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Is an Octopus Too Smart For Us To Eat?
An anonymous reader writes: The New Yorker is running a piece on the ethical dilemma we face when considering octopus intelligence alongside our willingness to eat them. "Octopus intelligence is well documented: they have been known to open jars, guard their unhatched eggs for months or even years, and demonstrate personalities. Most famously, they can blast a cloud of ink to throw off predators, but even more impressive is the masterfully complex camouflage employed by several members of Cephalopoda (a class that also includes squid and cuttlefish)." While humans eat animals ranging widely in mental faculties, the octopus remains one of the smartest ones we do consume. And unlike pigs, for example, their population is not dependent on humanity to survive. As our scientific understanding of intelligence grows, these ethical debates will only come into sharper focus. Where do we draw the line?
As a vegetarian I find the whole debate about which animals people should eat and why both amusing and slightly disturbing.
They're one of the few species i dont eat on purely ethical grounds. Cats and dogs I wouldn't eat on nutritional grounds, or other higher-order predators for that matter, but I guess that could be argued to be another sort of ethical reasoning.
A few years ago I saw a YouTube clip of a scuba diver whose camera was literally stolen by the octopus he was filming, who then proceeded to taunt the diver and make him give chase to wrest it back from the cephalopod. Holy shit! I thought, that sea creature is trolling this guy! And with that i decided i would no longer eat them. "Ability to troll" may not be a very scientific (or very high for that matter) bar I guess, but it apparently is mine. YMMV. Damn shame too, as i used to love eating them.
Simple rule. Never broke it.
Their neural anatomy is also radically different from us vertebrates. That makes comparisons almost meaningless.
Their brain is a toroid. The esophagus goes through the hole in the middle. Mollusks are weird.
Lab experiments have shown that they can measure things, and that they can learn by watching another octopus do something ONCE (gee, wish we were as good).
Does this mean that they're too intelligent to eat? Perhaps the solution is to cross them with chickens - then everyone gets a drumstick.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I recall an article about a aquarium that had a big tank of cuttlefish installed. Then every night one cuttlefish would disappear and no-one could figure out who'd come and steal cuttllefish, so they stuck some night-vision camera in and waited.
An octopus in a tank across the walkway would pop out the top of its tank, shimmy across the floor, up the side of the cuttlefish tank, grab one, eat it and then retreat back to its tank. I figure anything that figure out that its human keepers had put a fresh source of food for it across the hall is intelligent enough to not be eaten. Incidentally octopi are intelligent enough to take the trapped crabs and lobster from traps.
but hey, human eat fucking everything, destroying the environment it lives in as we all know nothing is more important than our bellies, and the profits made from selling it for other people's bellies.
I totally agree - crows blow my mind. They have complex language, tool use and family units similar to ours.
My opinion about whales was based upon an experience I had several years ago in Maui. A baby whale and then mother slowly came out of the water 6 feet away from our boat and I looked those whales in the eye. There was obvious curiosity and intelligence there.
Its hard to imagine eating something like that. It for me borders on cannibalism.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Personally, if I saw human meat at the butchers, and it was properly inspected to be free of diseases and medication, I would not have any problem with it.
i really don't understand taboos. I understand morality, and the need for us not to harm members of our herd, but if a healthy person dies in an accident, that's logically no different than a deer that's been shot.
But taboos are hard to break. You won't even find horse meat in the US because it's taboo. The reasoning usually boils down to "it's a horse!", and it surely would be "It's a human!" too.
We empathize with that which we perceive to be like us. People who look and act like me from my tribe? The halest, heartiest of the bunch, worthy of respect and honor. People who don't look like me but act like me... still, hearty mates. Animals which have emotions like me? Puppies, dogs, cats? Can't hurt them. Chickens? Well... they seem to be pretty different. They're okay to eat. Cows. Wow they're dumb and utterly unlike me - they're okay to kill. Fish? Utterly unlike me. No question, okay to kill. Octopi... wait, you're telling me they're like me? Hmmm, let me consider this.
I can't find the study on it, but I swear I read an article about how octopuses don't just learn through observation, but have actually been found to teach each other things.
Doing the classic jar opening trick, they will take two octopuses that have never seen a jar before. Out of view of each other, they'll give Octo #1 a jar and wait until he learns how to open it. Then, they'll put him in a pool with Octo #2, separated by glass, and give him a jar. Octo #2 manages to open it twice as fast. Meaning that somehow the first octopus has noticed what the second one is doing and then instructed him about what needs to be done.