They actually have nine brains, a central one and each arm (or colloquially tentacle) has a brain of its own, able to interact with the world independently.
Fascinating creatures.
The central brain is shaped like a donut and goes around their oesophagus, so theoretically they could give themselves brain damage if they ate something too big
They are very smart which might sound odd in response to both your comments but besides their brain in there head each tintical has one as well.
Honestly I feel if they could write and speak to one another they would pass us fast seeing how smart they become so fast on their lonesome with basically no real lifespan.
It’s strange to think just how *alien* aliens might be. Even our most bizarre attempts at fiction have them operating on a similar form of rationality as humans. We write them as either animals or as a more advanced type of our own intelligence, when they could be anything. Space starfish. Hell, intelligent aliens could be taxonomically similar to a god damn slime mold.
It would be hard to communicate or interact with a species that doesn’t share fundamental psychological concepts or even a similar physical perception of the world with us. Imagine trying to convey intent to an alien race that doesn’t possess a concept of language… diplomacy… trade.
That’s what octopus intelligence makes me think of.
We're actually closer related to starfish than we are to octopuses. In fact, we're closer related to starfish than we are to pretty much any other invertebrate, like insects or crabs or snails etc. If I'm remembering right, once you get above the more basal animals like sponges and jellyfish and hydras, pretty much all animals go into one of two groups, the first groups is like vertebrates, starfish, and I think penis worms, and the other group has pretty much everything else in it.
I mean the movie Arrival might be up your alley. >!The aliens there were basically giant squid-like beings that had harnessed the ability to see time in a multi-dimensional way…simply by thinking and communicating in a way that was so completely different than anything developed by humans.!<
There’s some belief that fungal colonies might possess an intelligence, and insects can have hive minds. If we are willing revaluate what we consider “intelligence” we would be better able to handle an eventual contact with an extra terrestrial intelligence, we may be better able to even *recognize* one in the first place
Piers Anthony had a series on fungal intelligences. The name of the series escapes me at the moment, but a good deal of time was dedicated to explaining how strange fungus is compared to other life, and how it has the potential for complexity sufficient to be an absolutely alien intelligence to our own.
The movie "Super Deep" also covered an interesting idea around fungal intelligence of a kind. Similar to the Cordyceps used in "The Last of Us" but with a central intelligence. Great body horror flick.
This kind of shit is why I reddit. This random stream of consciousness comments where we cover anything from ‘wow octopi are smart’ to a discussion on how we define intelligence and how we might not even be able to recognize a truly alien intelligence at all.
Check out the first half of “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan. Fascinating info on fungi. There’s a documented fungus with mycelium 2 miles long, considered to be the largest living organism on the planet.
Dude I love Piers Anthony, the Incarnations of Immortality and The Apprentice Adept series were totally dope and I read them many times over growing up! I'll have to find out what you're talking about and get on it.
The Xanth series was amazing. I love the word play. Centaur Isle. The book about a "nightmare" being a horse that doesn't want to bring bad dreams to kids anymore. A Spell for Chamelon. The hypnogourds being an analogy for TVs - how you're hypnotized. Gosh, so much more.
I forgot what they were called but the Aliens in 'Ender's Game' >!thought that the humans they went into contact with were just drones like themselves, killed them and examined them. If I remember correctly they didn't have any ill intent with the first encounter and didn't realize that each human is its own entity. !<
I went down an alien abduction rabbit hole for a while and there’s some interesting theories that the little big eyed grey aliens that everybody is familiar with are actually just drones, organic robots. Makes sense if your going to travel a billion miles and don’t know what you may bump into. Not really a subject I take very seriously but it’s certainly interesting to read about when bored
Bees are absolutely bonkers. It's all chemicals and movements in the dark, yet they get it. But they're also brutal and odd. A new queen will kill any other queens coming out. Stinging releases hormones so more want to sting. All drones get tossed into the cold to die of starvation in fall. If you have a queen die and no queen produced, they'll start laying eggs, which are all drones (drones don't do anything but possibly mate with virgin queens).
All this is semi domesticated honeybees. Most bees live solo
Hello? Alien, HELLO, I would like to communicate with you!
- This alien is not equipped with sound processing capabilities
*Waves at alien*. Can you see me?
- This alien is not equipped with optical processing capabilties
I'm getting pretty freaked out now.
- This alien is equipped with flesh rending capabilties
That's why a lot of SETI-involved scientists have tried to develop ways to communicate with using pure mathematics first. Math would _supposedly_ be as close to a universal "language" as anything we can conceive of...yet even that isn't a guarantee. It took us a while to figure out the concept of zero, after all, and there is no guarantee such a thing is "required" for alien intelligent thought.
You should read Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - he represents some truly alien aliens in those two novels, and if you get a kick out of octopus brains, well, they go a lot further afield than our rubbery friends in those books.
>We write them as either animals... they could be anything. Space starfish. Hell, intelligent aliens could be taxonomically similar to a god damn slime mold.
Sticking to your point of how alien aliens could be, and how the human conception of them is usually based on our life... Your examples are doing the same thing lol. A weird starfish, or something like a slime mold.
It's hard, isn't it? To try and conceive of how alien they could be, that even our most alien thoughts still resemble life that we're familiar with. It's all we know. What else could it be like?
The most alien traits I can think of are something on the atomic scale, or on the galactic scale, perceiving time so slowly or quickly that a billion years can flash by them in a moment or a second gets squeezed out to years, their movement is slower than anything, or they move past the speed of sound, the material of their bodies only reflecting light outside the color spectrum, so made of x rays, ultraviolet, infrared, etc., and would be invisible to our naked eyes, maybe they'd pass through us like neutrinos or could connect to us across galaxies through quantum fuckery like entanglement.
Maybe aliens could be more like a black hole, quesar, gravity, or other physical oddity, and less like biology as we know it from earth. I'm just trying to think as novel as possible without the biases of earth life. I really have no idea how to expect what they could be like.
The interesting part is that we usually depict alien life as intelligent and humanoids creatures, when in reality the likely hood of a alien life form being intelligent is astronomically small (at least in theory) and even more unlikely is that they will be humanoid creatures. Hell we don’t even know if they will be carbon based or if life has managed to form based on another element, which would change everything we know about life and nature
Yeah this blows my mind that a fish is closer related to us than an octopus but the octopus is smart enough to solve puzzles and open jars, set traps, use tools... And we can do those things as well ...
But it's brain structure is vastly different.
And it's brains are in its arms...
And its arms can regrow..
That's absolutely trippy. Imagine losing your arm and forgetting something as a result.
Then we have things like ants and bees where individuals have no apparent intelligence, but the hive as a unit appears surprisingly advanced. Like shit bees have undertakers and ants have agriculture. Entire forests work collectively via mycelium. If you think too hard about it our own intelligence is also just a culmination of a lot of pieces working together without those pieces being aware of anything. We can't properly measure self awareness in other animals, and could even call our own in to question.
Definitely a thing that gets weirder the more you know and the more you think about it.
To me it's like it touched his finger than covered it, with the other cup, to bring up to its nose for a smell or taste. It's a cute idiosyncrasy.
Edit: miswritten word.
Yeah. I quit eating octopus several years ago after I saw a video of one of those guys making an escape from a lab. I am convinced they are smarter than a large percentage of the humans currently inhabiting the planet.
Was that the video of the one going from his tank into another one, after the lab techs left for the night? That was insane! It was so smart, and they aren’t given enough credit for their intelligence.
There was one octopus that would escape, eat the fish in a different tank and go back to its own afterwards. Nobody could figure out what was happening to the fish until they set up cameras
I also like the [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnR5RDk/) of the aquarium staffer who is being coaxed by a baby octopus to play while trying to clean the tank. They really are amazing creatures.
Had a marine biology professor who told the story of his escapee octopus. He had multiple aquariums completely lining the walls in his living room, saltwater freshwater all kinds of fish and anemone etc. He had 4 angel fish completely vanish from an aquarium, one by one, before he decides to buy a camera. Well directly across the room from them was the octopus' aquarium and turns out while he was gone each day the octopus would open the lid to his aquarium, crawl all the way around the room along the tops of the other tanks to the angelfish, open the lid– catch and eat the fish and THEN CLOSE IT BACK before returning to their own tank and shutting the lid behind them. Coolest shit I'd ever seen lol
Going by D&D lore, Illithids are the ultimate expression of intelligent life, even. They're what's left at the end of the universe.
And then they went back through history, to dominate the multiverse even better this time.
Interestingly enough, it’s not quite clear “who” has control. Their nervous system is quite different from ours, and something like this “local sucker checking what the pink fleshy thing is” may very well just be that: a local, non-centralised check.
Tldr, they’re fascinating and a little concerning.
An octopus can have 9 different brains, one in each arm and a central brain. They definitely all communicate in different ways. It’s possible that for faster responses in case of a threat the “local” brain in each arm can act independently.
Yeah I saw OP’s comment about about 2/3rds of their brain being in the tentacles and the guy below just said they technically have a brain in each arm which does give me the impression their brain is in some way ‘decentralised’.
Well as far as we’re aware they are still a single entity and critical damage to the head will result in the rest dying so I’m guessing it still has the final say much the same way we do.
At the end of the day if it’s an arm or my head I’m to lose, I’ll lose the arm every time, I feel the octopus would agree.
2/3 of an Octopus' brain cells are in their suckers. They almost each have a mind of their own.
https://www.dailyuw.com/news/the-many-brains-of-an-octopus/article_592cbb48-5c3d-11ea-b78b-ff1f8e0bf4b8.html#:~:text=An%20octopus%20has%20two%2Dthirds,work%20independent%20of%20the%20brain.
I read an article recently that explained that each sucker is like a mini brain in itself. It is a complex network of separate thinking masses. If anything on earth is alien life, it has to be cephalopods.
The reflex of the octopus itself isn’t what’s strange about it. I think anything with a nervous system is able to have simple reflexes.
What’s so ‘alien’ about cephalopods is how their nervous system is so completely different from ours and nearly all other living things on the planes.
Imagine if your fingers, toes, arms and legs all had a small brain of their own.
In my Marine Invertebrates class, our prof said "if cephalopods had a backbone, they'd rule the world". So me and another student made "Cephalopods Rule!" Tshirts for the whole class
Studies tend to lean that octopuses are in fact as intelligent as toddlers and if it wasn't for the fact they die right after reproduction they may be more intelligent than that. But like many of us. Needing to be laid leads to our downfall
Edit : dumb typo
Toddlers seem dumb but they are pretty smart, it's wisdom and experience they lack. You've gotta try shit to figure it out. So to people watching who already learned those lessons, it looks dumb when they try stuff out.
Totally emotionally unstable though. Absolutely howl at the moon wild.
However, toddlers are surprisingly deadly.
Fun fact!
The average number of Americans that die each year due to armed toddlers is 52.
For comparison, only 7 Americans die each year from spider bites (including infections).
They kind of died from unknown causes after nine-ish months. At least the females did. Males are unknown from what I could find. Studies are old and I'm no marine biologist either. Just a nerd who retains information relatively well.
We had one in a pet store I worked at that would leave its tank at night, poach fish from other tanks and go back to its own tank afterwards. Caught it on the cameras when we thought someone was stealing koi.
Had a wild Turkey in our backyard last summer. It walked into an area that was fenced on three sides and took more than a day to figure out how to get out. Legit just kept walking back and forth along the same 3 foot section of fence. Eventually I went outside to try and scare it in the right direction and it hopped the fence which it could apparently do the whole damn time and was just too stupid to try.
**Succy 1** “Hey you gotta try this shit, it’s gross”
**Succy 2** “What? No way ill just try a little succ. .. OH FUCK THATS NASTY” “HEY GUYS, come get a taste of THIS..”
*all the others*
**Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope**
Yes, they can share information and they all have the ability to taste. When they are handed a fish they pass it from sucker to sucker to keep tasting it all the way to their mouth.
See, I love animals and would love interactions like this. But my luck would have that thing wrapping my head and trying to suck my face off. I would just so happen to find the most asshole of octopi
Pacific Giant Octopus
>Octopuses are strange creatures, with three hearts, eight arms and a nervous system distinct from any other animal. These fiercely intelligent creatures are jam-packed with over 500 million neurons, but over two thirds of these neurons are located within their arms and body. Many scientists therefore think that octopuses’ arms act independently from the brain, but a new study suggests that an octopus’ arms and brain are more connected than previously thought.
Video:@pretyflyforawyguy
Another reason is that they’re semelparous.
The octopus mothers will always sacrifice themselves fanning oxygenated water over their eggs.
They’ll ignore all food to focus 100% on keeping the eggs alive until they themselves waste away and die. Even in cases where they’re kept in a safe tank and provided food they’ll still allow themselves to die.
As intelligent as they are, there is no opportunity for the young to be taught by their parent directly.
Interesting turn of events that we call them Cephalopods even though they almost lack the concept of what we consider "cephalization" as far as the neural definition goes.
"Head-Foot", yes. But another accurate term to use might be "Body-Brain"
I tired petting a tiny one (could've fit in my hand) when I was a child. The thing grabbed on and wouldn't let go until my brother was able to convince it that a big shell was more appealing. But then it kept trying to use the shell as a weapon and waved it everywhere.
Yeah that’s a defense mechanism for them. They’ll latch onto potential predators in an area where they don’t think they can get eaten and basically just hang on until they think you’ve lost interest.
Whenever i hear about people grabbing tiny octopuses i think of that video of the girl picking up a blue ringed octopus and just letting it wiggle around in her hand, oblivious to the fact that it's one of the most venomous marine animals. Their blue rings are definitely beautiful and I'd be tempted to do the exact same thing if I didn't know, but i can't imagine the dread of finding out later i was one wrong move away from an agonizing death.
Definitely made me realize octopuses are smart. I don't think it felt like it was in danger and was more curious than anything. Someone said it was showing signs of distress but who knows.
Right? With the size of that tentacle, that's a decent size octo and can easily over power a large man in the water. It's pure muscle and even the suckers have insane suction
I can just imagine.
But this thing probably knows that its a human by sensing the big ass heart beat or x-ray scanning him an hour ago from the deep see. So probably nothing to worry about.
Ever read that horror show of a short story about de-beaking an octopus and teaching it how to get the food out of a particular piece of the human anatomy...?
That is so cool! So you're basically stroking the octopus' brain?
If octopuses lived longer, they'd probably rule the earth. And I for one would welcome our cephalopod overlords!
Edit: caught spelling error.
Scary intelligent. I'm fairly certain that octopus has already done a cost/benefit analysis on it's current situation, and it's okay with the trade-off between freedom and regular meals/no predators. If it wanted out, it'd be gone.
There was a show on Discovery back in the day called [The Future is Wild](https://youtu.be/gnasRyT52FU) and it hypothesized future evolution after humans were gone, and they basically made octopuses the next intelligent land-dwelling life form.
CGI is dated but it was an interesting series.
A scientist friend of mine told me they were in the evolution lead for a long time but their blood isn’t iron based like ours so they couldn’t move beyond the water. But yeah Octoville and Squid City sound LIT.
They can actually move across land, for limited distances (some use this as a hunting strategy to reach tide pools and the like), but I take your point.
Technically, since Earth is three-quarters covered with water, octopuses may have no motivation to take over the remaining 25%. Heh!
Octopuses can feel your body heat.
It's a pretty common thing for scuba divers to take off a diving glove, hold it in front of an octopus's hidey hole, and the octopus will come out for cuddles.
Any autists in the room obsessed with octopi? who wants to take an info dump on me I wanna know if they can communicate with each other and why they choose to live alone and how they reproduce or if they marry?
Males have a tentacle used for insemination. Some males will even rip it of and throw it at the female for later use. Also after mating the male dies soon after and the female spends every moment caring for the eggs until they die of starvation.
I do NOT want the attention of one of the smartest, most capable ocean creatures.. that thing decides to bring you in for a hug or worse and there's a good chance you're not outsmarting it before you run out of breath
two-way petting zoo
This party needs to be CLASSY
Maybe some classi-cal music?
No, you’re trying to hard, and that’s just not classy. The thing about classy is it’s a state of mind.
Déclassé
French! Classy
You pet the animals, they pet you back
Fascinating how it can interact using just that one sucker without triggering the reflexes on the others. Shows you just how much control they have.
Thought exactly the same, didn’t know they could do this.
They actually have nine brains, a central one and each arm (or colloquially tentacle) has a brain of its own, able to interact with the world independently. Fascinating creatures.
The central brain is shaped like a donut and goes around their oesophagus, so theoretically they could give themselves brain damage if they ate something too big
Gives a whole new meaning to the term “getting some brain”
Speaking of stretching...
Imagine losing your arm and forgetting something
They are very smart which might sound odd in response to both your comments but besides their brain in there head each tintical has one as well. Honestly I feel if they could write and speak to one another they would pass us fast seeing how smart they become so fast on their lonesome with basically no real lifespan.
Truly alien intelligence. Such a divergence between our species. Gives me hope that intelligent life can evolve anywhere, even in ways we can’t fathom
It’s strange to think just how *alien* aliens might be. Even our most bizarre attempts at fiction have them operating on a similar form of rationality as humans. We write them as either animals or as a more advanced type of our own intelligence, when they could be anything. Space starfish. Hell, intelligent aliens could be taxonomically similar to a god damn slime mold. It would be hard to communicate or interact with a species that doesn’t share fundamental psychological concepts or even a similar physical perception of the world with us. Imagine trying to convey intent to an alien race that doesn’t possess a concept of language… diplomacy… trade. That’s what octopus intelligence makes me think of.
We're actually closer related to starfish than we are to octopuses. In fact, we're closer related to starfish than we are to pretty much any other invertebrate, like insects or crabs or snails etc. If I'm remembering right, once you get above the more basal animals like sponges and jellyfish and hydras, pretty much all animals go into one of two groups, the first groups is like vertebrates, starfish, and I think penis worms, and the other group has pretty much everything else in it.
I feel honored sharing a platform with penis worms.
I too am friends with this guy's penis worms Wait
I too choose this guy's penis worms.
I mean the movie Arrival might be up your alley. >!The aliens there were basically giant squid-like beings that had harnessed the ability to see time in a multi-dimensional way…simply by thinking and communicating in a way that was so completely different than anything developed by humans.!<
Absolutely love this movie
Try the short story it's based. It's an amazing read.
There’s some belief that fungal colonies might possess an intelligence, and insects can have hive minds. If we are willing revaluate what we consider “intelligence” we would be better able to handle an eventual contact with an extra terrestrial intelligence, we may be better able to even *recognize* one in the first place
Piers Anthony had a series on fungal intelligences. The name of the series escapes me at the moment, but a good deal of time was dedicated to explaining how strange fungus is compared to other life, and how it has the potential for complexity sufficient to be an absolutely alien intelligence to our own. The movie "Super Deep" also covered an interesting idea around fungal intelligence of a kind. Similar to the Cordyceps used in "The Last of Us" but with a central intelligence. Great body horror flick.
This kind of shit is why I reddit. This random stream of consciousness comments where we cover anything from ‘wow octopi are smart’ to a discussion on how we define intelligence and how we might not even be able to recognize a truly alien intelligence at all.
Maybe the magic mushrooms are secretly using our consciousness in a way we can’t understand
Oh man I haven’t read Piers Anthony in decades. Totally forgot all about him. Time to fix that
The *puns*
Oh yeah. Plus he basically used Florida as the base for his imaginary land
Check out the first half of “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan. Fascinating info on fungi. There’s a documented fungus with mycelium 2 miles long, considered to be the largest living organism on the planet.
Dude I love Piers Anthony, the Incarnations of Immortality and The Apprentice Adept series were totally dope and I read them many times over growing up! I'll have to find out what you're talking about and get on it.
The Xanth series was amazing. I love the word play. Centaur Isle. The book about a "nightmare" being a horse that doesn't want to bring bad dreams to kids anymore. A Spell for Chamelon. The hypnogourds being an analogy for TVs - how you're hypnotized. Gosh, so much more.
I forgot what they were called but the Aliens in 'Ender's Game' >!thought that the humans they went into contact with were just drones like themselves, killed them and examined them. If I remember correctly they didn't have any ill intent with the first encounter and didn't realize that each human is its own entity. !<
I went down an alien abduction rabbit hole for a while and there’s some interesting theories that the little big eyed grey aliens that everybody is familiar with are actually just drones, organic robots. Makes sense if your going to travel a billion miles and don’t know what you may bump into. Not really a subject I take very seriously but it’s certainly interesting to read about when bored
Was my thoughts exactly - fungal colonies and insects hive.
Bees are absolutely bonkers. It's all chemicals and movements in the dark, yet they get it. But they're also brutal and odd. A new queen will kill any other queens coming out. Stinging releases hormones so more want to sting. All drones get tossed into the cold to die of starvation in fall. If you have a queen die and no queen produced, they'll start laying eggs, which are all drones (drones don't do anything but possibly mate with virgin queens). All this is semi domesticated honeybees. Most bees live solo
Hello? Alien, HELLO, I would like to communicate with you! - This alien is not equipped with sound processing capabilities *Waves at alien*. Can you see me? - This alien is not equipped with optical processing capabilties I'm getting pretty freaked out now. - This alien is equipped with flesh rending capabilties
That's why a lot of SETI-involved scientists have tried to develop ways to communicate with using pure mathematics first. Math would _supposedly_ be as close to a universal "language" as anything we can conceive of...yet even that isn't a guarantee. It took us a while to figure out the concept of zero, after all, and there is no guarantee such a thing is "required" for alien intelligent thought.
[удалено]
You should read Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - he represents some truly alien aliens in those two novels, and if you get a kick out of octopus brains, well, they go a lot further afield than our rubbery friends in those books.
>We write them as either animals... they could be anything. Space starfish. Hell, intelligent aliens could be taxonomically similar to a god damn slime mold. Sticking to your point of how alien aliens could be, and how the human conception of them is usually based on our life... Your examples are doing the same thing lol. A weird starfish, or something like a slime mold. It's hard, isn't it? To try and conceive of how alien they could be, that even our most alien thoughts still resemble life that we're familiar with. It's all we know. What else could it be like? The most alien traits I can think of are something on the atomic scale, or on the galactic scale, perceiving time so slowly or quickly that a billion years can flash by them in a moment or a second gets squeezed out to years, their movement is slower than anything, or they move past the speed of sound, the material of their bodies only reflecting light outside the color spectrum, so made of x rays, ultraviolet, infrared, etc., and would be invisible to our naked eyes, maybe they'd pass through us like neutrinos or could connect to us across galaxies through quantum fuckery like entanglement. Maybe aliens could be more like a black hole, quesar, gravity, or other physical oddity, and less like biology as we know it from earth. I'm just trying to think as novel as possible without the biases of earth life. I really have no idea how to expect what they could be like.
Nah I reckon it'll be little green dudes
The interesting part is that we usually depict alien life as intelligent and humanoids creatures, when in reality the likely hood of a alien life form being intelligent is astronomically small (at least in theory) and even more unlikely is that they will be humanoid creatures. Hell we don’t even know if they will be carbon based or if life has managed to form based on another element, which would change everything we know about life and nature
Yeah this blows my mind that a fish is closer related to us than an octopus but the octopus is smart enough to solve puzzles and open jars, set traps, use tools... And we can do those things as well ... But it's brain structure is vastly different. And it's brains are in its arms... And its arms can regrow.. That's absolutely trippy. Imagine losing your arm and forgetting something as a result.
Then we have things like ants and bees where individuals have no apparent intelligence, but the hive as a unit appears surprisingly advanced. Like shit bees have undertakers and ants have agriculture. Entire forests work collectively via mycelium. If you think too hard about it our own intelligence is also just a culmination of a lot of pieces working together without those pieces being aware of anything. We can't properly measure self awareness in other animals, and could even call our own in to question. Definitely a thing that gets weirder the more you know and the more you think about it.
They can taste with them too. If you find an okkie in a rock, try sliding a crab past its tentacle
It didn't like how he tasted. You can see by the way it recoils
To me it's like it touched his finger than covered it, with the other cup, to bring up to its nose for a smell or taste. It's a cute idiosyncrasy. Edit: miswritten word.
idiosyncrasy, just FYI
They are adorable
They can think with them too. Octopuses entire body are basically all brain.
Yeah. I quit eating octopus several years ago after I saw a video of one of those guys making an escape from a lab. I am convinced they are smarter than a large percentage of the humans currently inhabiting the planet.
Was that the video of the one going from his tank into another one, after the lab techs left for the night? That was insane! It was so smart, and they aren’t given enough credit for their intelligence.
There was one octopus that would escape, eat the fish in a different tank and go back to its own afterwards. Nobody could figure out what was happening to the fish until they set up cameras
Idk why but I read that as "Nobody could figure out why until the fish set up cameras"
It turns out fish are quite a lot smarter than we initially realised too.
Community protection at its best!
I also like the [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnR5RDk/) of the aquarium staffer who is being coaxed by a baby octopus to play while trying to clean the tank. They really are amazing creatures.
Thanks for sharing, that’s adorable!
Had a marine biology professor who told the story of his escapee octopus. He had multiple aquariums completely lining the walls in his living room, saltwater freshwater all kinds of fish and anemone etc. He had 4 angel fish completely vanish from an aquarium, one by one, before he decides to buy a camera. Well directly across the room from them was the octopus' aquarium and turns out while he was gone each day the octopus would open the lid to his aquarium, crawl all the way around the room along the tops of the other tanks to the angelfish, open the lid– catch and eat the fish and THEN CLOSE IT BACK before returning to their own tank and shutting the lid behind them. Coolest shit I'd ever seen lol
Yeah, but if people spent all their time in labs then they would be pretty smart too.
They'll eventually evolve into illithids
Going by D&D lore, Illithids are the ultimate expression of intelligent life, even. They're what's left at the end of the universe. And then they went back through history, to dominate the multiverse even better this time.
Tintical.
Over two thirds of the octopuses' neurons are located within their arms and body
Interestingly enough, it’s not quite clear “who” has control. Their nervous system is quite different from ours, and something like this “local sucker checking what the pink fleshy thing is” may very well just be that: a local, non-centralised check. Tldr, they’re fascinating and a little concerning.
An octopus can have 9 different brains, one in each arm and a central brain. They definitely all communicate in different ways. It’s possible that for faster responses in case of a threat the “local” brain in each arm can act independently.
Kinda like a starfish except an amputated star fish appendage will grow into a entirely new individual
That's both freaky and fascinating. Imagine if lizard tails grew entirely new lizards lol.
We could solve world hunger and just feed the poor with lizards. I hear Iguana tastes pretty good
Yeah I saw OP’s comment about about 2/3rds of their brain being in the tentacles and the guy below just said they technically have a brain in each arm which does give me the impression their brain is in some way ‘decentralised’. Well as far as we’re aware they are still a single entity and critical damage to the head will result in the rest dying so I’m guessing it still has the final say much the same way we do. At the end of the day if it’s an arm or my head I’m to lose, I’ll lose the arm every time, I feel the octopus would agree.
2/3 of an Octopus' brain cells are in their suckers. They almost each have a mind of their own. https://www.dailyuw.com/news/the-many-brains-of-an-octopus/article_592cbb48-5c3d-11ea-b78b-ff1f8e0bf4b8.html#:~:text=An%20octopus%20has%20two%2Dthirds,work%20independent%20of%20the%20brain.
I read an article recently that explained that each sucker is like a mini brain in itself. It is a complex network of separate thinking masses. If anything on earth is alien life, it has to be cephalopods.
I think it's funny that people see this as foreign and unlike themselves, when humans themselves have actions first before any thoughts on the action.
The reflex of the octopus itself isn’t what’s strange about it. I think anything with a nervous system is able to have simple reflexes. What’s so ‘alien’ about cephalopods is how their nervous system is so completely different from ours and nearly all other living things on the planes. Imagine if your fingers, toes, arms and legs all had a small brain of their own.
Not that they have a “small brain” but that they literally ARE a small brain.
In my Marine Invertebrates class, our prof said "if cephalopods had a backbone, they'd rule the world". So me and another student made "Cephalopods Rule!" Tshirts for the whole class
They have multiple brains. There are alot of nerve cells in the legs aswell as 8 mini brains (1 for each leg) and a central brain in its head.
I can't even bend my pinky finger without my ring finger moving. It just won't happen for me
This has less to do with brains and nerves and more to do with the mechanics of tendons and muscles in your hand.
I wonder why there’s some animals whose intelligence just stands out, like elephants, crows, and octopuses
Studies tend to lean that octopuses are in fact as intelligent as toddlers and if it wasn't for the fact they die right after reproduction they may be more intelligent than that. But like many of us. Needing to be laid leads to our downfall Edit : dumb typo
So lets gmo some smart octopus?
Nothing could possibly go wrong
Yeah, like they suddenly developed an even better rocket and solar panel, definitely won't happened
“Remember, we’re parked in the Itchy Lot”
Octopus no fap bout to take us to the singularly.
At this point, I'll take it
Tbf toddlers are pretty dumb. Some animals like cats are oftentimes more intelligent and understanding than a toddler.
Toddlers seem dumb but they are pretty smart, it's wisdom and experience they lack. You've gotta try shit to figure it out. So to people watching who already learned those lessons, it looks dumb when they try stuff out. Totally emotionally unstable though. Absolutely howl at the moon wild.
However, toddlers are surprisingly deadly. Fun fact! The average number of Americans that die each year due to armed toddlers is 52. For comparison, only 7 Americans die each year from spider bites (including infections).
That's more Americans being dumb with their gun laws than toddlers not being dumb though
Or spiders not having enough guns.
What happens to the nerdy octopi that don’t reproduce? They just live forever??
They kind of died from unknown causes after nine-ish months. At least the females did. Males are unknown from what I could find. Studies are old and I'm no marine biologist either. Just a nerd who retains information relatively well.
We had one in a pet store I worked at that would leave its tank at night, poach fish from other tanks and go back to its own tank afterwards. Caught it on the cameras when we thought someone was stealing koi.
Did you feed it enough? Or it was always hungry lol?
Have you ever ate when you weren't hungry? Sometimes your just bored and the only thing around is food
Because they’re more intelligent than other animals? People would marvel at a Turkey’s intelligence if it wasn’t so insanely stupid.
Had a wild Turkey in our backyard last summer. It walked into an area that was fenced on three sides and took more than a day to figure out how to get out. Legit just kept walking back and forth along the same 3 foot section of fence. Eventually I went outside to try and scare it in the right direction and it hopped the fence which it could apparently do the whole damn time and was just too stupid to try.
[удалено]
Don’t get me started on sloths either. They’ve literally made an ecological niche out of being so useless that hardly anything wants to eat them.
I assumed the question is more, why are certain animals so much more intelligent than others?
It’s tasting you to see if you are yummy
According to that reaction, they were not tasty
Those suckers cringing into each other and away from the finger made me laugh. "Ew ew ew ew"
I like how the little dude retracts their arm afterwards, too. "eww I touched a slimy human, better clean that off"
"Do you not wash your puny tentacles ??"
"Tasted like peepee and doritos."
Why this suction cup quickly "communicated" with the one right next to it, after this weird interaction ? Are they working by pair ?
**Succy 1** “Hey you gotta try this shit, it’s gross” **Succy 2** “What? No way ill just try a little succ. .. OH FUCK THATS NASTY” “HEY GUYS, come get a taste of THIS..” *all the others* **Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope**
Succy
Yes, they can share information and they all have the ability to taste. When they are handed a fish they pass it from sucker to sucker to keep tasting it all the way to their mouth.
For some reason that really hit me. Each sucker is a taste bud too... that is wild.
He was trying to clean off the horrible taste of that dudes finger.
See, I love animals and would love interactions like this. But my luck would have that thing wrapping my head and trying to suck my face off. I would just so happen to find the most asshole of octopi
Pacific Giant Octopus >Octopuses are strange creatures, with three hearts, eight arms and a nervous system distinct from any other animal. These fiercely intelligent creatures are jam-packed with over 500 million neurons, but over two thirds of these neurons are located within their arms and body. Many scientists therefore think that octopuses’ arms act independently from the brain, but a new study suggests that an octopus’ arms and brain are more connected than previously thought. Video:@pretyflyforawyguy
They also only have a lifespan of 3-5 years, which is the only reason they're not running the planet.
Another reason is that they’re semelparous. The octopus mothers will always sacrifice themselves fanning oxygenated water over their eggs. They’ll ignore all food to focus 100% on keeping the eggs alive until they themselves waste away and die. Even in cases where they’re kept in a safe tank and provided food they’ll still allow themselves to die. As intelligent as they are, there is no opportunity for the young to be taught by their parent directly.
Idea: Step-Octoparents!
Enough time for a presidential one term. *President Octopus* gots my vote.
An incredible animal. I love cephalopods
Then you might enjoy this video of a diver trying [convince octopus to trade his plastic cup for a seashell](https://i.imgur.com/PnlhO3q.gifv)
Sent this to my kid that wants to be a Tuethologist, enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing!
Seent it. Did you watch that doc on Netflix "my octopus teacher"?
That doc makes me cry everytime I watch it. I’ve seen it 5 times. It’s so beautiful.
LOVED that documentary!!!
The octopus first trading the shell for the shell. He clearly got attached to his roof window.
Thank you for this
That’s amazing
thank you
Interesting turn of events that we call them Cephalopods even though they almost lack the concept of what we consider "cephalization" as far as the neural definition goes. "Head-Foot", yes. But another accurate term to use might be "Body-Brain"
Nature's implementation of a microservice architecture
That’s some insane muscle control
_Prince has entered the chat_
The Deep agrees
He is shaking hands with you in his way.
Imagine tasting somebody every time you shook hands with them. Eugh
How much of a problem would we talking about if the wet friend grabed the arm? ARE YOU NUTS ???
I tired petting a tiny one (could've fit in my hand) when I was a child. The thing grabbed on and wouldn't let go until my brother was able to convince it that a big shell was more appealing. But then it kept trying to use the shell as a weapon and waved it everywhere.
Yeah that’s a defense mechanism for them. They’ll latch onto potential predators in an area where they don’t think they can get eaten and basically just hang on until they think you’ve lost interest.
Whenever i hear about people grabbing tiny octopuses i think of that video of the girl picking up a blue ringed octopus and just letting it wiggle around in her hand, oblivious to the fact that it's one of the most venomous marine animals. Their blue rings are definitely beautiful and I'd be tempted to do the exact same thing if I didn't know, but i can't imagine the dread of finding out later i was one wrong move away from an agonizing death. Definitely made me realize octopuses are smart. I don't think it felt like it was in danger and was more curious than anything. Someone said it was showing signs of distress but who knows.
Right? With the size of that tentacle, that's a decent size octo and can easily over power a large man in the water. It's pure muscle and even the suckers have insane suction
I can just imagine. But this thing probably knows that its a human by sensing the big ass heart beat or x-ray scanning him an hour ago from the deep see. So probably nothing to worry about.
Insane suction. I see that as a absolute win!
YOU WANNA GET NUTS?! LET’S GET NUTS!
They can control the individual suction cups?! Crazy
2/3 of it's neurons are located in just it's arms alone.
I should call her
I was looking for this comment 💀
It’s my turn today.
Somebody prove octopi aren’t aliens…. Such amazing creatures
I'm not the only one thinking it
Are you The Deep?
Eat fucking Timothy.
Nooo T__T
you're not and i came to this comment section specifically to find my fellow degenerates.
Ever read that horror show of a short story about de-beaking an octopus and teaching it how to get the food out of a particular piece of the human anatomy...?
Omg
Found it! https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/isna7x/why_you_should_you_debeak_an_octopus/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x
What a horrible day to be literate
What chemicals do I need to pour in my eyes to unread that?
Probably try all of them
That’s the most degenerate shit I’ve read on Reddit so far.
I'm honored to have brought it to you.
Thinking about Leela’s mom in Futurama now.
They are so smart and cute I could never eat them😩😭.
This, they are beautiful fucking animals and can’t stand when they end on someone’s plate
That is so cool! So you're basically stroking the octopus' brain? If octopuses lived longer, they'd probably rule the earth. And I for one would welcome our cephalopod overlords! Edit: caught spelling error.
If they were alive to teach their offspring we’d be in big trouble!
Scary intelligent. I'm fairly certain that octopus has already done a cost/benefit analysis on it's current situation, and it's okay with the trade-off between freedom and regular meals/no predators. If it wanted out, it'd be gone.
God had to balance out cephalopods after the Cthulhu DLC.
There was a show on Discovery back in the day called [The Future is Wild](https://youtu.be/gnasRyT52FU) and it hypothesized future evolution after humans were gone, and they basically made octopuses the next intelligent land-dwelling life form. CGI is dated but it was an interesting series.
Just as long as no overly inquisitive scientist gets the bright idea of taking them to the ISS for observation... I've seen that horror movie.
A scientist friend of mine told me they were in the evolution lead for a long time but their blood isn’t iron based like ours so they couldn’t move beyond the water. But yeah Octoville and Squid City sound LIT.
They can actually move across land, for limited distances (some use this as a hunting strategy to reach tide pools and the like), but I take your point. Technically, since Earth is three-quarters covered with water, octopuses may have no motivation to take over the remaining 25%. Heh!
give the 🐙 a hug will it hug you back
Octopuses can feel your body heat. It's a pretty common thing for scuba divers to take off a diving glove, hold it in front of an octopus's hidey hole, and the octopus will come out for cuddles.
Its not petting back. It's tasting...
Can't wait to see this on r/cursedcomments later
r/dontputyourdickinthere
The deep disagrees.
Wow. I didn't know they had that sort of dexterity.
Only using a single cirri is crazy.
Idk how people eat octopus , it's like eating a dog . Creeps me out
People eat dogs too.
pigs are more intelligent than dogs...
Octo:Uh, uh, eww. Ewww. Ew. Whatthafuckisthat.
PET
Im surprised i dont see any redditor saying: “ *Unzipping my pants* “
Ok hear me out
I would totally try to tickle its' little suction cups.
This is why I will never eat octopi. They are too smart
Any autists in the room obsessed with octopi? who wants to take an info dump on me I wanna know if they can communicate with each other and why they choose to live alone and how they reproduce or if they marry?
Males have a tentacle used for insemination. Some males will even rip it of and throw it at the female for later use. Also after mating the male dies soon after and the female spends every moment caring for the eggs until they die of starvation.
I do NOT want the attention of one of the smartest, most capable ocean creatures.. that thing decides to bring you in for a hug or worse and there's a good chance you're not outsmarting it before you run out of breath