Ha! Totally my mistake, thanks for calling it out - **skaladom** here in the comments got it right, it's *Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness,* by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Will edit the post to include it.
That one was on my possibility list (it was my book of 2019) but your own research clearly goes beyond it in a few seconds (especially re: physiology) so wasn't sure!
I suppose you're talking about Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey-Smith? Cool book, cool comments on it!
Another wild fact (well, more researcher-speculation) is that, due to their highly distributed nervous system, they have completely different proprioception from us. Their brains don’t so much control their tentacles’ motion as give them general instructions. It’s less “grab this shell, twist left with Tentacle 1, then right with Tentacle 2, then down” and more “tentacles 1 and 2: get the shell open.”
If you watch them do things, there is this weird way in which the motion is both chaotic and also coordinated. It’s hard to explain, but the idea that they’ve distributed some of the cognition kind of fits.
Personally, I just love the idea that they could kind of get pissed off at their own body—like Doctor Strangelove’s right arm. “Oh for heaven’s sake Tentacle Six, stop being a jackass and get back to work! T6 is always acting like this, goddam pain in the ass, every bloody day, off squirting water at the trigger fish instead of GETTING THE DAMN JOB DONE.”
So let's see, is there any other creature as totally defenseless to predation, absent its wits and ability to hide and camouflage? They're just basically a big soft pile of mush, it makes sense they need to be able to do incredible camouflage. I do agree it's interesting they aren't social, though that one documentary made it seem like they could be, rather like a cat...at least it showed an interestvin making a friend. I guess to me the bigger question is why isn't group hunting beneficial to them, as it is for dolphins or orcas? They might turn out to be like cats, who can be either solitary or social depending on their circumstances and what's more beneficial to them and what food sources they have.
Though being immediately eaten by one's own children does seem to give quite a good reason to not be social.
Also, how does anyone even have any idea what went on with them millions of years ago, do they even leave fossils? They have no shell or skeleton to not just immediately disintegrate (if not eaten), do they?
> So let's see, is there any other creature as totally defenseless to predation, absent its wits and ability to hide and camouflage?
Yep, you've nailed it in terms of "incentives to be smart" existing both around hunting and hiding / avoiding predation.
The group hunting question is a really good one - there's mixed evidence that Caribbean reef squids have been seen coordinating hunting, or at least signaling to each other that the hunting is good in a particular area, but it seems pretty rare overall.
> Also, how does anyone even have any idea what went on with them millions of years ago, do they even leave fossils? They have no shell or skeleton to not just immediately disintegrate (if not eaten), do they?
Mostly genetics - we can trace genetic lineages and changes all the way back to prokaryotes and eukaryotes, so it's our best lens on the deep past.
But surprisingly there ARE some fossils - from the book:
“The oldest possible octopus fossil dates from 290 million years ago. I emphasize the uncertainty—it’s just one specimen, and little more than a smudge on a rock. After this there is a gap in the record, and then at around 164 million years ago there is a clearer case, a fossil that looks undeniably like an octopus, with eight arms and an octopus-like pose. The fossil record of octopuses remains skimpy because they don’t preserve well.”
Well the mushy non fossilizing aspect then gives me reason to prefer to imagine an entire mushy advanced underwater civilization from 300M years ago that is beyond our comprehension and has left no trace because there's no current living ancestors left and we've totally missed the fossil evidence. But mostly because that's just fun to think about. 😊
But when I think about social living and cooperative hunting, I always like to think about tigers versus lions...essentially the exact same animal, but radically different social behavior. And isn't that just because a tiger can sneak up easily in the jungle, and there's no good way to sneak up on anything on a savannah? The question to me, is, would you rather be a tiger or lion? I'd say tiger. The part where younger males come around periodically to murder the patriarch and cubs just doesn't seem like a great system to me, for anyone. Neither does being a slave/drone for a queen bee or ant, for that matter. Perhaps after developing a certain level of intelligence, it makes sense, if a creature can hack it, to go off and do their own thing? Perhaps cephalopods started off social and then chose to go their own way, eventually becoming so indifferent to each other that they just immediately turn around and eat their own parents?
It is hard to imagine a creature getting to that level of intelligence int the first place, absent sociality and having to deal with juggling multiple minds/group v individual interests. But maybe once the threshold is reached, it can make some level of sense to go off alone?
I may have a blind spot here, but do you actually name the book anywhere?
Ha! Totally my mistake, thanks for calling it out - **skaladom** here in the comments got it right, it's *Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness,* by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Will edit the post to include it.
That one was on my possibility list (it was my book of 2019) but your own research clearly goes beyond it in a few seconds (especially re: physiology) so wasn't sure!
I suppose you're talking about Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey-Smith? Cool book, cool comments on it!
Another wild fact (well, more researcher-speculation) is that, due to their highly distributed nervous system, they have completely different proprioception from us. Their brains don’t so much control their tentacles’ motion as give them general instructions. It’s less “grab this shell, twist left with Tentacle 1, then right with Tentacle 2, then down” and more “tentacles 1 and 2: get the shell open.”
If you watch them do things, there is this weird way in which the motion is both chaotic and also coordinated. It’s hard to explain, but the idea that they’ve distributed some of the cognition kind of fits.
Personally, I just love the idea that they could kind of get pissed off at their own body—like Doctor Strangelove’s right arm. “Oh for heaven’s sake Tentacle Six, stop being a jackass and get back to work! T6 is always acting like this, goddam pain in the ass, every bloody day, off squirting water at the trigger fish instead of GETTING THE DAMN JOB DONE.”
So let's see, is there any other creature as totally defenseless to predation, absent its wits and ability to hide and camouflage? They're just basically a big soft pile of mush, it makes sense they need to be able to do incredible camouflage. I do agree it's interesting they aren't social, though that one documentary made it seem like they could be, rather like a cat...at least it showed an interestvin making a friend. I guess to me the bigger question is why isn't group hunting beneficial to them, as it is for dolphins or orcas? They might turn out to be like cats, who can be either solitary or social depending on their circumstances and what's more beneficial to them and what food sources they have.
Though being immediately eaten by one's own children does seem to give quite a good reason to not be social.
Also, how does anyone even have any idea what went on with them millions of years ago, do they even leave fossils? They have no shell or skeleton to not just immediately disintegrate (if not eaten), do they?
> So let's see, is there any other creature as totally defenseless to predation, absent its wits and ability to hide and camouflage?
Yep, you've nailed it in terms of "incentives to be smart" existing both around hunting and hiding / avoiding predation.
The group hunting question is a really good one - there's mixed evidence that Caribbean reef squids have been seen coordinating hunting, or at least signaling to each other that the hunting is good in a particular area, but it seems pretty rare overall.
> Also, how does anyone even have any idea what went on with them millions of years ago, do they even leave fossils? They have no shell or skeleton to not just immediately disintegrate (if not eaten), do they?
Mostly genetics - we can trace genetic lineages and changes all the way back to prokaryotes and eukaryotes, so it's our best lens on the deep past.
But surprisingly there ARE some fossils - from the book:
“The oldest possible octopus fossil dates from 290 million years ago. I emphasize the uncertainty—it’s just one specimen, and little more than a smudge on a rock. After this there is a gap in the record, and then at around 164 million years ago there is a clearer case, a fossil that looks undeniably like an octopus, with eight arms and an octopus-like pose. The fossil record of octopuses remains skimpy because they don’t preserve well.”
Well the mushy non fossilizing aspect then gives me reason to prefer to imagine an entire mushy advanced underwater civilization from 300M years ago that is beyond our comprehension and has left no trace because there's no current living ancestors left and we've totally missed the fossil evidence. But mostly because that's just fun to think about. 😊
But when I think about social living and cooperative hunting, I always like to think about tigers versus lions...essentially the exact same animal, but radically different social behavior. And isn't that just because a tiger can sneak up easily in the jungle, and there's no good way to sneak up on anything on a savannah? The question to me, is, would you rather be a tiger or lion? I'd say tiger. The part where younger males come around periodically to murder the patriarch and cubs just doesn't seem like a great system to me, for anyone. Neither does being a slave/drone for a queen bee or ant, for that matter. Perhaps after developing a certain level of intelligence, it makes sense, if a creature can hack it, to go off and do their own thing? Perhaps cephalopods started off social and then chose to go their own way, eventually becoming so indifferent to each other that they just immediately turn around and eat their own parents?
It is hard to imagine a creature getting to that level of intelligence int the first place, absent sociality and having to deal with juggling multiple minds/group v individual interests. But maybe once the threshold is reached, it can make some level of sense to go off alone?