..maybe it is an explorer. I wish octopuses were able to communicate more knowledge intergenerationally. It feels like they don't currently get the most out of their intellects.
Most likely - I'll just rest here on this rock, woooah, oh shit oh shit oh shit what's happening ๐ฑ
โฆmaybe it is an explorer. I wish octopuses were able to communicate more knowledge intergenerationally. It feels like they donโt currently get the most out of their intellects.
Maybe they do! Maybe this octopus is shark riding just like it's grandparents taught it, in order to get to the more fertile feeding grounds for the winter, using the routes passed down from generation to generation.
Well unfortunately no, this is the tragedy of the octopuses - they don't know their parents and grandparents. Their mothers die when they are born and their fathers are absent, and they are solitary.
Their only chance at learning is social or observational learning from peers but because of the territory arrangements even that doesn't happen a lot as far as we know, though scientists have observed some younger octopuses learning from watching older ones from a distance.
Octopuses are incredibly smart. They can infer from context, make generalizations, spatially imagine objects, and even show altruism. If only they could do what you said and pass on knowledge the world would be their oyster!
There was a species discovered awhile ago that formed colonies and was observed pair bonding, intimate mating and spawning multiple times over their lifetime. Completely unlike other octopuses. The Larger Pacific striped octopus.
Sadly, their lifespan is only about two years, which probably is why they aren't the dominant species.
Thank you so much; I hadn't heard about that (out of the octopus loop). I can't find it now but I wonder if the instances I mentioned of wild octopuses learning were somehow related to those - if memory serves it was somewhere off the coast of California so some habitat overlap.
Wow, the LPSO have a lot of evolutionary potential. If their environmental conditions are right who knows what will happen. I don't mean to sound disloyal to my species but if humans do succeed in dragging themselves back into the stone age it might be time for the octopusses to shine. An Octipodean Era!
I can't remember exactly where I learnt about the LPSO. Might have been a documentary. Hopefully climate change doesn't wipe them out.
There is a book by Adrian Tchaikovsky about a planet taken over by genetically modified octopuses that started their own civilisation. They even had their own space ships. Children of Ruin is the title if anyone's interested.
Hopefully some of them survive. They sound so amazing.
Thanks for the book rec - good timing! I only just read Children of Time a few weeks ago - didn't realise the sequel was going to be about octopuses, thought it was just going to be spiders in space! @[email protected] has Children of Time on reading list too.
I am still using... a very old bio-method to track my reading; it has worked up til now but as time goes by data loss is an increasing possibility so I should probably switch to tech. I think there might be a fediverse Goodreads alternative for books? Bookwyrm. Also NeoDB but I'm not sure what that does.
I think it's pretty normal for the wait time to be longest for the first book. Some number of people read the first one, then a smaller number are interested in the second, and an even smaller number are interested in the third. Almost no one reads the second book before the first so it's always front loaded like that.
Luckily I can strip the DRM and read it in my own time ๐.