octopus inteligence

my :twocents: is that a lot of what we assume about intelligent animals comes from extrapolating from just the vertebrates, or just the mammals, so we're getting a whole lot of evolutionary baggage in the animals that happen to be intelligent, but that doesn't really have anything to do with intelligence in general. I think a good reason to investigate smart invertebrates like cephs or stomatopods is to understand how much blindness we have to things that aren't like us, as well as to look at how animals distantly related to us use different biology to solve the same problems we do by convergent evolution to some particular pattern (the similarities and differences between human and octopus eyes are often brought up in this regard).
 
I wonder what octopuses would be able to do if they lived for 10... 15... or 20 years. If they can at such a fast rate, imagine the possibilites.
 
That's what I am getting at. If octos can exhibit such intelligence despite a complete lack of culture and a short lifespan. Imagine what those brains might be capable of if they were on par with human lifespans. And better still, if they somehow developed a means of passing this knowledge and skill base on from one generation to the next.

One element that jumped out at me was this section of the article linked to above:

Meanwhile, Anderson has been investigating another phenomenon little-noted in invertebrates: sleep. Until recently, only vertebrates were believed to sleep in the full metabolic sense. But Anderson has observed that octopuses, ordinarily hypervigilant, may sleep deeply. Their eyes glaze over, their breathing turns slow and shallow, they don't respond to light taps, and a male will let his delicate ligula—the sex organ at the tip of one arm—dangle perilously.

Stephen Duntley, a sleep specialist at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, has videotaped similar slumber in cuttlefish, with a twist: Sleeping cuttlefish lie still, their skin a dull brown, for 10- to 15-minute stretches, then flash bold colored patterns and twitch their tentacles for briefer intervals. After viewing Duntley's footage, Anderson suggests the cuttlefish might merely be waking to check for threats. But Duntley says the cycling resembles the rapid eye movement sleep of birds and mammals, when humans dream. If invertebrates undergo a similar cycle, Duntley argues, it would affirm "that REM sleep is very important to learning." Would it also suggest that cuttlefish and octopuses dream? "That's the ultimate question," Duntley responds.

Have any of you lot noticed this phenomenon in your tanks?
 
My cuttlefish definitely rest. They are usually pale (matching the sand) and at the back of the tank with their pupils closed... In the morning, sometimes I catch them still resting before the timer turns the light on.
 
YELLOWFISH;96303 said:
That's what I am getting at. If octos can exhibit such intelligence despite a complete lack of culture and a short lifespan. Imagine what those brains might be capable of if they were on par with human lifespans. And better still, if they somehow developed a means of passing this knowledge and skill base on from one generation to the next.

Any further down this line of speculation and I think you need to shift this thread to the Cthulu forum :twisted::cthulhu:
 
I think my octopus sleeps. Sometimes if I'm quiet, I can sneak past the tank and Oscar doesn't even move. Other times, he shys away from the front of the tank. He also turns very pale.

It is interesting to think he may be dreaming. What could they be dreaming about.
 
YELLOWFISH;96303 said:
And better still, if they somehow developed a means of passing this knowledge and skill base on from one generation to the next.

Think about the rate at which they could transmit information using thier colour/pattern changes and what's more, unlike us, both could communicate simultaneously (well ok some humans can do this). The possibililties of body language with eight fully flexible limbs also rather boggle the mind.
 

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