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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.
When I read that headline, I thought it applied to many of the people I know as well...
That is all.
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.
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.
So octopus are like women?
Oceanianica News (Deep under Chowder Bay): In an important press release today the octopuses involved in the Cowderbay Excursion report on their scientific excursion into the ape territory to assess the intelligence and personality of the horrific to look at four creatures with four limbs that only move on two of them that call themselves humans. The 32 members of the scientific team were specially trained in observational techniques that emphasized uniform behaviors so as to minimize the impact of their presence on the lower life forms being studied.
A four limbed creature who self identifies as "Miss Pronk" was extensively interviewed and examined. She attempted to use primitive externalized colored skin image projectors to get the 32 excursion members to react. Her primitive attempts at communication failed with what she called "PAL". Then the subject attempted to communicate using something she called "HDTV" by showing images of food. At the sight of a captive octopus the excursion members elected for a quick withdrawal back to the forward base camp in Chowder Bay (human's name for it). The members of the excursion ensured at all times to not reveal any individuality by using the uniform motion training instilled in all octopus from birth.
An assessment from the team after their safe return to Aquatica City was that the human subject lacked any personality during any of the tests. She failed to move on her two upper limbs and also failed to use her lower limbs except for moving about. In addition she had enclosed herself inside an flexible and rigid outer shell and refused all attempts to leave her shell so that we could examine her personality up close.
Naturally the humans require additional study. Under no circumstances should attempts be made to communicate with them until the safe return of the captive octopus hostages can be executed.
In addition it was discovered that while some humans have an additional appendage that is usually kept in the shell the human self identified as Miss Pronk failed to accept any of the advances by the others to have her interact with this appendage. For this reason we conclude that Miss Pronk has no personality.
...your standard geek.
Hey, I know tons of geeks with tons of personalities... just check their character sheets!
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
So, in other words, they're just like most slashdotters?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
People who don't understand statistics and scientific research methods, but like to pretend they are the smartest people on earth, love to say that phrase, just remember that.
Monstar L
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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I disagree.
How we know is more important than what we know.
People who don't understand statistics and scientific research methods, but like to pretend they are the smartest people on earth, love to say that phrase, just remember that.
I'm in good company, then. I'll remember that.
Btw, I only tried to be funny. Mabye I failed; we'll have to wait for the modding.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
No, octopuses are not inherently evil. You are thinking of krakens.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I want to thank all of the noble Slashdot readers who tagged this story "Pronk," yet again proving their intelligence and foresight in picking a tag which I am sure will occur again and often in the future. Their brave efforts at usefully categorizing articles never ceases to astound.
Slashdot is a pretty cool guy eh posts dupes and doesn't afraid of anything.
I once met a guy who had to role a die to decide whether to laugh or cry.
Coz when the octopi rise up and enslave us, we will know how to curry favour with our new masters.
Mmmm, curried octopus...
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
"A further discovery is that octopuses show no trait of individual personalities, even though they exhibit a high level of intelligence."
In other words, they are like 90%+ of the human population. Except for the high level of intelligence part, of course.
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.
I still prefer octopi, with a light brown crust.
Ah, but were you showing them TV a lot? That tends to destroy even invertebrates'
personalities.
There is a long standing law in Australia, if a child doesn't eat vegemite, said child is fed to dingos.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
It is...*rolls*...a pleasure to meet you!
- 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.
...who can only breathe under water and then you put him in a field of broccoli, refusing to return him to the salty depths until he has picked five times his own body weight. There are few things will motivate a Mexican Octo-man to work harder than such an immediate threat to his mortality. During my days in the Raj we were sure to keep a few brine filled baths of Mexican Octo-men handy come the spring. Harvesting time is upon us, fetch the Mexicans, eh what!
Now wash your hands.
-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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Come to think of it, I think the plural of 'octopus' may be 'sushis'.
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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There seem to be a *large* number of people who have convinced themselves that animals with the intelligecne of dogs or cats are non-sentient, and any personality or self awareness that they seem to exhibit is just the owners self-deception. I've seen smart and dumb cats, and smart and dumb dogs. There are certainly cats and dogs which seem to have no personality or mental model of the world, and act like simple stimulus-response system. There are also cats and dogs with clear personalities that interact with the world in a thoughtful manner.
I have to agree that those who say that self-awareness (or at least world-awareness, but it's hard to imagine a good mental model of the world that doesn't include oneself) is limited to humans simply haven't spent the time to know better.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Except in Japan, where all of them do ;).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.