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Octopuses Have No Personalities and Enjoy HDTV
Whiteox writes about an Australian researcher named Renata Pronk, who has discovered that octopuses prefer HDTV. She recruited 32 gloomy octopuses from the waters of Chowder Bay. Previously, researchers have reported little success when showing video to octopuses. Miss Pronk's insight was that the octopus eye is so refined that it might see standard PAL video, at 25 fps, as a series of stills. She tried HDTV (50 fps) and her subjects reacted to the videos of a crab, another octopus, or a swinging bottle on the end of a string. A further discovery is that octopuses show no trait of individual personalities, even though they exhibit a high level of intelligence. It would certainly be possible to quibble about the definition of "personality" employed, and whether Miss Pronk had successfully measured it.
FTFA:
"The definition of personality," she said, "is having repetition in your responses, for example, being consistently bold, or consistently shy, or consistently aggressive."
She went on to say that any individual octopus had random, inconsistent, reactions to the same stimuli on any random day.
What's hindering them from developing a civilization soon ( In geological time of course ;) is the fact that their lifespans are so short. For example, I believe that the Giant Pacific Octopus only lives for about 4-5 years. It's saddening that such beauty and intelligence only graces this Earth for such a short time. :(
jdb2
The plural is octopodes, not octopi.
Ok, a couple of problems here:
- Standard video is not 24 frames per second, as the original article states. That's the speed for film, not video.
- 1080i HDTV is displayed at the same frame rate as standard definition TV. In PAL land, that's 50 fields per second, which makes 25 frames per second.
- Even at 720p's 50 full frames per second in PAL countries, that does not give the perception of smoother motion. SDTV will give you 50 half-resolution fields per second, and 720P will give you 50 full-resolution frames per second. The motion smoothness will be essentially the same. The real difference is the resolution delivered with each picture.
-1, irrelevant pedantry
We have borrowed words or phrases into this language that include non-native morphology. With the exception of some Latin and Greek plurals, we generally ignore the non-native morphology and use our own endings. So, for example, not only is it acceptable, but it is required to say "the La Nina" or "those La Ninas" and not "*La Nina" or "*the Nina" or "*those Las Ninas" or "*Estas Ninas". The lexical item is "La Nina", which cannot be decomposed into smaller morphemes like it can in Spanish.
Another example, also Spanish-related, is the presence of a number of words of Arabic origin in Spanish that begin with "al-", such as "algodon". Originally, this was the definite article in Arabic, but it is now a meaningless part of the word in Spanish and does not prevent the use of the native definite article.
Or, going back to English, it is generally correct to use a native s-plural for words of Latin origin, except in a small set of common loanwords: "formulas", "nexuses", "moratoriums", etc. Again, this is okay because English isn't Latin and isn't required to use Latin morphology. The fact that it does at all is a more a testament to the high standing Latin had and still has in our culture. Those non-native plurals are actually affectations, rather than the rule. You don't see people generally trying to use non-native plurals with words from other languages (the less important the language, the less likely we are to use anything other than the native s-plural).
So, my point is, it doesn't really matter what the original morphology was in the language we borrowed from. We borrowed the word as "kraken" and it is not decomposable into any smaller morphemes. The correct *English* plural is "krakens" and not "kraker", "kraks" or "krakulations".
For the pedant in all of us, the GP is correct. Etymonline explains how the -pi inflection results from an overgeneralization of the latin -us to -i pluralization (eg. status -> stati, terminus -> termini), but octopus is Greek (oktopous), not Latin, and the plural of pous (foot) is podes.
Unforutunately (of fortunately, depending on your stance), many of these words are losing their original inflectional category and are being "regularized" to the more Englishy -es (octopuses, statuses, terminuses). Many dictionaries (or the one you provided) don't even list "octopodes" as a plural (and they even list "octopi" since it's taken on a kind of folk-correctness). In order of historical correctness, it would be "octopodes" > "octopuses" > "octopi". In order of usage (and general acceptance by the masses) it would be "octopuses" > "octopi" > "octopodes"
Now, if we all spoke Chinese or Japanese, there would almost be no such thing as "plural inflection" (imagine all nouns being like mass nouns... "one octopus", "two octopus").
Will she look like this?
It's up to the individual. My wife prefers Mrs instead of Ms. Perhaps the researcher in question prefers Miss instead of Ms.?
You could always ask her. (thanks slushdork)
On your doctoral point, in the above site she states that she is an Honours student. That's post-grad. Next step is Masters or Doctorate.
As she is not a Phd, Richard Macey (the author of the article ) entitled her as 'Miss'.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Oh, that's just too punny -- only I'm not sure if you meant it, or just made a typo.
For those not familiar with Japanese, otaku is the word for "nerd" -- generally not in any positive sense. The word stems from the roots o-, being a generic honorific prefix to refer to things not your own (simply speaking), and taku or "residence", the underlying implication being someone who never leaves the house.
Meanwhile, tako is Japanese for "octopus".
I once heard of an idea for opening a chain of Mexican-themed seafood fast-food restaurants around Japan, called "Tako Taco"...
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
......... Actually octopus have relatively short lifespans. The first one was several months old when I got her from a lab that was doing behavioral research and the fact that he lived almost a year after that was pretty good. The second octopus was a bit of a stowaway when I found her on my SCUBA tank at a gas stop about 100 miles away from the ocean. She was tiny then and lived for almost two years which is pretty long lived for an octopus.
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That's been the case in the UK for the last decade or two (longer at Cambridge) but in the U.S. the period is still the norm (as it was pretty much everywhere up until 1950 or so.
Not to go all history nazi on you or anything...
--MarkusQ
P.S. And (switching to spelling Nazi mode) grammar is spelt with an "a."
Umm, imagine a Mexican with 8 arms.
Octopi have only six arms. The other two are legs. (Six appendages for manipulating objects, two for pulling themselves along. And one of them doubles as a sex organ!)
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
There's also a reasonably well developed research literature on personality in octopuses and squid (as well as many other species). All converge to show that they DO have personalities. I'm surprised that the author would claim to have shown they don't have personalities. I can see how you might fail to find evidence that they do have personalities but that is quite different from showing that they don't. A few of the octopus/squid refs are below for those who want to read more on the topic: Sinn, D., Perrin, N., Mather, J. A., & Anderson, R. C. (2001). Early temperamental traits in an octopus (Octopus bimaculoides). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 115, 351-364. Mather, J. A., & Anderson, R. C. (1993). Personalities of Octopuses (Octopus rubescens). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 107, 336-340. Sinn, D. L., Gosling, S. D., & Moltschaniwskyj, N. A. (2008). Development of shy/bold behaviour in squid: Context-specific phenotypes associated with developmental plasticity. Animal Behaviour, 75, 433-442.