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Aethien
PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 3:07 pm 
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Apparently, octopi have now been observed to use tools, in the wild.

Makes me want to time-travel a few million years in the future, see if Octopus is the new dominant species on Earth, having slowly developed intelligence and tool-using abilities. That would be so cool (apart from the time-travel aspect).

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Kaffis Mark V
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 4:05 pm 
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It has an evolutionary advantage -- it can use 8 tools at once to our 2!

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Aethien
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 4:48 pm 
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Wow, I can see it now - The Human-Octo War.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:43 pm 
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and if they were zombified...
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 9:17 pm 
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Midgen
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 10:27 pm 
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I heard about this today. I'm not sure I get the significance. How is this any different than hermit crabs or any other critter that lives in a seashell? Heck and those guys are even portable?
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Aethien
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 10:46 pm 
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The hermit crab just stumbles upon a shell - or, maybe, actually looks for one of a suitable size, if you will, once it needs a new one because it's grown. This octopus, meanwhile, was observed to pick up two coconut shells, empty them out, and then carry them to a specific spot where it put them together so as to be able to hide inside more effectively.

Seems to me that the Hermit crab may have it in its genes to search out something that protects its soft body. The octopus, however, has it in its genes to hide inside a coconut or something that had fallen to the sea floor naturally, much like the crab. But this octopus species has now learned that it can take two coconut shells (which have been cracked by humans, and which in themselves would not provide the same level of protection), empty them out to create more room inside, and then put them together to make an ideal hiding spot.

There's a dissertation here waiting to be written on whether or not this is learned behavior. In other words, did one octopus discover it, and then teach others? That would be freakin' huge.

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Kaffis Mark V
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:58 pm 
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Midgen wrote:
I heard about this today. I'm not sure I get the significance. How is this any different than hermit crabs or any other critter that lives in a seashell? Heck and those guys are even portable?

If you look at the article, they describe the difference being that the octopi they observed were cleaning the husks out, carrying the coconuts to a different spot, and then assembling the two halves to make a more protective shelter. These behaviors indicate planning that the hermit crab, who just crawls into a shell for immediate (and then on-going) protection does not exhibit. The article acknowledges that there's a lot of debate over how best to describe "tool use" in these fields.

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Raell
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:13 am 
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So should we start dropping rust resistant tools in the ocean to see what they can really do...?

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Micheal
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:49 am 
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darksiege
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 1:52 am 
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ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

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Micheal
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That requires a sanity check. You'll need a high roll on 1-100, here is a d20, roll once.

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darksiege
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 2:33 am 
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woohoo! Critical fumble! I rolled a nr'hph'hrm

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Aethien
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 3:39 am 
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darksiege wrote:
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Win!!

They can unscrew jar lids, and squeeze through 1/2" cracks, etc. They're fantastic creatures. Let's kickstart the process and start training them ...

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Colphax
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 7:19 am 
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AAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!


Octupus is a FREAKING GREEK ROOT WORD!

"Octopi" is wrong!!!!!!! It's Octopuses! OCTOPUSES!




ermm....I'm OK now...I think...Ima go get some more Nyquil....

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Gorse
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 7:54 am 
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My wife and I volunteered at the Corpus Christi aquarium back in 96-97 and they had a problem with rare fish that kept disappearing. Fearing it being an "inside" job (meaning they though employees were stealing them) they installed cameras and caught the culpret on tape.

As you probably already guessed by this thread, it was their octopus squeazing through mesh raiding the other tanks and going back to it's tank before the morning shift arrived. I have no doubts about their intelligence.

I also seem to recall a similar story a few years ago where they observed octopi in the wild using sharp sharp rocks as tools to cut open crabs and shellfish.

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TheRiov
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 8:47 am 
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I've seen videos of them taking out the tank light on a nightly basis because they prefer the dark. I've also seen them hunting and killing the small sharks in the aquarium next to them.
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Monte
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 8:49 am 
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/cleans up pieces of Colophax's brain.

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Colphax
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 8:55 am 
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Stupid freaking cold

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Aethien
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 12:45 am 
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Colphax wrote:
AAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!


Octupus is a FREAKING GREEK ROOT WORD!

"Octopi" is wrong!!!!!!! It's Octopuses! OCTOPUSES!




ermm....I'm OK now...I think...Ima go get some more Nyquil....


Heh, I looked that up before I started:

[quote="Wikipedia, pronunciations removed"]The term octopus ... is from Greek ὀκτάπους (oktapous), "eight-footed", with plural forms: octopuses, octopi, or octopodes. Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the US as well as the UK; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable.[/url]

Funny, "octopodes" strikes me as objectionable. :) Ocotopodes? :?

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Talya
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 12:51 am 
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Cephalopods are among the smartest species on earth. They'd be smarter yet if they lived longer, but they die shortly after mating, the various species having life expectancies ranging from 6 months to 5 years at the maximum.

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Aethien
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 12:57 am 
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Yeah, I noticed that about life expectancies. That's sad.

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Colphax
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:03 am 
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Heh, according to askoxford.com:
Quote:
What are the plurals of 'octopus', 'hippopotamus', 'syllabus'?

English words of Latin or Greek origin have rather unpredictable plurals, and each one usually depends on how well established that particular word is. It may also depend on whether the Latin or Greek form of the plural is either easily recognizable or pleasant to the speaker of English.

Although it is often supposed that octopi is the 'correct' plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its 'correct' plural would logically be octopodes.

Other words ending in -us show a very varied pattern. Like octopi, the plural hippopotami is now generally taken to be either funny or absurdly pedantic, and the usual plural is hippopotamuses. Common usage appears to indicate a slight preference for termini rather than terminuses, but syllabuses rather than syllabi. Other usual forms include cacti and gladioli, and our files at the dictionary department show scarcely any examples of nucleuses or funguses. (Omnibi is simply a joke, and quite ungrammatical in Latin!)

Among words ending in -um it seems worth drawing attention to the word curricula, plural of curriculum, and warning against confusion with the adjective curricular (as in extra-curricular).


So it looks like the choice is between the correct, proper, but weird Greek octopodes, the funny but incorrect Latin plural octopi, or the technically incorrect, but more in line with English Anglicized plural octopuses.

I agree, -podes is wonky. If the choice is between Latin and English bastardizations, I'm gonna go with English.

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Ladas
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 9:52 am 
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Talya wrote:
They'd be smarter yet if they lived longer, but they die shortly after mating, the various species having life expectancies ranging from 6 months to 5 years at the maximum.

One could argue that the pressure to survive in a hostile environment long enough to get that one shot at passing on your genes is the driving force behind their intelligence.
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