
The Octopus: Stable Genius - montrose
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/science/octopus-brain-intelligence.html
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chadash
For a much more in-depth article, I'd recommend Amia Srinivasan's review of
two recent books about octopuses at [https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n17/amia-
srinivasan/the-sucker-the...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n17/amia-
srinivasan/the-sucker-the-sucker). Of course, the books that Srinivasan
reviews go into far more depth than any article summarizing them could, but if
you're not going to read the entire books, I think you'll still find this
article very interesting.

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sho
Thanks. If you enjoyed that, you might also enjoy David Foster Wallace's
famous essay _Consider the Lobster_ , which also examines the issues inherent
in comprehending the inner experience of animals, and the ethics involved in
our eating of them.

I can only find this genius link, unfortunately: [https://genius.com/David-
foster-wallace-consider-the-lobster...](https://genius.com/David-foster-
wallace-consider-the-lobster-annotated)

~~~
jackhack
That was a thoughtful, interesting article. From the link: "Like most
arthropods, they date from the Jurassic period, biologically so much older
than mammalia that they might as well be from another planet." (then later...)
“The nervous system of a lobster is very simple, and is in fact most similar
to the nervous system of the grasshopper. It is decentralized with no brain.
There is no cerebral cortex, which in humans is the area of the brain that
gives the experience of pain.”

Which makes it all the more remarkable that we share some basic elements. As
Jordan Peterson recently explained in his book (12 rules) and the now-famous
BBC Channel 4 interview, lobsters have been around for an exceedingly long
time -- before there were trees! And we share a number of hormonal pathways
with this lowly, delicious creature.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=lobster+dopamine](https://www.google.com/search?q=lobster+dopamine)

The same hormonal triggers that lead an Alpha-lobster to walk with pride and
swagger and respect among his carapace-suited peers are involved in our own
human sense of accomplishment leading to machismo. How incredible that
durable, robust mechanisms replicate in nature and result in enormously
complex systems (such as social networks),built on this foundation!

~~~
keithflower
Your selective quotation misses the main point of Wallace's piece. He is
wrestling with the ethics of causing gratuitous suffering.

The 'grasshopper' quote is Wallace actually quoting the Maine Lobster
Promotion Council, possibly not an unbiased source for science. Wallace goes
on to say:

 _Though it sounds more sophisticated, a lot of the neurology in this latter
claim_ [grasshopper quotation] _is still either false or fuzzy. The human
cerebral cortex is the brain-part that deals with higher faculties like
reason, metaphysical self-awareness, language, etc. Pain reception is known to
be part of a much older and more primitive system of nociceptors and
prostaglandins that are managed by the brain stem and thalamus._

Wallace goes on to write:

 _The basic scenario is that we come in from the store and make our little
preparations like getting the kettle filled and boiling, and then we lift the
lobsters out of the bag or whatever retail container they came home in
…whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen. However stuporous the
lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to
life when placed in boiling water. If you’re tilting it from a container into
the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the
container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a
person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when
the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you
can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push
it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it
thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I
would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception
of screaming). A blunter way to say this is that the lobster acts as if it’s
in terrible pain, causing some cooks to leave the kitchen altogether and to
take one of those little lightweight plastic oven timers with them into
another room and wait until the whole process is over._

~~~
biggc
This expanded quote got me to go look up videos of live lobsters being boiled.
None of them showed the lobster reacting to being immersed in the water the
way Wallace describes

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pqh
[http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm](http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm)

This is an interesting essay on the minds of our ocean-dwelling aliens.

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hawktheslayer
My daughter and I have been learning about octopui and squids and I never
cease to be amazed by these creatures so far removed from us on the
evolutionary tree. Recently I learned how scientists studied the squids giant
axons to understand our own brains.

~~~
themagician
I believe you mean octopodes my good sir.
[https://youtu.be/wFyY2mK8pxk](https://youtu.be/wFyY2mK8pxk)

Pip pip, cup of tea, cheerio.

~~~
jjtheblunt
i thought the same immediately: octopus is a screwy latiny-misspelled greeky
word, with octopodes the plural. happy to see another knew that.

~~~
Digit-Al
This view is "contentious" :-)

[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/270/what-is-
the-...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/270/what-is-the-correct-
plural-of-octopus/271)

~~~
mc32
That it might be but it's pretty clear the Latin associated plural is
misapplied.

So English has octopuses.

Greek has octopodes.

Some English speakers prefer to use the Greek word rather then the loan
derived plural which uses English construction.

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saosebastiao
I was trying to explain how CitusDB works the other day to another developer
and tried using an octopus as an analogy. Turns out I needed an analogy to
explain my analogy.

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Jesus_Jones
They must have been thinking about Trump's comment when they made the
headline, right?

