
| were a second-declension Latin noun, the plural form would be_
| octopi; in the correct plurals radii and gladii, with which
| _octopii is analogous, the first 'i's are part of the words'
| stems (radi- and gladi-), and not their case endings -- for_
| octopii to be the plural, *octopius would need to be the
| singular."
|
| Thanks wikipedia.
|
| TIL!
| fffrantz wrote:
| Thought exactly the same!
| crazygringo wrote:
| I wonder why it is that "octopuses" just kind of sounds wrong?
|
| Is it the repeated "s" at the end? But we have no problem
| saying "buses" or "rebuses".
|
| Is it something to do with the plural of "fish" just being
| "fish"? But we have no problem making whales and dolphins
| plural with an -s.
|
| Is it that "-puses" sounds slightly vulgar, like we're talking
| about multiple female genitalia?
|
| I genuinely don't know. All I know is that "octopuses" just
| sounds wrong for some reason I can't put my finger on. And that
| "octopii" somehow "feels" much better, even if everything about
| it is logically wrong.
|
| I'll still say "octopuses", but I know I always _want_ to say
| "octopii" instead. (And spell it that way too, because "octopi"
| feels like it would rhyme with "canopy".)
| danans wrote:
| > I wonder why it is that "octopuses" just kind of sounds
| wrong?
|
| Because of the english words with taboo meanings that
| coincidentally share the phonetic structure p-s-
| afiori wrote:
| The plural of fish is fish, but the plural of type of fish is
| fishes
| bmacho wrote:
| > I wonder why it is that "octopuses" just kind of sounds
| wrong?
|
| There are some Latin words ending -us in English, that keep
| their Latin plurals. For octopuses, both plurals are common
| and acceptable.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I'll still say "octopuses", but I know I always want to say
| "octopii" instead. (And spell it that way too, because
| "octopi" feels like it would rhyme with "canopy".)
|
| There's a restaurant near here called Octapas.
| banannaise wrote:
| Because it turns it into a four-syllable word with three
| consecutive unstressed syllables. It has bad meter and ruins
| the meter of almost any sentence constructed around it.
| alwa wrote:
| I hadn't thought about that, but that explanation suits me
| as to why "octopuses" comes off... I don't know, muddy?...
| while the 1983 James Bond film named for the vulgar pun
| rolls off the tongue, even though they use virtually the
| same phonemes: it's that the latter emphasizes the third
| syllable, making it metrical again.
|
| Thank you for a nifty insight, whose effects I'd noticed
| but whose mechanism had never occurred to me before today!
| foldr wrote:
| In that case I say we go with oc-TO-pusses (as in
| photograph vs. photography).
| crazygringo wrote:
| But "teleporters" or "marathoners" or tons of other words
| follow the same pattern of stress and sound fine.
| "Photocopiers" extends it to four unstressed syllables and
| sounds fine.
| banannaise wrote:
| We treat words like they have a single stressed syllable
| and everything else is unstressed, and that's a useful
| abstraction sometimes, but that's not actually true.
| "Photocopiers" has primary stress on the first syllable
| but secondary on the third - _PHO_ -to-CO-pi-ers. The
| same goes for "teleporters" and "marathoners".
|
| But that also goes for "octopuses", so what gives? Seems
| like there's something else going on that my brain hasn't
| accounted for yet. It's probably that the plosives (stop
| consonants) are hugely unbalanced, with all of them
| coming in the first half of the word. Plosives, as the
| word implies, can add quite a bit of _oomph_ to a word,
| even if they aren 't reflected in the stress pattern. So
| "octopuses" seems to just peter out halfway through the
| word.
| r00fus wrote:
| All of these words have informal 3rd syllable stress so
| work fine.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| The pronunciation of the word is already on the boundaries
| between "awk-toe-poos", "awk-tuh-puhs", and "awk-tah-piss"
| depending on your region just in America.
|
| So adding an additional "-es" that can be "-ehhs" or "-iz"
| gives at least six possible pronunciations.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Incidentally, if, as per etymology, we consider the tentacles
| as feet, then the headline is wrong as the Octopodes are
| technically kicking the fishes.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| This whole thing is built on lies!
| johnnyjeans wrote:
| Technically speaking, Octopuses don't have tentacles at all.
| Those are arms. The morphology of "Octopus" is actually a
| really great example case for demonstrating paraconsistent
| logic.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Hmm so the name must be corrected to be 8-armed in Greek.
| Oktobratso? Oktooplizo? Oktocheiro?
| gpderetta wrote:
| It goes deeper than that! According to wikipedia, the
| tentacles, or appendages, are indeed called "arms", but
| they evolved from what in other molluscs is called a
| "foot"!
| cacois wrote:
| It's a house of cards, people!
| gpderetta wrote:
| yes, something is ... afoot.
| kaiken1987 wrote:
| Deeper still, one of those arms on males contains their
| sexual organs call the hectocotylus.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| So the plural of virus, if it wouldn't have been viruses, would
| be viri, not virii? I think for octopus I'd have intuitively
| thought octopi, but for virus I'd have thought virii.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It is in fact "viri".
| jjk166 wrote:
| Virus actually is a latin word, but the plural is vira.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/virus#Latin
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The plural of the Latin virus is vira (second declension etc
| etc). However viri means "men"
| kibwen wrote:
| But more generally, enough generations have passed that
| "octopus" is no longer a foreign word, it's now just part of
| the English lexicon, and so you're free to pluralize it in the
| standard English manner. "Octopuses" is correct by that
| reasoning.
|
| Note that this is the same process that we eventually apply to
| every other loanword; next time you talk to a German, watch
| them cringe at "delicatessens" as the plural to "delicatessen".
| carlmr wrote:
| Delicatessen itself is a French loanword (delicatesse) in
| German that's wrongly pluralized, it should be delicatesses
| not delicatessen.
|
| So it's like doubly wrong.
| shmeeed wrote:
| I'm waiting for myself to one day muster the courage to
| order "dos expressis" at a restaurant in Italy. But I fear
| the repercussions.
| airstrike wrote:
| https://imgur.com/8pQYSUd
| amatic wrote:
| Every time you order an "expresso", an Italian falls off
| a vespa.
| 725686 wrote:
| Touche!
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| But according to Wikipedia, the French delicatesse is an
| Italian loanword (delicatezza)...
| crooked-v wrote:
| It's loan words all the way down. We just don't have
| enough info about prehistory to complete the chain all
| the way back to local variants of caveman speak.
| carlmr wrote:
| Cavemen would really hate our quintuple pluralization.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I'm sure I read a sci-fi novel some years back where one of the
| main characters selectively breeds octopuses for intelligence
| before dropping them on a terraformed planet and there was a
| small bit about how he didn't like octopuses either and so
| called them octopii.
|
| I'm in his boat ;)
|
| fun book, forgot the name.
| dougfulop wrote:
| Children of Time!
| yayitswei wrote:
| Could it be "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky?
|
| (ht Claude)
| jayGlow wrote:
| it sounds more like the sequel "children of ruin" children
| of time primarily involves spiders.
| diggan wrote:
| > Could it be "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky?
|
| Currently reading that one and there is no octopuses (only
| read half so far though) but a lot of spiders, ants and
| space-faring primates :)
| globular-toast wrote:
| Right. They are talking about the sequel, _Children of
| Ruin_.
| user982 wrote:
| Children of _Ruin_.
| mellavora wrote:
| But not as cool as "Whales on Stilts"
| mellavora wrote:
| Yes, but always remember the plural of applepus is apple pie
| banannaise wrote:
| While I'm all for a history lesson (and the double-I octopii is
| indeed simply incorrect) I take issue with anyone insisting
| that "octopi" is wrong:
|
| 1. Language is neither static nor a series of rules to be
| blindly followed. The way a word was pluralized 1400 years ago
| has limited relevance today.
|
| 2. As noted just about everywhere, "octopodes" looks insane in
| any modern English sentence because we don't pluralize any
| other word that way. It also moves the emphasis to the second
| syllable. Thus it manages to make everybody's life harder for
| no benefit, a favorite pastime of the sort of people who would
| suggest this pluralization.
|
| 3. "Octopuses" feels stilted, and while it is correct, I
| thoroughly empathize with anyone uninterested in using a four-
| syllable word with three consecutive unstressed syllables in a
| sentence. Therefore it makes sense to create a shorter
| pluralization, and we can do this by analogy to other English
| words!
|
| 3a. We are not speaking Latin. If "-us" to "-i" is a valid
| pluralization of other English words, then it makes sense for
| it to be a valid pluralization of this word. While this pattern
| can be used irresponsibly ("bus" -> "bi"), using it for the
| three-syllable "octopus" is non-destructive. It preserves the
| structure (and the meter!) and thus makes a lot of sense.
|
| 4. To come back to "double-I octopii is simply incorrect": It's
| wrong because it's trying to be pedantic but uses the rules
| wrong (as noted in the wikipedia reference above). If, in 700
| years, I were still alive, English were still spoken, and some
| band of idiots had managed to make "octopii" the most common
| pluralization, then I would begrudgingly accept it per point 1
| above, but until then, no.
| iwontberude wrote:
| 3. "Octopuses" sounds like what a child or English as Second
| Language speaker would say. Not sure what is stilted about
| being a novice to the language.
| banannaise wrote:
| And a child or ESL speaker will often use constructions
| that sound stilted. I'm not sure what you're trying to say
| here.
|
| "Stilted" is a bit of a judgy word, but it's not a value
| judgment of anyone else's intelligence. Some English speech
| sounds stilted. So it goes. That's why I don't prefer that
| pluralization in my own speech.
|
| Lord knows I sound weird enough at times; I'm not here to
| throw stones from glass houses.
| thfuran wrote:
| Octopuses sounds like a proper English pluralization, not
| that nonsense about sticking other languages' grammar rules
| into English.
| saberience wrote:
| The best plural is simply keeping the word the same as the
| singular. I.e. "octopus". There are many animals using this
| form, e.g. fish, deer, elk, salmon, buffalo.
|
| E.g. Look at all those octopus.
|
| All the divers I know say it this way, easy to say,
| understand, doesn't make you sound like an asshole.
| joenot443 wrote:
| This is what I would say.
|
| It does beg the question though, how'd we come up with the
| list of animals to pluralize like that? Why "five birds"
| but not "five deers?"
| philipov wrote:
| It raises the question - begging the question is
| something else.
|
| As for the question, it probably has to do with the
| gender of the noun. I bet 'deer' derives from a neuter-
| gendered word in Anglo-Saxon, while 'bird' does not.
|
| Noun gender is the system used by many languages to
| categorize words that have different declension rules.
| It's atrophied in English, but is implicitly still
| present in the various "inconsistencies" that pop up.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I think it was done just to make it harder for those
| languages that do not have a concept of plural. Of course
| I'm kidding, but it has to be super frustrating trying to
| learn it as ESL.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Note that those are animal we generally hunt/eat. I'd bet
| this is tied to the language of the ruling/hunting
| classes of England, back when they spoke French more than
| English.
|
| There are also some middle-ground words like "Shark". One
| goes fishing for "shark" like they would "fish" but it is
| more common to say "several sharks" using a plural as
| opposed to "several fish" using the singular. But
| "fishes" is still a word, which likely goes back to
| ruling classes who ate fish but generally did not _hunt_
| them as they would have deer.
| banannaise wrote:
| "Fishes" is a plural of a plural. You wouldn't likely say
| "two fishes", but you might say "all the fishes in the
| sea", referring to many groups of fish (much as you might
| refer to the "peoples of the world" referring to many
| cultures). Aside from that, I bet you're onto something.
| yreg wrote:
| That's hardly 'the best'. Recognizable plural is a useful
| language feature.
| philipov wrote:
| > 2... It also moves the emphasis to the second syllable.
|
| Octopods - 8 times better than regular pods.
| c0brac0bra wrote:
| I would prefer "octopoden"
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| > Language is neither static nor a series of rules to be
| blindly followed.
|
| It's also not open to arbitrary subjective opinion. There are
| rules, this is not 'Nam. :) Languages evolve, but you can't
| just claim something is correct because you think so or you'd
| love it to be so. It's incorrect in English language, today.
| Maybe in the future, when more people start using the plural
| "octopi", it will be correct.
|
| Fun fact: Oxford dictionary changed the definition of
| "literally" to also mean "figuratively". https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/grammar/misuse-of-literally
| banannaise wrote:
| _> Maybe in the future, when more people start using the
| plural "octopi", it will be correct._
|
| The future is now. "Octopi" is considered _the_ correct
| plural by a significant plurality of US adults, and a
| plurality of all age groups.
|
| https://x.com/YouGovAmerica/status/1749131745893679173
| Supermancho wrote:
| > It's also not open to arbitrary subjective opinion. There
| are rules
|
| > Conversations follow rules of etiquette because
| conversations are social interactions, and therefore depend
| on social convention. Specific rules for conversation arise
| from the cooperative principle. Failure to adhere to these
| rules causes the conversation to deteriorate or eventually
| to end. Contributions to a conversation are responses to
| what has previously been said.
|
| Both parties must agree on those rules. There is no mandate
| that one must follow another's rules, in the initial
| engagement. This is helpful to understand, in modern online
| discourse. If someone doesn't want to play by some basic
| rules, further engagement is likely futile and
| unproductive.
| card_zero wrote:
| > 3a. We are not speaking Latin.
|
| This is why I would prefer say _axises, basises, indexes,_
| and _matrixes._ I mean as plurals of their respective
| singulars, not as plurals of octopus.
| goldfeld wrote:
| But octopi is also trying to be pedantically latin, octopodes
| though it could be pedantic is at least correct, and entirely
| descriptive. In practice I wouldn't expect someone to say
| octopi to my face, but writing weird words online is another
| matter.
| TrnsltLife wrote:
| There's "antipodes" though.
| jameshart wrote:
| Which implies that while the whole of 'Australia and New
| Zealand' can be referred to as 'the antipodes', Australia
| or New Zealand alone should be called 'an antipus'.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| "Antipous" has been used as a singular form of the word
| in some 19th-century works [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/antipous#English
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| > As noted just about everywhere, "octopodes" looks insane in
| any modern English sentence because we don't pluralize any
| other word that way.
|
| I'm guessing "platypodes" doesn't count.
| feoren wrote:
| This is a strange argument to make _against_ "octopuses".
| Break from our history; use the English standard; we are not
| speaking Latin ... therefore it should be _octopi_!? _What_?
| How about this: it 's OK to use the traditional form if it's
| still commonly understood, but otherwise let's try to use a
| "standard English" form. Those are your choices: traditional
| for the word, or standard. Since "octopodes" is awkward and
| not really ever used, we say "octopuses". Why would you
| convert to a false-traditional version?
| cryptonector wrote:
| Yes, but 'octopodes' is really neat, and definitely a [nerdy]
| conversation starter.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| All my friends say "octopodes".
|
| Some people on the internet keep saying that that's wrong; I
| find that very strange.
|
| > _because we don 't pluralize any other word that way._
|
| Certainly we do "platypodes", "matrices", "irides",
| "clitorides" and "vortices", are all quite common words.
| sigzero wrote:
| I am using octopodes from now on!
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I think what you cited missed the spelling aberration, since
| the -pus is a mistake, as it should have been -pous,-podes
| (singular,plural, nominative). the word is just a chimera.
|
| also, the reality is
|
| #define octopi octopodes
|
| #define octopuses octopodes
|
| and so on is what's more or less going on...whereas in English
| octopodes is a mouthful.
| not_kurt_godel wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus#Etymology_and_pluralis...
| mseepgood wrote:
| "Partners"? "Companions"? More like slave drivers.
| primer42 wrote:
| I love imagining how the fish are almost an extension of the way
| the octopuses think. Octopuses seem to have quite a bit of
| independent cognition in each of their arms, which are wrangled
| by the central brain. Now they're wrangling independent fish
| brains instead of octopus arm brains. Incredible
| mellavora wrote:
| >Octopuses seem to have quite a bit of independent cognition in
| each of their arms, which are wrangled by the central brain.
|
| Yes, that's inherent in the design. All grey matter (optimized
| for local intercommunication), no white matter (optimized for
| sending signals between regions).
|
| Each arm has its own ganglion ("CPU") and the central unit
| struggles to keep up with these and keep them coordinated.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| living brains are not "CPUs"
| Dansvidania wrote:
| why not?
| exe34 wrote:
| it's a metaphor, you sperg.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Be mindful of the forum you're on, and yourself.
| astrange wrote:
| They're SoCs.
| setgree wrote:
| You might enjoy 'Children of Ruin' by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which
| explores this idea in depth with a civilization of genetically
| modified, super-intelligent octopuses. (Though I'd start with
| the first book in the series, 'Children of Time')
| thrance wrote:
| Also featuring geneticaly modified super-intelligent
| octopuses, is "Manifold: Time" by Stephen Baxter.
| zbirkenbuel wrote:
| A solid series, with descriptions of thought process feeling
| truly alien. I'm currently enjoying "The Mountain in the Sea"
| by Ray Nayler for more octopus based speculative fiction
| riffic wrote:
| I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus's garden in the shade.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| The fish are able to gather food from the sand which the octopus
| moves. It happend to me too in the ocean where fish around my
| feet followed along the spots in the sand I touched. Therefore I
| was hunting together with fish!?
| mellavora wrote:
| Yes, you just aren't as good at it as the octopus. Maybe if you
| practiced more?
| shawn_w wrote:
| Maybe if he punched the fish...
| bbqfog wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| > _"I think sociality, or at least attention to social
| information, is way more deep-rooted in the evolutionary tree
| than we might think,"_
|
| Maybe, or maybe the neural power required to move all of those
| limbs is good enough at processing that they developed their own
| sophisticated behavior.
| mellavora wrote:
| Well, given the overwhelming emerging evidence of social
| attention and behavior in plants, and given that it makes
| evolutionary sense that "social attention" would provide a
| fitness advantage in any environment where there are other
| actors,
|
| the only reason to doubt it would be an assumption that
| "attention to social information" can only happen in creatures
| with an complex central nervous systems. Which requires rather
| constrained definitions of "attention", "social", and
| "information"
|
| ok, there is another reason to doubt it. inertia. We've been
| taught/told that a complex CNS is what makes intelligence, and
| it is hard to get away from that idea.
| knighthack wrote:
| Wait... so we have an octopus lording over fishy underlings?
| Like... a mob boss?
| motohagiography wrote:
| given how the octopus uses camoflauge, operating on their
| environment by using other fish as a distraction to their prey is
| logical. punching the still predator fish to keep them moving
| removes competition and keeps them moving as a part of the noise
| distraction.
|
| longevity research for cephalopods seems like it could be really
| fruitful.
| setgree wrote:
| How much of a leap is it to say that octopuses have effectively
| domesticated fish, the way early humans might have turned docile
| wolves into hunting companions?
| throwup238 wrote:
| It depends on your definition of domestication. One could
| easily argue that ants have domesticated aphids so I don't
| think the concept depends on the intelligence of the
| domesticator so much as the symbiotic relationship between
| species.
|
| However the usual definition of domestication is specific to
| humans. The aforementioned aphid farming and the octopodes in
| TFA are technically in mutualistic relationships.
| setgree wrote:
| I don't think there is scholarly consensus on whether ant
| behavior can/should be considered domestication, but, per
| [0]:
|
| > The best-studied insect-associated domestication is that of
| the attine ants...and the majority cultivate parasol
| mushrooms in the Leucocoprineae [58]. The ants plant sessile
| fungal cultivars, manage growth conditions by regulating
| temperature and moisture and fertilizing the fungal gardens,
| protect their crop from other herbivores, parasites, and
| disease, and harvest the cultivated fungi for food [4,58].
| This coevolved domestication system has turned ants into
| obligate fungivores, as experimental removal of the fungal
| crop results in reduced reproduction and increased mortality
| among ants [58]. For the fungi, the ants increase their
| fitness relative to the free-living state by increasing their
| proportion across generations, providing for geographic
| dispersal and protecting the fungi against parasites and
| pathogens [58]. In the higher attine ants, the fungal
| cultivars are obligate mutualists and cannot grow in a free-
| living state [58]. It should be noted that fungi may not be
| the only ant domesticates; some ants tend to hemipteran
| insects like aphids and treehoppers in a system reminiscent
| of human animal husbandry [4,10].
|
| I would call this domestication, full stop.
|
| [0] https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-
| evolution/fulltext/S0169...
| rsingel wrote:
| I'm just slightly disturbed that someone thinks a rich social
| life is defined by punching your co-workers
| Tool_of_Society wrote:
| I feel like my life would of been enriched a few times had that
| been a viable legal option to pursue :P
| pvaldes wrote:
| Disneyfication of octopuses. In that video you'll see, exactly
| anything that you want to see.
|
| Would justify perfectly an: "in the video the octopus is seen
| trying to avoid being stolen its food by all the other fishes",
| that is the same behavior that you'll see if you break a crab or
| an urchin underwater. Many coastal fishes from rocky bottoms will
| come to steal any food scrap available. They don't cooperate with
| other fishes on any way.
|
| Or maybe they are playing "rock, paper, tentacle", but to me the
| message more probable here is "this is my food, go away". If you
| look the video carefully the fishes seem trying to swim near the
| mouth of the octopus, where the probability of stealing a scrape
| is higher.
| Tool_of_Society wrote:
| In the one short video you do see what you want to see.
| Meanwhile the researchers have hundreds of hours into this...
|
| Probably shouldn't base your entire opinion of the study on a
| 17 second video or a fluff article.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02525-2
| andrew-dc wrote:
| Audio found? https://youtu.be/sAoiwGjBmZs
| staplung wrote:
| The octopuses I spoke to strenuously deny the fish abuse
| accusations.
|
| "It's true that our innovative management technique - Continuous
| Tactile Feedback - can look a little rough to the untrained eye,
| but our Food Collection Engineers are actually very well
| treated."
| vasco wrote:
| Yes but I've read the reports in the Annals of Oceanography and
| the sub-director General of Fishing Affairs said it is
| happening and the only reason they haven't been able to pursue
| it is that the dolphins keep vetoing any real measures at every
| yearly convention. It's a bit of a fishy subject.
| KaushikR2 wrote:
| And that's why it's important to vote! #BlueWhale2024
| tommiegannert wrote:
| The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02525-2
|
| Sampaio et al., Multidimensional social influence drives
| leadership and composition-dependent success in octopus-fish
| hunting groups
|
| I was curious about the the 3D reconstruction of the scenes.
|
| > We manually tracked individuals in the videos using the
| software Computer Vision Annotation Tool. We annotated three
| frames per second, which yielded a time resolution of 0.33 s for
| animal movement.
|
| > We then used another software developed to incorporate the
| previously tracked animals in each camera in the 'colmap' habitat
| models and camera paths, 'multiviewtracks' or 'mvt' [29]
|
| > [29] Francisco, F. A., Nuhrenberg, P. & Jordan, A. High-
| resolution, non-invasive animal tracking and reconstruction of
| local environment in aquatic ecosystems
|
| Seems it was specifically developed to track fish. Cool project.
|
| Links to https://github.com/matterport/Mask_RCNN and
| https://github.com/pnuehrenberg/multiviewtracks.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| It's too bad there aren't more software projects (and jobs)
| like this.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Octopuses don't have money, so the people with money aren't
| interested in putting more resources into understanding
| octopuses.
| rkagerer wrote:
| But surely if they can punch fish they can click ads?
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Awaiting the ad industry giants to see this new source of
| end users.
| glompers wrote:
| New meaning to HN hug of death too
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Octopuses are practically alien.
|
| They can:
|
| - shape shift into so many different forms and shapes.
|
| - "invisibility", by instantanously changing colors & it's own
| skin texture, to match surrounds.
|
| - can regrow entire body parts if cut off (like arms)
|
| - have 9 brains (localized)
|
| - and are ridiculous intelligent
| rkagerer wrote:
| And yet like us they have two eyes. I wonder if we meet aliens
| from another star-orbiting planet if their light-sensors will
| look anything like ours.
| Wojtkie wrote:
| Well, I'm not sure there'd be much benefit to spending energy
| on a 3rd eye. You can already achieve stereoscopic vision
| with just two eyes, why waste the energy on a third? It
| probably doesn't increase fitness enough to be worth the
| energy spend.
| john2x wrote:
| Different sets for different wavelength ranges
| thfuran wrote:
| It might be too hard to parse, but an eye on each arm would
| give variable baseline and potentially 360deg stereoscopic
| coverage.
| goostavos wrote:
| And they might have dreams!
|
| One of the coolest things I've encountered at an aquarium was a
| sleeping octopus wildly shifting its colors. It seems truly
| alien to behold -- like it shouldn't be possible.
|
| My googling after the fact says that who knows why they
| actually do it or what's going on, but, I really like the
| thought of them having little octopus dreams.
| Intralexical wrote:
| Somewhat related, "Octopuses are building small "cities" off the
| coast of Australia (2017)":
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36103801
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopolis_and_Octlantis
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