I recommend Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent by Peter Godfrey-Smith.
A great read, reflecting on an Octopus "city" which was briefly established around some sea bottom clump.
The stories about how Octopuses escape routinely from enclosures in marine parks are fascinating.
(I realize this is off-beam from a story fundamentally about cross-species friendship, but I do think this book goes to a lot of questions around what another kind/form of intelligence might look like, if we were of a mind to look for it)
Other Minds is very good. The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery is similar but covers some different topics, including the author's relationship with a couple different octopuses.
When the great white sees a human it scans us, its search image is picking up something that's not prey. ...They aren't animals that are after us, if they were, there would be attacks every day.
Reminds me of the bear documentary filmmaker who was killed by the bears he was observing:
“Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes.”
Quark, ST: Deep Space 9
Is that just one attack a year in that specific region? There are certainly more than that globally. Earlier this year there were two attacks in Australia only hours apart.
It's about 50-100 a year world wide. The majority, oddly, in the US - seems even the sharks around here are more prone to violence. (No word on the Jets yet)
But, seriously, given that we kill 100 million of them every year, they're surprisingly nice to us.
I had a dive instructor one who had an interesting insight re attacks Hawaii. Surfer goes missing. Body is found later with massive, obvious, shark bites. Lungs full or water. Official story: surfer drowned and then was bitten. If a large shark wants to actually eat you, you aren't getting away to call it an attack. It is not abnormal for people to simply go missing on the ocean. If even a small percentage of these are attacks, the "one attack per year" mantra should be revisited.
I would not recommend swimming, or walking, around any apex predator. They are very confident animals and are therefore curious. Watch a puppy 'inspect' an unusual object. You might not survive such curiosity.
Google "red sea jaws", a story about a true rogue shark that attacked multiple people across several days. The animal has a deformed jaw and so the bites could be linked.
I can't decide if I think it's real or fake. It's a very good doc and Timothy's footage could absolutely be real but the people interviewed, every single one of them, just come across as fake and very very bad actors.
Whenever the film comes up on Reddit I scan the comments and I've done a tiny bit of googling but it seems I'm in the minority with this opinion which I find strange since I can't fathom the interviewees are even close to genuine.
In my youth, during the southern Australian summer startup parts of the year, things would get warmer and warmer .. the sun staying up for longer and earlier and waking up the beach from the cold nights winter storm hangover, the awesome Indian Ocean water a bit docile, the winds calmer, perhaps, visibility getting less shark'y and more plankton'y, and in general a happy sea in the morning first-thing meant it was time for a swim. And so the daily ritual: goggles, flippers, a knife and a bag of treats, beach-bag: check.. I'd walk down to the spot, as it wasn't far from the family beach-house, and by the time I got to the water had deposited all earthly possessions behind me such that I could just splash my dive with the wave .. always a bit of a shiver at first, but then with clarity the ocean opens up its wonders.
This particular spot, and there were many for sure, but this particular one was just better to swim to, rather than walk up and over .. a spot just out past a reefy-beach, beyond a bit of a break, and then back onto a shallow reef a bit further from the beach. A bit of a swim and daunting in the deep bits, but if it were docile once you got there, the creatures were too. Playful, even. Chill.. A true ocean garden paradise of warm-weather nooks, holes, ledges, crannies, shelves, and a few scarey deep bits thrown in for pleasure. On the right day though, its like swimming in a giant bath-tub, although all your mates have the potential to kill you..
I can see it in my mind now, the back of my hand ahead of me as I take one last breath of air and dive down to the hole with a ledge... my bag of treats seemingly dropping into the hole with a mind of its own, and out spills the contents .. a few gold coins (well-polished with coca cola), a couple marbles, a flourescent rubber ball, like they used to make, heavy... all sinking into the shallow depth. And the inky tentacle reaching from the hole, catching each coin as it fell, glistening endlesly in the sun, to dark silence below. I float and watch, and of course the other objects cross my mind, but once the coins are gone, the octopus disappears for a few seconds .. probably inspecting the validity of the mint .. before returning in a gigantic splash of liquid being, all 8 tentacles extended, some kind of attack mode like .. how dare i enter this lair .. and then .. docile. friendly. just a big scareshow for the human, and anyway.. what else did i bring, oh yes .. the fluoro ball now has a bite mark in it, didn't like it .. marbles .. hmm ..
I go up, grab another breath, dive down .. can't see anything its just the hole with a ledge. Dive deeper, under the ledge, there it is .. guarding the horde. A few fish-hooks and sinkers down there, a thousand empty shells too, some kind of a collection. Would I call it a midden? Yes, I would. With my coins in it. Up for another breath, and down again to retrieve what treat I can, but of course the game is to get a coin from the lair, drop it from the surface, and let the sun do all the work. Not easy though, putting ones hand into an octopus lair when its guarding its midden.
I know this is going to sound weird, but to me it really seemed there was a sudden sweet-spot where the reflections would catch in a way that the octopus could see I was trying to play the game, and so it was that we played catch like this a few times that summer. It did give me one of the coins back eventually.
>Octopus reproductive organs mature due to the hormonal influence of the optic gland but result in the inactivation of their digestive glands, typically causing the octopus to die from starvation. Experimental removal of both optic glands after spawning was found to result in the cessation of broodiness, the resumption of feeding, increased growth, and greatly extended lifespans.
Pains of not being a mammal. Turns out if your children's lives don't depend on your filtered blood, protection and teaching skills, evolution doesn't optimize for you not starving after your reproductive organs mature. Fascinating.
I've always imagined if they lived a few decades they would have long ago invented a breathing apparatus that would allow them to survive on land and eliminated humans from competing with them at the top of the food chain.
Bad news for us, on the other hand, Mars would probably be colonized by now.
What would that look like? So like, some chimps see a monolith and then start using bones as blunt weapons - fast forward some millions of years and we’ve got machine guns. What is the octopus breathing apparatus version of that? Maybe that they carry shells with water in them to extend their time on the surface ever so slightly? They’d design rigid exoskeletons somehow, yeah? Out of shells, barnacles, something like that? Rigid exoskeletons with little shell-cups of water for short periods on the surface.
Wouldn't they just dominate the seas?
Being in the water would give them more real estate and would let them work with higher volumes, therefore growing/evolving faster. And since we are going there as result of 'out-teching' land people they would flood everything (by melting ice) and colonize land space.
I would say that they have their own mindset and culture distinct from ours. Who's to say that they would want to invent air breathing devices to explore the land, eliminate humans, or explore space if they were smarter or more organized?
There are two extant genera of cephalopods able to live for a few decades in fact. Ironically they are the 'dumbest' (but are elusive and keep still a lot of secrets, so maybe this point of view could change in the future).
I find it sad that we eat so many intelligent creatures, including octopus. Alas, B12 and certain other nutrients are only gotten from meat.
I find it reasonable to limit meat consumption to animals that were bred for that purpose, and I am satisfied with few types of meat and have no need for the more capricious varieties (eating things like horse is unnecessary. I'll stick with chicken).
Just a tangent, but it might make your life easier (and other being's lives, too): You get B12s not only from meat, fish, eggs and milk but also from fermented food like sauerkraut, kimchi, tempeh, kombucha, some seaweeds and fermented tea.
>Alas, B12 and certain other nutrients are only gotten from meat.
There are alternative sources of B12 and every other nutrient we're aware of. Even if you doubt plant-derived/synthetic analogues, that still leaves dairy and eggs. There is very clearly no requirement for humans to consume meat.
>I find it reasonable to limit meat consumption to animals that were bred for that purpose[...]
Why is that? Is seems much more reasonable to me that, if you are going to eat animals, you would eat the ones that are not raised specifically for that purpose. Animals raised specifically for consumption have absurdly short lifespans (chickens for instance go from egg to slaughter in about 7 weeks) with most of them having little to no chance to lead anything resembling a normal, stimulating life. Is it not more reasonable to eat hunted animals who had the opportunity to experience real lives?
It was a surprise to see the Glaucus atlanticus photo. Didn't expected to see this 'blue dragon' in a kelp forest. Always photogenic and always dangerous.
A living proof that molluscs can be very alien in its own ways.
"They aren't animals that are after us, if they were, there would be attacks every day. If they see a seal, a fish or some of the other prey that's a different story but humans are not on their menu."
In my region (Cape Cod) we've seen an explosion in the seal population, which has attracted a large number of great white sharks. Two attacks last year, one fatal and the other could have also easily been (victim barely survived).
Seals swim just a few feet off of the very popular beaches here - it's only a matter of time until the next attack. Locals and tourists still have the mindset of "attacks are rare, driving is more dangerous!" - but I'm not optimistic that the frequency will continue to be so low.
Readit News
A great read, reflecting on an Octopus "city" which was briefly established around some sea bottom clump.
The stories about how Octopuses escape routinely from enclosures in marine parks are fascinating.
(I realize this is off-beam from a story fundamentally about cross-species friendship, but I do think this book goes to a lot of questions around what another kind/form of intelligence might look like, if we were of a mind to look for it)
When the great white sees a human it scans us, its search image is picking up something that's not prey. ...They aren't animals that are after us, if they were, there would be attacks every day.
Reminds me of the bear documentary filmmaker who was killed by the bears he was observing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Treadwell#Death
Nature's pretty good at opportunism. A well-fed bear might be fairly safe, while that same bear if starving would eat you without a second thought.
>The one attack a year is an aberration.
Is that just one attack a year in that specific region? There are certainly more than that globally. Earlier this year there were two attacks in Australia only hours apart.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-16/man-attacked-by-shark...
But, seriously, given that we kill 100 million of them every year, they're surprisingly nice to us.
I would not recommend swimming, or walking, around any apex predator. They are very confident animals and are therefore curious. Watch a puppy 'inspect' an unusual object. You might not survive such curiosity.
Google "red sea jaws", a story about a true rogue shark that attacked multiple people across several days. The animal has a deformed jaw and so the bites could be linked.
https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/shark-attack-nea...
A shark attack is when a shark with a baseball bat walks in to your living room while your watching a movie and says “shark attack!”.
When you get bitten by one while your swimming or surfing, that’s a well deserved ass whipping.
Great doc.
Grizzly Man (2005): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWA7GtDmNFU
Whenever the film comes up on Reddit I scan the comments and I've done a tiny bit of googling but it seems I'm in the minority with this opinion which I find strange since I can't fathom the interviewees are even close to genuine.
In my youth, during the southern Australian summer startup parts of the year, things would get warmer and warmer .. the sun staying up for longer and earlier and waking up the beach from the cold nights winter storm hangover, the awesome Indian Ocean water a bit docile, the winds calmer, perhaps, visibility getting less shark'y and more plankton'y, and in general a happy sea in the morning first-thing meant it was time for a swim. And so the daily ritual: goggles, flippers, a knife and a bag of treats, beach-bag: check.. I'd walk down to the spot, as it wasn't far from the family beach-house, and by the time I got to the water had deposited all earthly possessions behind me such that I could just splash my dive with the wave .. always a bit of a shiver at first, but then with clarity the ocean opens up its wonders.
This particular spot, and there were many for sure, but this particular one was just better to swim to, rather than walk up and over .. a spot just out past a reefy-beach, beyond a bit of a break, and then back onto a shallow reef a bit further from the beach. A bit of a swim and daunting in the deep bits, but if it were docile once you got there, the creatures were too. Playful, even. Chill.. A true ocean garden paradise of warm-weather nooks, holes, ledges, crannies, shelves, and a few scarey deep bits thrown in for pleasure. On the right day though, its like swimming in a giant bath-tub, although all your mates have the potential to kill you..
I can see it in my mind now, the back of my hand ahead of me as I take one last breath of air and dive down to the hole with a ledge... my bag of treats seemingly dropping into the hole with a mind of its own, and out spills the contents .. a few gold coins (well-polished with coca cola), a couple marbles, a flourescent rubber ball, like they used to make, heavy... all sinking into the shallow depth. And the inky tentacle reaching from the hole, catching each coin as it fell, glistening endlesly in the sun, to dark silence below. I float and watch, and of course the other objects cross my mind, but once the coins are gone, the octopus disappears for a few seconds .. probably inspecting the validity of the mint .. before returning in a gigantic splash of liquid being, all 8 tentacles extended, some kind of attack mode like .. how dare i enter this lair .. and then .. docile. friendly. just a big scareshow for the human, and anyway.. what else did i bring, oh yes .. the fluoro ball now has a bite mark in it, didn't like it .. marbles .. hmm ..
I go up, grab another breath, dive down .. can't see anything its just the hole with a ledge. Dive deeper, under the ledge, there it is .. guarding the horde. A few fish-hooks and sinkers down there, a thousand empty shells too, some kind of a collection. Would I call it a midden? Yes, I would. With my coins in it. Up for another breath, and down again to retrieve what treat I can, but of course the game is to get a coin from the lair, drop it from the surface, and let the sun do all the work. Not easy though, putting ones hand into an octopus lair when its guarding its midden.
I know this is going to sound weird, but to me it really seemed there was a sudden sweet-spot where the reflections would catch in a way that the octopus could see I was trying to play the game, and so it was that we played catch like this a few times that summer. It did give me one of the coins back eventually.
>Octopus reproductive organs mature due to the hormonal influence of the optic gland but result in the inactivation of their digestive glands, typically causing the octopus to die from starvation. Experimental removal of both optic glands after spawning was found to result in the cessation of broodiness, the resumption of feeding, increased growth, and greatly extended lifespans.
Bad news for us, on the other hand, Mars would probably be colonized by now.
After that, they’re pretty much on track, no?
I find it reasonable to limit meat consumption to animals that were bred for that purpose, and I am satisfied with few types of meat and have no need for the more capricious varieties (eating things like horse is unnecessary. I'll stick with chicken).
This video is what triggered this thought process for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqAmR1lEN0I (EDIT: I'd linked the wrong video)
I will certainly never eat octopus.
There are alternative sources of B12 and every other nutrient we're aware of. Even if you doubt plant-derived/synthetic analogues, that still leaves dairy and eggs. There is very clearly no requirement for humans to consume meat.
>I find it reasonable to limit meat consumption to animals that were bred for that purpose[...]
Why is that? Is seems much more reasonable to me that, if you are going to eat animals, you would eat the ones that are not raised specifically for that purpose. Animals raised specifically for consumption have absurdly short lifespans (chickens for instance go from egg to slaughter in about 7 weeks) with most of them having little to no chance to lead anything resembling a normal, stimulating life. Is it not more reasonable to eat hunted animals who had the opportunity to experience real lives?
From: https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/vitamin-b12/
I eat food that is fortified with B12 and sometimes I take supplements. Blood work came back positive - not B12 deficient.
A living proof that molluscs can be very alien in its own ways.
In my region (Cape Cod) we've seen an explosion in the seal population, which has attracted a large number of great white sharks. Two attacks last year, one fatal and the other could have also easily been (victim barely survived).
Seals swim just a few feet off of the very popular beaches here - it's only a matter of time until the next attack. Locals and tourists still have the mindset of "attacks are rare, driving is more dangerous!" - but I'm not optimistic that the frequency will continue to be so low.
Dead Comment