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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
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.
Only if it's 1080i25/1080i30 and not 1080i50/1080i60
Even at 720p's 50 full frames per second in PAL countries, that does not give the perception of smoother motion.
Yes it does. There are no interlacing artifacts for the horizontal component of the motion.
The motion smoothness will be essentially the same
No, because the claim is that the octopus can see the individual pictures (i.e. fields) at 25/30 fps. Where there is significant horizontal motion in an a picture where each field is only updated every 1/25th of a second, the octopus may be able to see each field being updated. At 50 progressive fields per second the entire image is updated at twice the rate. This of course depends on the display type.
We have to remember that one reason CRT's look "smooth" to us is persistence of vision. We don't notice the light intensity fade over 1/25th of a second as the electron beam scans out the rest of the picture. However, the octopus's persistence of vision may be different. Imagine for a moment that the octopus see's the old "standard definition" display the same was as we see an old CRT when viewed through a camcorder: With big bands running across it due to the scanning done by the electron beam. Maybe with HDTV, where CRT technology is less likely to be used, this is no longer the case and thus the octopus sees the picture as real.
Anyway, to me this is perfectly plausible. We shouldn't be dismissive so quickly towards a behavior that has actually been observed for several subjects, even if we can't instantly explain it.
-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".
......... 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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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.