Scientists Agree: Octopuses Are Intelligent, and Might Think Like Us

[Aetrion]

Well, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, for one, even if there was a sea creature every bit as intelligent as a human they wouldn't be able to establish a civilization anywhere near as powerful. Humans took hundreds of thousands of years of being for all practical purposes exactly as smart as they are now to actually accumulate enough knowledge to make anything we might call progress. Once the ball got rolling all the cultures that moved past a mere subsistence economy did what? They used bronze, and then iron. We call entire ages in our history by those materials because they were so important. Would an octopus ever be able to pour bronze and start building a civilization, even if it was twice as smart as us? Nope. You can't do that stuff underwater, and you cannot invent technologies that would let a fish go on land to do it without those advances. There would also be a significant issue with preserving food, which is a key technology in allowing a civilization to divide it's labor and free up people to invent things and build infrastructure instead of just farming. In short, building an underwater civilization that rivals human cultures would be impossible, it simply wouldn't be able to ever progress past the hunter-gatherer state of subsistence.

And then there is also the fact that there is a good chance that pretty much everything that lives in the ocean will be dead within the next 100 years or so because humans. The ocean is pretty much the thing that's been soaking up all the abuse we inflict on our ecosystem, and once that gives out, well, seafood haters rejoice.

 

[Genocidicles]

Well, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, for one, even if there was a sea creature every bit as intelligent as a human they wouldn't be able to establish a civilization anywhere near as powerful. Humans took hundreds of thousands of years of being for all practical purposes exactly as smart as they are now to actually accumulate enough knowledge to make anything we might call progress. Once the ball got rolling all the cultures that moved past a mere subsistence economy did what? They used bronze, and then iron. We call entire ages in our history by those materials because they were so important. Would an octopus ever be able to pour bronze and start building a civilization, even if it was twice as smart as us? Nope. You can't do that stuff underwater, and you cannot invent technologies that would let a fish go on land to do it without those advances. There would also be a significant issue with preserving food, which is a key technology in allowing a civilization to divide it's labor and free up people to invent things and build infrastructure instead of just farming. In short, building an underwater civilization that rivals human cultures would be impossible, it simply wouldn't be able to ever progress past the hunter-gatherer state of subsistence.

And then there is also the fact that there is a good chance that pretty much everything that lives in the ocean will be dead within the next 100 years or so because humans. The ocean is pretty much the thing that's been soaking up all the abuse we inflict on our ecosystem, and once that gives out, well, seafood haters rejoice.

Humans didn't have a more advanced species looking over their shoulder who could train them and provide them with technology though.

Well, we probably didn't...

Spoiler

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well intelligence is one thing, but understanding and passing on knowledge is the key ingredient to making real progress.
Hell even us humans were lumbering around uselessly with our super advanced brains for an estimated two million years before we got here (i.e. 2mil year old tools were found), simply because we had nothing to learn back then, no one wrote shit down so knowledge would just die with people and it went on and on and on.
What we think of as advanced technology mostly came in with the last 200 years, think about that scale for a second.

So if we ever get to see any kind of advancement from other species is highly questionable simply on the basis of time these things take.

 

[OneCatch]

So the time of the Squibbon is closer then we think

Spoiler

and that's another edition of obscure reference daily

Not as obscure as you think - though I had forgotten that video!
Was that the same one that had the predatory slime-mould and the jungle-fish?

 

[Lazy Kitty]

All this time we've been preparing for zombie apocalypses and robot uprisings...
While we really should have been preparing for the Octopus Overlords.

 

[immortalfrieza]

The spawn of Cthulhu are lying in wait... Watching for the opportunity to take revenge upon humanity for all the calamari we've eaten!

They are coming...

 

[erbkaiser]

Well, nobody suspects a thing about Octodad...

I don't dispute Octopodes may be intelligent, but sentient? The more we learn about animals (and even plants, according to some), the more we realise that they are far more capable than was once thought. Magpies use tools, some species of ants use aphids as cattle, animals as varies as chimps and dolphins form intricate societies with different 'dialects' and group behaviour, etc.

Yet human intelligence, sapience, has not been found. There are no dolphin philosophers, there is no chimp writer, and there is no octopus working on a water tank to walk in air.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

Unless an Octopus can recognize itself in a mirror, then it doesn't matter how smart it is at problem solving. The Mirror Test is important in understanding how intelligent and sapient a creature is; Apes, most Porpoises, Elephants and certain birds can recognize themselves in Mirrors. Rats are great Problem solvers, but they can't pass the Mirror Test. Surprisingly, even some species of Ants can recognize themselves in Mirrors!

So if Octopuses can't recognize themselves in mirrors, then they aren't anywhere near as intelligent or Sapient as people are making them out to be. Thus all this "Sapient Octopus Cyborgs taking over the world" stuff would be just silly.

 

[Saltyk]

So we're accepting that much as fact. So that's how many unique species on the planet that have fairly advanced intelligence other than humans? Dolphins, various apes and monkeys, and now octopi.

Really makes it seem like if another planet has life, there is probably intelligent life on it.

It also makes me wonder if there were other species on Earth before us, and not similar to us, that had advanced levels of intelligence. I mean there have been some 3 different mass extinction events on Earth, right? Were there some intelligent animals among them?

That's actually really difficult to know. If we're talking about intelligent-but-not-sapient species like dolphins, octopi, primates, crows, etc.. then it's basically impossible to know. We're only able to glean so much from fossilized remains, and they wouldn't be smart enough to make proper tools, or leave behind art (assuming stuff like that can even hold up for millions and millions of years anyway).

The Mesozoic era lasted for dang near 200 million years. That is an unfathomable length of time compared to the measly 200,000 or so that homo sapiens has been around as a species (and even we still know precious little about our early history. I'd say that it is almost a certainty that we are missing huge swathes of our planet's history, and that extremely intelligent animals existed throughout Earth's various eras.

If you want to get super freaking out there though. The Sun is only about 4.5 billion years old. The universe is about 14 billion years old from our best estimation. The Sun, 100%, was born from the nebula left behind by another star that lived and died. Did it have planets? Could there have been life? A whole star system born, lived and died before the Sun and everything around it even existed. It's kind of cool to think about.

That's sort of my point. I was just wondering how intelligent some extinct animals may have been. And who knows how many species we have yet to find or may never find evidence of. It's sort of frightening. Considering that the Sun is some 4.5 billion years old, and life began appearing on Earth some 300 million years ago, there could have been past civilizations not dissimilar to our own that were lost in the millions of years between us with evidence being destroyed in one of the many extinction events between now and then.

May not be likely, but food for thought.

So we're accepting that much as fact. So that's how many unique species on the planet that have fairly advanced intelligence other than humans? Dolphins, various apes and monkeys, and now octopi.

And rats. They're the only non-primate species so far that's been tested to show that they're capable of metacognition- in essence, knowing what you do and don't know prior to applying that knowledge.

I left out several animals that I knew displayed intelligence. Crows being a big one as well. They use tools, modify objects to use as tools, have helped other crows, and plenty of other actions. They may well be among the smarter animals on the planet.

I suppose the intelligence of rats explains why they are used in experiments rather often.

Unless an Octopus can recognize itself in a mirror, then it doesn't matter how smart it is at problem solving. The Mirror Test is important in understanding how intelligent and sapient a creature is; Apes, most Porpoises, Elephants and certain birds can recognize themselves in Mirrors. Rats are great Problem solvers, but they can't pass the Mirror Test. Surprisingly, even some species of Ants can recognize themselves in Mirrors!

So if Octopuses can't recognize themselves in mirrors, then they aren't anywhere near as intelligent or Sapient as people are making them out to be. Thus all this "Sapient Octopus Cyborgs taking over the world" stuff would be just silly.

I'll do one better. Octopuses have displayed the ability to recognize humans. They conducted an experiment where one researcher fed an octopus and the other pestered it. Even years later, when the one who pestered it would walk by it would actually spray water at him. And only ever him.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The spawn of Cthulhu are lying in wait... Watching for the opportunity to take revenge upon humanity for all the calamari we've eaten!

They are coming...

Uxia cordially invites you to join her.

Don't worry; she's no spawn of Cthulhu.
Just the granddaughter of Dagon.

 

[Scarim Coral]

So I guessing that game Octodad is relevent then assuming if our eyes are messed up aswell?

 

[FalloutJack]

The spawn of Cthulhu are lying in wait... Watching for the opportunity to take revenge upon humanity for all the calamari we've eaten!

Well, Cthulhu's all about squid. Are they the same in terms of brain power? It's not been tested. Octopoids...belong to Hastur, right? Good thing Henderson killed him...

 

[Keoul]

And then we find out squid are intelligent as well and the next thing we know splatoon becomes a reality, humanity overthrown and now squids and octopi fighting it out using ink.

 

[voltair27]

The thing that bugs me is that I thought the octopus brain was very small. I knew they were surprising intelligent despite that, but really didn't think they were so smart that they were able to solve problems. How intelligent could they be? Man, this makes me wonder so much. They obviously recognize certain people, for example.

Funny you should mention that. While the Octopus central brain is rather small, its intelligence is actually distributed among its limbs.

Its tentacles have minds of their own.

 

[CaitSeith]

And now I am thinking of Eclipse Phase (a sci-fi tabletop RPG setting), where sapient, genetically-uplifted octopi are one of the playable species.

Spoiler

I can't tell if that's cute, cool or nightmare fuel...

 

[chimeracreator]

So if Octopuses can't recognize themselves in mirrors, then they aren't anywhere near as intelligent or Sapient as people are making them out to be. Thus all this "Sapient Octopus Cyborgs taking over the world" stuff would be just silly.

The mirror test shows a gross sensory bias. Many animals dedicate a far smaller percentage of their brain to processing visual data than their other senses and as such judging them based on our primary sense is foolish at best.

That said we are fairly safe from the octopi taking over since their life span and social habits may be why they never developed any sort of technology. The average octopus lives less than five years and ends if they ever procreate a process that has them lay hundreds to tens of thousands of eggs. When not procreating they live mostly solitary lives. This isn't conducive to building up technology which requires a constant exchange over ideas, passing on knowledge to future generations and task specialization. Since octopi can't do any of that we'd be safe even if forging metals was possible under the sea.

On the other hand if we can craft octopi brains onto computer chips the results might be really nifty as it could provide a nice end run around the whole AI problem.

 

[Sylveria]

Cthulhu isn't a myth... he's our future.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

You know, I'm sure I've heard of a story of someone who tried to test the intelligence of his octopus collection and got some...worrying results. I think the basic set up was that he'd rigged a lever in their tanks, and if they followed his cues and pulled the lever he'd feed them. At first it went fine, they quickly realised what the lever was for and things seemed to be going very well...but then they stopped. Just wouldn't pull the lever any more.
Not only were they clever enough to figure out the rules of the game, they were clever enough to realise it was a game and basically went on strike when they decided they didn't want to play anymore. Of course the scientist couldn't let them starve so he had to cave and give them food anyway. Dude wanted to see how clever octopi were...and got outsmarted.
Really wish I could provide links or even names for this, just to show its real. Any of you octoknowledgeable people help me out?

 

[Lightknight]

Smart is such a relative term especially since humans can be really dumb, especially during childhood (even if their parents like to say otherwise).

Until we have a way to communicate and gauge relative intelligences then these findings don't really tell us anything except that these animals have more complex brain structures than other animals which only distinguishes them from simple brain models.

 

[Kerethos]

Suddenly I feel strangely good about my decision not to eat squid... though that came mostly from tasting squid that one time and deciding "nope, this ain't good - like pretty much everything from the sea". I then proceeded to eat a bunny rabbit - which was really tasty.