Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the clever-girl dept.

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @06:16PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @06:16PM (#603088)

    Even the Septopods cannot communicate in the complex language of Octopuses.

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 29 2017, @06:46PM (4 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 29 2017, @06:46PM (#603101) Journal

    Octopus experts have come to agreement that eight highly versatile limbs is a prerequisite for the development of intelligence. Thus they make no effort to communicate with lower limbed life forms such as humans. Because they reason there is no possibility of intelligence. And their observations might even back up that supposition.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:33PM

      by krishnoid (1156) on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:33PM (#603155)

      And in some cases [telegraph.co.uk], even the purportedly eight-limbed specimens are not considered their brightest examples.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:36PM (2 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:36PM (#603157)

      Humans most certainly are intelligent, just like almost all animals. If an animal can learn, it's intelligent. Mice, rats, cats, horses, etc., are all intelligent to some degree.

      The question is whether something is intelligent enough to bother trying to communicate cross-species, which is another level of intelligence beyond just learning from stimuli and adapting.

      There's little evidence that humans have this level of advanced intelligence.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:43PM (1 child)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:43PM (#603164) Journal

        Humans communicate with pet species like dogs and cats. Even that just barely qualifies1 as communication. The semantic meaning is little more than "time to eat", "time to go outside", "bad doggie", "good doggie", "those chewy shoes are not for eating", etc. I'm not sure how high level human to other primate communication might be with sign language. Is it still at the level of "food", "outside", etc?

        1like orange clown tweets

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:46PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:46PM (#603199)

          How about "where would you like me to put your food dish", etc.? I talk with my cat all the time, and we understand each other well enough to often get frustrated when we can't get our point across.

          The biggest stumbling blocks to communicating is developing a shared vocabulary: most pets have spoken language comprehension potential at least comparable to a two year old or so - enough to understand a fairly large amount, but only if you limit yourself to simple sentences and a limited and well-chosen vocabulary. Similarly, they can't speak, so you have to learn enough of their communication language to understand their responses. In that regard "Show me" is probably one of the single most useful phrases I've taught her, since at least a large fraction of what she wants to communicate can be communicated, at least in broad strokes, by leading me somewhere and looking/pawing pointedly at something.