hypdom:dreamingdarkly:queensjenn:wittyusernamed:actualfarmerclintbarton-deactiv:Let us take a moment
hypdom:dreamingdarkly:queensjenn:wittyusernamed:actualfarmerclintbarton-deactiv:Let us take a moment to observe the awesomeness of octopus.My buddy read an article about octopus intelligence. It was feeding time, and the handler dumped some shrimp into an octopus’ tank. Then he went into another room and sat at his desk.A while later, a shrimp was tossed onto his desk.The octopus, upon finding one bad shrimp in the lot, had grabbed it, escaped its tank, crossed the hall, and threw the expired shrimp at its caretaker. Not only does this showcase their problem-solving capabilities, but also that it could have escaped at any time. It just broke out this time to chuck an off shrimp in indignation at its handler. That’s not just intelligence, that’s a human-like reaction. Kinda make you wonder exactly how smart these guys can be…OH MY GODThere’s all kinds of stories like this… Octopus are quite possibly the smartest damn things on the planet (including us). But they are largely too foreign and independent to communicate with.They can open jars (from the inside), solve mazes, puzzles, etc when motivated. Can fit through openings larger than their beak, a fraction of their full size, fit under doors, through faucets and pipes, scale pretty much any wall (I imagine they’d have a lot of trouble with Ice, because they’d freeze to it, but pretty much anything else.) they’re basically B&E artists. Seriously.It’s apparently a known and common thing among aquarium employees that Octopi can, and will, find a way to break out of their tanks and eat other exhibits. It’s not even urban legend or anecdotal, there’s plenty of video footage of them doing it.They’ve been spotted playing tricks (there’s one in Germany that’s fond of juggling crabs for no apparent reason other than to show off), jokes, making tools, all kinds of behavior we’d normally never associate with invertebrates. They even sometimes decorate things, just to make them look pretty. It’s not part of a mating display or anything. They just seem to like making rock sculptures.My favourite account is probably one aquarium that kept needing to replace it’s jellyfish. As fairly regularly, it would suddenly be empty in the morning. It happened again and again, with nothing on the security footage. Until someone installed a hidden camera. Apparently an octopus in a nearby tank had figured out not only how to escape his tank and enter the jellyfish tank, but how to do so without being caught. He’d sneak in on a specific night due to the shift schedule, avoid the cameras, eat everything he could, then get back into his tank before morning O_o.And of course, there’s the practically magical Mimic Octopus. That’s only been known for a decade or two, mostly because people couldn’t believe it was actually real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimic_octopusOh, and larger species of Octopus can grow to 30 feet across, and get strong enough to break the spines of large sharks with their tentacles.I’m pretty sure the only reason they haven’t taken over the planet is the whole needing water to live thing, being very easy to kill with even a tiny bit of pollution, and that they really aren’t very social.Let me be the first among us to welcome our octopus overlords -- source link
#octopuses#cephalopod#long post#gif heavy