On: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

[cylon13]

The marginal intelligence point makes survival to reproduce more likely, so octopi that are marginally smarter tend to be slightly more likely to reproduce.

However, they seem to die very soon after mating for some reason related to their evolutionary history. There's no way for a marginally longer-lived octopus to be more successful at reproduction, because reproduction is a one-shot event for them. If anything there's pressure to reproduce (and die) at a younger age, since these octopi would be more successful.

Such are the tragedies of evolution, the blind idiot god.

[nabla9 → cylon13]

Octopus genome and weird epigenetics another interesting aspect in them and probably related to their intelligence. Octopus can do RNA editing.

https://www.nature.com/news/octopus-genome-holds-clues-to-un...

Trade-off between Transcriptome Plasticity and Genome Evolution in Cephalopods https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6

• Unlike other taxa, cephalopods diversify their proteomes extensively by RNA editing

• Extensive recoding is specific to the behaviorally complex coleiods

• Unlike mammals, cephalopod recoding is evolutionarily conserved and often adaptive

•Transcriptome diversification comes at the expense of slowed-down genome evolution