
How I became friends with an octopus - evo_9
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-45967535
======
ggm
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)

~~~
kevinmchugh
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.

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Johnny555
This excerpt:

 _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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Treadwell#Death)

~~~
pandapower2
I was curious about this.

>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...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-16/man-attacked-by-shark-near-
gracetown-in-western-australia/9662422)

~~~
groby_b
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.

~~~
quirkot
Keep it cool, boy. Real cool.

~~~
barrow-rider
Careful mon ami, someone might DANCE at you. Them pirouettes is scary.

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test1235
Given the title, there was disappointingly little content on the octopus

~~~
fit2rule
I once made friends with an octopus, also.

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.

~~~
drakonka
This was such a cool story, thanks for sharing your experience.

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adrianN
It's so sad that these terribly intelligent creatures die so young. Imagine
what they could learn if they lived a few decades.

~~~
Inconel
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.

~~~
pesmhey
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.

After that, they’re pretty much on track, no?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
(Taking things too seriously)

I think the major obstacle facing octopi is that they're solitary. When an ape
invents something, a dozen others in its troop learn it too, and maybe refine
it a little, and teach it to their children who refine it some more. A tech-
savvy modern human isn't much smarter than the earliest _homo sapiens_ , but
we have 200,000 years of R&D behind us. Octopi don't have those social bonds,
and no one individual--however brilliant--can invent advanced tech alone, from
first principles.

~~~
duskwuff
The other major obstacle is their reproductive cycle. Octopodes breed once,
then die shortly afterwards. They don't live to pass knowledge on to their
children, and there's no reproductive "reward" for individuals that are more
successful in life -- so long as they survive to breed, that's it.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Yeah, that's part of the same thing, for sure. They don't share knowledge with
other adults or with their own children, so nothing gets passed on.

------
pvaldes
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.

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josefresco
"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.

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justanegg
all animals should be friends

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newnewpdro
"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."

Humans may not be on the preferred menu, but they're sure as hell a form of
food and in times of scarcity the menu becomes flexible.

It's interesting that he was able to develop a close relationship with an
octopus, but the romanticized crap about sharks seems both unnecessary and
flawed.

~~~
toss1
What experience and knowledge do you have that is even close to that of the
author and supports your "romanticized crap" characterization?

Seems that the author is speaking from a position of many years of experience
in observing wildlife and a full year+ diving with these creatures every day.

Moreover, it's quite a solid point that if the sharks actually saw us as an
'on the menu' food source, there would be attacks more than daily. The general
take from shark experts I've read seems to be that they are generally
mistaking us for seals on occasion. For example, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts,
seals have started to increase in population, and shark incidents with
swimmers/surfers have also increased.

~~~
newnewpdro
I am not a diver, I've just read and seen enough about sharks and their
attacks on humans to know there's enough contrary evidence to consider this
diver isn't exactly a scientist.

My issue is he's making generalized statements about sharks based on years of
diving in a specific region: the icy waters of cape town.

It seems perfectly obvious to me that his observation can equally be explained
as "the sharks in the icy waters of cape town may be generally well-fed".

Frankly the article is nothing more than a thinly veiled advertisement for a
book, and probably lacked substance if it stayed purely on-topic regarding the
octopus. I expect the book to suffer similarly.

