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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.
I think that by understanding a creature as alien to us as an octopus, we're learning more about what is 'intelligence'. While they're not going to be developing a civilization any time soon, its cool to have an invertebrate that on many levels is closer to primate intelligence than many mammals.
Actually, I'd have to disagree with the assessment of no personality in octopuses. I had a common octopus (octopus vulgaris) as a pet (her name was Cephus, short for cephalopod) for almost two years and she most absolutely displayed a personality completely different from another octopus that I had as a pet for about a year.
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- Absolutely!
My wife keeps salt water tanks and we had an Octopus named Oglebbie. Oglebbie was such a sweetie. (I'm calling her a female, but that is an assumption.)
We had what can only be called the classic love affair - doomed from the start..
It started with small touching with fingers/arms. It was routine - every day a few times I would put my octopus-looking hand in and she would embrace. And Pull - she wanted me to stay.
They have a very sharp beak BTW. Only try this if you are willing to get bit. She never bit me.
It was definitely love. As soon as I turned on the light she would shoot across the tank to the top door area, and I would open it .. verbally complaining at the time about never get rest.. and Oglebbie would inflate herself with water and climb out to travel across the top of tank to play.
After a sort time (few minutes) she would go back to the door and if I went over there she would shoot the water at my general direction, then dive in.
Tragic love.. She would dream of us romping across reefs, and having fun. I would want to go running through fields of flowers with her ...
One day she lost all her zing. My wife was away and I didn't keep the water level up.. the salt concentration went too high. She didn't die but she lingered, and didn't want to play - which was more torturous for me because she was there.. but not there. And it was my fault.
Thank you for sharing - I'm still getting over it.. (I really did feel terrible - and the way she seemed to haunt the tank - a fraction of her was left. It's like how your non-nerdy spouse see you when you are coding - but permanent.
Thanks for the story.
Cephus died of old age thankfully and I will say that she exhibited many of the same qualities, including a sense of humor or ability to get people to pay attention to her as she would shoot water out of the tank if she wanted attention. She also snuck out of the tank on more than one occasion to steal fish out of the feeder tank across the table from her own aquarium (which necessitated a large, heavy pot to be placed on top of the tank to prevent that sort of behavior.
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