I do eat a variety of animals, but as I said in my post I rationalize my non-octopus eating habits with the "they are too smart to eat" excuse. A week or two after I started working with a giant pacific octopus I was out for sushi with some friends. I put a bit of octopus in my mouth, and the sucker pads brushed my cheek and that brought back the sense memory of the octopus holding my wrist and after that, I just couldn't do it.
I probably should be more consistent.
As for octopuses and their comparative intelligence, that's a really fuzzy grey area. Intelligence can't be quantified and measuring intelligence between different species that inhabit different ecological niches is damn near impossible. Octopuses play, swim mazes, open jars, and can be trained, but they don't have the social intelligence displayed by dolphins. Octopuses just aren't social. If two octopuses meet, they are either going to mate or try to eat one another. If octopuses were social creatures capable of working together toward a common goal and lived more than a couple of years, who knows what could happen.
Like I said, cuttles are smart enough to respond to Pavlovian conditioning. They also have a reflex to ink when they are in danger. Usually I would slap the surface of the water in the tank to get a few of them to ink, then offer them a juicy bit of shrimp or crab. Once a group of them started coming to the top of the tank when I would slap it, I stopped and would only feed them if they came up to the surface when I walked by. Cool story short, they got food for inking, then eventually food when I would tap the side of the tank to "Shave and a Hair Cut."
One of the octopus geeks I know trained her octopus to take a little ride around the tank on her hand before feeding time.
My pleasure. Just spreading the word about these wonderful and woefully underestimated animals.
Some of the researchers I've worked with have taught their octopuses to play with Legos. How can you not be fascinated by an animal that plays with Legos?
I won't eat cuttles. I raised too many generations, and they are at least as smart as dogs and trainable with Pavlovian methods. That moves them out of the food category in my mind.
Heck, I even trained a couple to ink on command. How can I eat my Super Cephalopod Inking Squad?
The world of squid geekery is pretty specific. I can count on two hands the number of squid geeks I know, and they represent the bulk of biologists that specialize in cephs.
If you've ever seen any of the squid or octopus shows on Discovery, then you've seen the Squid Geeks.
Ahhh, good ole 'Dream of the Fisherman's Wife.' The text around the picture is hilarious. It reads like "chu chu, oh you naughty octopus. I am not supposed to be doing this."
So, pretty much the same dialog you would hear or read in anything involving tentacles.
I was going to get this whole piece tattooed on my back, but then I sobered up and got something even better.
I still eat squid, but I can't eat octopus for the reason you cite.
I eat squid because everything eats squid, including other squid. Most of the calamari you get in restaurants is either California Market Squid or one of the more common species of Loligo, (which just had a taxonomy change and I can't remember the new genus) and they are, to use a scientific term, dumb as posts.
Their camo is for defensive purposes only.* They get off kind of light as far as skin goes. They use kinesthetics to fool predators but tend to remain in a default black and white coloration. Most fish, and I would guess that enough animals that are predators of the mimic are color-blind. Most octopuses and squid are as well. Instead of color vision though their eyes filter the different polarizations of light and the guess is that they process the difference in polarization the same way we'd process a difference in color. So, instead of matching a background color, a mimic gets away with matching a background tone and then altering its body postures to produce a convincing enough silhouette.
The black and dark colors are made by chromatophores, the white is make by leukophores.
One interesting and thoroughly unscientific experiment I did involved altering the polarization of light my eyes were receiving, and then looking at squid and their predators while diving. I got a pair of welding goggles with replaceable lenses then ordered some circles of polarized glass. I got two lenses that only allowed vertical or horizontal light (depending on the angle of the channels to your eye) and glued them in to the goggles with some reference marks.
With both lenses vertical I saw a lot of amazing stuff. The scales on fish were a lot less fuzzy and I could make out parts of the squid displays with more clarity. With both lenses horizontal, the scales on fish that normally looked silver would appear black at some angles. When I did one lens H and one lens V, I got a massive headache but my ability to pick out the details of fish and animal movement was increased by quite a bit. At the same time, the squid and the displays on their skin were brought in to sharp focus in some directions and very very confusing waviness in others.
There was much mind blowing and Advil taking that day. However, that was exceptionally unscientific of me, and is presented as "hey, isn't that cool" only.
*that we've observed in the wild. To my knowledge, no one has had observed mimic octopuses mating.
The squid's brain is in five lobes, two lobes being oversized at attached via the single huge super-neuron to the corresponding eye. The other three lobes are typically used for running autonomous squid functions and don't light up much under MRI. The optic lobes however, are a bit like GPUs. The squid uses them for image processing but there are also hints of some higher order stuff going on. Not consciousness as we would recognize it, but something.
Fun Cephalopod Fact!: The esophagus passes directly through the center of the brain. Cephalopod brains are radial, but not radially symmetric.
Did you know that squid skin can be activated by electricity? The chromataphores are just sacks of pigment with muscles attached, and their displayed hue and saturation values are controlled by the expansion and contraction of these muscles. As the sack gets stretched, the pigment spreads out allowing more light to pass through. As the sack contracts, the concentration of the pigment rises and more light is blocked.
Cephalopods also have irideophores which reflect only the blue/green (short) wavelengths of light. In reef squid, there is a higher number of these cells around the eyes giving that species their characteristic "eye-makeup" look. Strangely enough, when squid display eyeshadow patterns, it is usually the females and it is usually a mating related display showing at least mild interest. Male squid are capable of this display, but rarely show it. One thing we observed is that "sneaker males" which are beta-male squid that use subterfuge to mate with available females rather than alpha-squid strength and aggression displays, will often display eyeshadow and saddle patterns to convince alpha-males that they are, in fact, females. Then, when the alpha-male is busy being aggressive toward other male squid, the sneaker male will mate with the largest female they can find.
Most squid that school are predominately matriarchal. The larger the female the more desirable she is as a mate. Particularly large female squid can have harems of a dozen males or more.
Male squid that aren't good at mating, or are too pushy, or too aggressive, or aren't aggressive enough, sometimes get eaten immediately after the mating.
Only if you had species specific videos, and then you'd have to change them to respond to the squid porn you were getting in return. If you showed a lateral silver to a female, and she responded with a non-flicker saddle, you'd better flicker and black-silver-black before she oreo'ed and zebra'd.
These two species aren't the only squid or octopuses (or cuttlefish for that matter) that have amazing abilities in their skin.
The Caribbean Reef Squid is able to flicker it's chromatophores and photophores on and off at greater than 120Hz, meaning that the squid are able to replicate the patterns of light and shadow against the sand and rock substrate caused by the waves in the water. It wasn't until we had some footage from The Discovery Channel taken with an HD high speed camera in an underwater housing that we realized that our original estimation of 30Hz for squid skin color change was way off. What we were seeing was the pattern as interpreted by our brain's somewhat limited image processing abilities.
This really didn't come as a surprise as squid have optic lobes in their brains that dominate all other parts, and their optic nerves are absolutely massive, easily 100 times larger than the comparable neurons in mammals.
Shallower and warmer water species of squid, octopus, and cuttlefish also have an ability that was touched on in the article, which is counter-shading their undersides to break up any silhouette they would create when seen from below. This is accomplished by photophores that emit light in similar frequency ranges as the sun after it passes through a few feet of water.
Squid also use their skin's full-motion video ability for mating displays and communication, but I think I've already babbled on about squids enough.
That won't be a problem. Its not like the stem cells are growing in to a meat-like mush. If they are making muscle cells, then you're going to get all of the texture of muscle, because you will be eating muscle.
I too would be very interested to see the return of large format instant. I have a 4X5 Crown Graphic with two instant film backs that are completely unusable because the only in-production instant sheet film in that size is only available in Fuji's filmpack format.
This is why I find Apple's walled secret garden concept to be bullshit. If I want to screw around on my wife or any one of my three girlfriends, that's my business. That's why I use the Samsung Cock S8 with Android. Not only can I fuck who I want, when I want, but I have a huge choice of cybernetic Smart Dicks that run Android.
Sure, you have to be careful in the app store, and a buddy of mine got a nasty virus on his, but if you're smart about the prophylactic software you use and who you accept connections with, you'll be fine.
Come on, really? With so many old school gamers on Slashdot, you can't figure out the Voynich Manuscript?
Pages and pages in what could be a constructed language containing drawings of plants that don't exist, maps of stars and constellations that have no analog to our own Earthly observations, bullet point lists, recipes that reference the drawings in other sections of the book, and copious drawings of naked women...
Yeah, it's a source book, or perhaps a player's guide to some Medieval role playing game.
Slashdot Mirror
Not yet, and while Humboldts scare the hell out of me, I'd do it in a heart beat.
I do eat a variety of animals, but as I said in my post I rationalize my non-octopus eating habits with the "they are too smart to eat" excuse. A week or two after I started working with a giant pacific octopus I was out for sushi with some friends. I put a bit of octopus in my mouth, and the sucker pads brushed my cheek and that brought back the sense memory of the octopus holding my wrist and after that, I just couldn't do it.
I probably should be more consistent.
As for octopuses and their comparative intelligence, that's a really fuzzy grey area. Intelligence can't be quantified and measuring intelligence between different species that inhabit different ecological niches is damn near impossible. Octopuses play, swim mazes, open jars, and can be trained, but they don't have the social intelligence displayed by dolphins. Octopuses just aren't social. If two octopuses meet, they are either going to mate or try to eat one another. If octopuses were social creatures capable of working together toward a common goal and lived more than a couple of years, who knows what could happen.
Like I said, cuttles are smart enough to respond to Pavlovian conditioning. They also have a reflex to ink when they are in danger. Usually I would slap the surface of the water in the tank to get a few of them to ink, then offer them a juicy bit of shrimp or crab. Once a group of them started coming to the top of the tank when I would slap it, I stopped and would only feed them if they came up to the surface when I walked by. Cool story short, they got food for inking, then eventually food when I would tap the side of the tank to "Shave and a Hair Cut."
One of the octopus geeks I know trained her octopus to take a little ride around the tank on her hand before feeding time.
My pleasure. Just spreading the word about these wonderful and woefully underestimated animals.
Some of the researchers I've worked with have taught their octopuses to play with Legos. How can you not be fascinated by an animal that plays with Legos?
I won't eat cuttles. I raised too many generations, and they are at least as smart as dogs and trainable with Pavlovian methods. That moves them out of the food category in my mind.
Heck, I even trained a couple to ink on command. How can I eat my Super Cephalopod Inking Squad?
Don't let that stop you, squid info wants to be posted!
I'm just a layman who happened to have a run of good luck and meet the one cephalopod biologist who was also in to Dungeons and Dragons.
From there it was a magical journey of fish guts, scut work, and reading till I thought my head would explode.
I think the cephalopod biologists have settled on the term "Octopodiatrist"
Thank you, thank you.
The world of squid geekery is pretty specific. I can count on two hands the number of squid geeks I know, and they represent the bulk of biologists that specialize in cephs.
If you've ever seen any of the squid or octopus shows on Discovery, then you've seen the Squid Geeks.
YES! Finally! The one thing I can actually post intelligently about!
Feels good man.
Ahhh, good ole 'Dream of the Fisherman's Wife.' The text around the picture is hilarious. It reads like "chu chu, oh you naughty octopus. I am not supposed to be doing this."
So, pretty much the same dialog you would hear or read in anything involving tentacles.
I was going to get this whole piece tattooed on my back, but then I sobered up and got something even better.
I still eat squid, but I can't eat octopus for the reason you cite.
I eat squid because everything eats squid, including other squid. Most of the calamari you get in restaurants is either California Market Squid or one of the more common species of Loligo, (which just had a taxonomy change and I can't remember the new genus) and they are, to use a scientific term, dumb as posts.
That's how I rationalize it anyway.
Negative, I am American. I know very few tentacle porn researchers that are Japanese. Most of them tend to be Australian.
It depends on what you're asking.
Their camo is for defensive purposes only.* They get off kind of light as far as skin goes. They use kinesthetics to fool predators but tend to remain in a default black and white coloration. Most fish, and I would guess that enough animals that are predators of the mimic are color-blind. Most octopuses and squid are as well. Instead of color vision though their eyes filter the different polarizations of light and the guess is that they process the difference in polarization the same way we'd process a difference in color. So, instead of matching a background color, a mimic gets away with matching a background tone and then altering its body postures to produce a convincing enough silhouette.
The black and dark colors are made by chromatophores, the white is make by leukophores.
One interesting and thoroughly unscientific experiment I did involved altering the polarization of light my eyes were receiving, and then looking at squid and their predators while diving. I got a pair of welding goggles with replaceable lenses then ordered some circles of polarized glass. I got two lenses that only allowed vertical or horizontal light (depending on the angle of the channels to your eye) and glued them in to the goggles with some reference marks.
With both lenses vertical I saw a lot of amazing stuff. The scales on fish were a lot less fuzzy and I could make out parts of the squid displays with more clarity. With both lenses horizontal, the scales on fish that normally looked silver would appear black at some angles. When I did one lens H and one lens V, I got a massive headache but my ability to pick out the details of fish and animal movement was increased by quite a bit. At the same time, the squid and the displays on their skin were brought in to sharp focus in some directions and very very confusing waviness in others.
There was much mind blowing and Advil taking that day. However, that was exceptionally unscientific of me, and is presented as "hey, isn't that cool" only.
*that we've observed in the wild. To my knowledge, no one has had observed mimic octopuses mating.
Oh.. well..
The squid's brain is in five lobes, two lobes being oversized at attached via the single huge super-neuron to the corresponding eye. The other three lobes are typically used for running autonomous squid functions and don't light up much under MRI. The optic lobes however, are a bit like GPUs. The squid uses them for image processing but there are also hints of some higher order stuff going on. Not consciousness as we would recognize it, but something.
Fun Cephalopod Fact!: The esophagus passes directly through the center of the brain. Cephalopod brains are radial, but not radially symmetric.
Did you know that squid skin can be activated by electricity? The chromataphores are just sacks of pigment with muscles attached, and their displayed hue and saturation values are controlled by the expansion and contraction of these muscles. As the sack gets stretched, the pigment spreads out allowing more light to pass through. As the sack contracts, the concentration of the pigment rises and more light is blocked.
Cephalopods also have irideophores which reflect only the blue/green (short) wavelengths of light. In reef squid, there is a higher number of these cells around the eyes giving that species their characteristic "eye-makeup" look. Strangely enough, when squid display eyeshadow patterns, it is usually the females and it is usually a mating related display showing at least mild interest. Male squid are capable of this display, but rarely show it. One thing we observed is that "sneaker males" which are beta-male squid that use subterfuge to mate with available females rather than alpha-squid strength and aggression displays, will often display eyeshadow and saddle patterns to convince alpha-males that they are, in fact, females. Then, when the alpha-male is busy being aggressive toward other male squid, the sneaker male will mate with the largest female they can find.
Most squid that school are predominately matriarchal. The larger the female the more desirable she is as a mate. Particularly large female squid can have harems of a dozen males or more.
Male squid that aren't good at mating, or are too pushy, or too aggressive, or aren't aggressive enough, sometimes get eaten immediately after the mating.
I know far too much about squid sex.
Only if you had species specific videos, and then you'd have to change them to respond to the squid porn you were getting in return. If you showed a lateral silver to a female, and she responded with a non-flicker saddle, you'd better flicker and black-silver-black before she oreo'ed and zebra'd.
These two species aren't the only squid or octopuses (or cuttlefish for that matter) that have amazing abilities in their skin.
The Caribbean Reef Squid is able to flicker it's chromatophores and photophores on and off at greater than 120Hz, meaning that the squid are able to replicate the patterns of light and shadow against the sand and rock substrate caused by the waves in the water. It wasn't until we had some footage from The Discovery Channel taken with an HD high speed camera in an underwater housing that we realized that our original estimation of 30Hz for squid skin color change was way off. What we were seeing was the pattern as interpreted by our brain's somewhat limited image processing abilities.
This really didn't come as a surprise as squid have optic lobes in their brains that dominate all other parts, and their optic nerves are absolutely massive, easily 100 times larger than the comparable neurons in mammals.
Shallower and warmer water species of squid, octopus, and cuttlefish also have an ability that was touched on in the article, which is counter-shading their undersides to break up any silhouette they would create when seen from below. This is accomplished by photophores that emit light in similar frequency ranges as the sun after it passes through a few feet of water.
Squid also use their skin's full-motion video ability for mating displays and communication, but I think I've already babbled on about squids enough.
HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wait, seriously, what was your comment?
That won't be a problem. Its not like the stem cells are growing in to a meat-like mush. If they are making muscle cells, then you're going to get all of the texture of muscle, because you will be eating muscle.
The real trick is to figure out the marbling.
I was just about to post that I couldn't wait for my local taco trucks to start offering beef, pork, chicken, and wendy.
Only for the people who are still alive.
I too would be very interested to see the return of large format instant. I have a 4X5 Crown Graphic with two instant film backs that are completely unusable because the only in-production instant sheet film in that size is only available in Fuji's filmpack format.
What they said was "rear" but what they meant was "rise up and enslave humanity." So, you're right to never turn your back on it.
This is why I find Apple's walled secret garden concept to be bullshit. If I want to screw around on my wife or any one of my three girlfriends, that's my business. That's why I use the Samsung Cock S8 with Android. Not only can I fuck who I want, when I want, but I have a huge choice of cybernetic Smart Dicks that run Android.
Sure, you have to be careful in the app store, and a buddy of mine got a nasty virus on his, but if you're smart about the prophylactic software you use and who you accept connections with, you'll be fine.
Ahh, that figures. XKCD is ALWAYS doing it before everyone else.
Come on, really? With so many old school gamers on Slashdot, you can't figure out the Voynich Manuscript?
Pages and pages in what could be a constructed language containing drawings of plants that don't exist, maps of stars and constellations that have no analog to our own Earthly observations, bullet point lists, recipes that reference the drawings in other sections of the book, and copious drawings of naked women...
Yeah, it's a source book, or perhaps a player's guide to some Medieval role playing game.