Looking for nerdy conversation, how is everyone?

Joined
Mar 22, 2021
Messages
4
Location
a deep sea vent near you
Hi there, I'm new here. I hope everyone here is having a good time. Cephalopods are my passion, and I'm very interested in their behavioural patterns. If any of you have made your own observations, or would like to just use this thread as a place to discus cephalopod behaviour, that would be very welcome, otherwise, please have a great day, and stay squishy.
 
Hello! Welcome to TONMO! I do research on cephalopod behavior so it is a topic very dear to me, and one I am very passionate about. Do you have any particular species you are most interested in?
Hi there! Thank you so much for the reply :smile:) I am currently doing a project on octopus farming, so I am mostly doing research about the common octopus vulgaris, because I need to justify the ethical problematics of said farming. I have accumulated a wide variety of single facts, such as vulgaris having a favourite arm, preferred foods, having a very complex brain structure and so on, but these are mostly for show to convince others of my cause. One question I have had for a while on this subject is what an octopuses reaction to isolation or forced communal living conditions would be, and how vulgaris deals with pain, because these are all factors of the possible living conditions a farmed octopus would be put in. What are some species you are passionate about? :smile:
 
The species I work with and am most familiar with is the octopus bimaculoides, which is native to the coast of California. I have also worked with a species of pygmy octopus called octopus chierchiae, which are very small and very fun to look at!

I know there was a paper published very recently about octopus pain perception. I don't think the research was on vulgaris in particular but all species are likely similar in their pain perception. Let me know if you have troubles finding or accessing the paper.

A short note on the topic of animal ethics and octopus farms, if we assume people will eat octopus regardless of the way they are harvested, would you prefer people to eat animals born and raised in captivity (potentially conserving the wild population), or ones collected from the wild?

The ethics of eating animals is a complicated, but important discussion to have. I'm glad more and more people are interested in the topic!
 
Thanks for the reply :smile: Your work sounds awesome! Would you be interested in telling a bit about your work? It sounds very interesting.

I see both sides of the argument when it comes to the ethics of octopus farming. I am relatively neutral on the topic, but if I had to chose, which at the moment I do, I am more against farming than for it, simply because I hate to know that somewhere in the world octopuses are being farmed on mass to be eaten, since they are (in my opinion) intelligent, and sensitive, while they are not a foundation for feeding general human populations. I would love to live in one of two utopias, where either octopuses aren't eaten at all (which is pretty impossible in the near future, to my absolute dismay) , or, one where ocean habitats world wide are so balanced and plentiful that it is sustainable to catch wild octopus at limited amounts. (sorry if that's a lot of text-)

Thanks for the suggestions, I will defiantly look into reading those papers. :smile:
 

Shop Amazon

Shop Amazon
Shop Amazon; support TONMO!
Shop Amazon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Back
Top