- cross-posted to:
- nzwildlife@no.lastname.nz
- cross-posted to:
- nzwildlife@no.lastname.nz
International media and scientific organisations are lapping up footage of a real life ‘Sharktopus’ filmed in the Hauraki Gulf.
Marine biologist Professor Rochelle Constantine said the encounter in December 2023 was a tale to top them all.
Well unfortunately no, this is the tragedy of the octopuses - they don’t know their parents and grandparents. Their mothers die when they are born and their fathers are absent, and they are solitary.
Their only chance at learning is social or observational learning from peers but because of the territory arrangements even that doesn’t happen a lot as far as we know, though scientists have observed some younger octopuses learning from watching older ones from a distance.
Octopuses are incredibly smart. They can infer from context, make generalizations, spatially imagine objects, and even show altruism. If only they could do what you said and pass on knowledge the world would be their oyster!
Aw man that’s sad. They were this close 👉 👈 to being the dominant species on the planet.
There’s still time!
As long as they survive climate change…
There was a species discovered awhile ago that formed colonies and was observed pair bonding, intimate mating and spawning multiple times over their lifetime. Completely unlike other octopuses. The Larger Pacific striped octopus.
Sadly, their lifespan is only about two years, which probably is why they aren’t the dominant species.
Thank you so much; I hadn’t heard about that (out of the octopus loop). I can’t find it now but I wonder if the instances I mentioned of wild octopuses learning were somehow related to those - if memory serves it was somewhere off the coast of California so some habitat overlap.
Wow, the LPSO have a lot of evolutionary potential. If their environmental conditions are right who knows what will happen. I don’t mean to sound disloyal to my species but if humans do succeed in dragging themselves back into the stone age it might be time for the octopusses to shine. An Octipodean Era!
I can’t remember exactly where I learnt about the LPSO. Might have been a documentary. Hopefully climate change doesn’t wipe them out.
There is a book by Adrian Tchaikovsky about a planet taken over by genetically modified octopuses that started their own civilisation. They even had their own space ships. Children of Ruin is the title if anyone’s interested.
Hopefully some of them survive. They sound so amazing.
Thanks for the book rec - good timing! I only just read Children of Time a few weeks ago - didn’t realise the sequel was going to be about octopuses, thought it was just going to be spiders in space! @Dave@lemmy.nz has Children of Time on reading list too.
Nice! I think the third one is about corvids. I haven’t got around to it yet as I got sidetracked with other books.
Out of interest what are you guys using to track books? I’m still using good reads. I know it’s crap, but haven’t looked into anything else.
Awesome. Corvids seem like a solid choice.
I am still using… a very old bio-method to track my reading; it has worked up til now but as time goes by data loss is an increasing possibility so I should probably switch to tech. I think there might be a fediverse Goodreads alternative for books? Bookwyrm. Also NeoDB but I’m not sure what that does.
Haha do you mean… remembering?
Thanks, I’ll look into bookwyrm. I like to see how many books I read every year, which is mainly what I use Goodreads for.
Maybe we need a Lemmy Nz ebook repository
Ha yes remembering is what I’ve been using. I tried Goodreads but it always makes me feel like I need to write reviews and I don’t want to.
Hate to think how many I read! I’m still traumatized by the time in middle school when they made us write books we had read on a wall chart.
I would totally peruse your bookwyrm/gr though, based on your rec so far!
I think we’d have to be careful about what we reposited (reposed?). Shadow libraries seem to be in the crosshairs at the moment including in NZ.
Only an 8 week wait until I can get started!
I’ve just put a hold on Children of Ruin too. A 4 week wait 😆
😄Hmm does that say something about the books I wonder or is it more a reflection of how many people only read the first part of trilogies?
I think it’s pretty normal for the wait time to be longest for the first book. Some number of people read the first one, then a smaller number are interested in the second, and an even smaller number are interested in the third. Almost no one reads the second book before the first so it’s always front loaded like that.
Luckily I can strip the DRM and read it in my own time 🙂.
That makes sense. Good, I am looking forward to this octopus book!
Do you use Calibre as your ebook manager too? 🙂