SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Now that's alien intelligence:
The she-cephalopod was filmed by the Blue Planet II crew as they were exploring the inky depths in South Africa, focusing on the magical world of marine forests. As series producer Mark Brownlow explains, "We may think of our ocean's as blue but there is another surprising world of the Green Seas. From towering undersea forests of giant kelp to vast prairies of sea grass, this is an almost Brothers Grimm fairy tale of all the strange and magical creatures that live within these secret worlds. Here sea dragons lurk, bizarre giant cuttlefish breed, and an ingenious octopus outwits a forest full of sharks."
Our tale of clever derring-do begins when a hungry pyjama shark goes to attack the octopus, who quickly inserts its tentacles into the shark's gills in an effort to suffocate it. Shark lets go; octopus skedaddles.
But then she does something truly remarkable, and something never before seen (by humans, at least). As the show's narrator, Sir David Attenborough, says: "The octopus is far from finished."
Caught in the open, she scrambles to the seafloor, attaches shells to her body with her suckers, and rolls up into a beautiful mosaic ball. The shark is left confused and by the time it seems to figure out what is going on, the octopus darts away, leaving the shark looking for her in the scattered detritus of her ersatz armor.
Clever. Maybe we should try teaching octopi sign language, as as we have other species.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 29 2017, @05:27PM (1 child)
How about a virtual octopus on a flat screen?
Question: how would an octopus react to a mirror?
What about a flat screen virtual octopus with an adjacent mirror for the real octopus to see itself?
What if you provided a superior weapon of some type for the octopus to use against sharks, and the virtual octopus demonstrated its use. Would learning occur? Or instead of weapon some superior type of shielding protection from sharks, with video demonstration of its use.
Sign language teaching the octopus to agree to the EULA first.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:25PM
Interesting tidbit (that I think I'm remembering correctly) - Optopuses were long thought to be uninterested in others because such video tests utterly failed to engage them. Turns out that the problem was actually that their visual systems are faster than ours, so they perceived traditional video as a series of still images. Show them the same video filmed at 120Hz instead though, and they'll react as though seeing other animals.