this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 159 points 1 week ago (15 children)

Something smart enough to recgonize the people, what they mean, learn their schedule, and understand how to decieve them, is something that should not be kept in captivity for our amusement.

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 88 points 1 week ago

A lot of animals are capable of learning. More importantly they’re capable of feeling. They should not be exploited in the same way that octopi should not be exploited.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Quite right, they should be given badges and guns.

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] snooggums@piefed.world 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Four. They need the others to move around!

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] AsoFiafia@lemmy.zip 2 points 5 days ago

And there would be less needless fatalities than with our current police force.

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[–] snooggums@piefed.world 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Every animal can react to their environment, including avoiding predators. Not all of them do it perfectly, but it is a basic survival skill for mobile life forms.

In the wild an octopus often hides in a tight space to protect itself and wanders out to feed, then returns to their safe location afterwards. They avoid predators while doing so. Lots of animals will be less active when predators are out and about, or will be active during times where it is more difficult for the predators to hunt.

Yes, an octopus is a very clever animal but really we should stop killing them because we are absolutely crushing their populations.

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[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

And especially should not be farmed or eaten alive for clicks on youtube. We have made significant progress as a society reducing the barbaric practice of eating shark-fin soup and other exotic animal products, and made great strides in ending torturing sea mammals in amusement parks. We have to add octopus to this list of things we now know better about.

Octopus have feelings and are higher animals with unique personalities and ways of experiencing the world. They are curious, they are intelligent, they dream and seem to show emotions in a variety of ways.

And our last common ancestor didn't even have a backbone. This fact alone should amaze us and give us hope for the greater universe - that we can share so much with something so very distant from us gives hope that if we ever do contact aliens, we might share more than we think.

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[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 67 points 1 week ago

Multiple similar stories:

https://youtube.com/shorts/iork5qOyCNs

https://mishpacha.com/octopus-escapades/

My favorite is one who would squirt water at lights to turn them off.

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-36051623

[–] chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 54 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I would believe it, those fuckers are smart and if they were social creatures I think they would be in competition with humans for the dominant species . This is an opinion of a person not super well versed on octopi so take this with a good size grain of salt.

[–] Sphks@jlai.lu 58 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Their lifespan is an issue. They live around 2 to 3 years before dying.

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Also, the act of reproducing kills the mother. Basically starved to death protecting the eggs. No generational knowledge transfer.

[–] accideath@feddit.org 9 points 1 week ago

Also doesn’t help that they live underwater. Makes it kinda hard to harness the power of fire or electricity. Especially the former was very important for human domination

[–] Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And the dad doesn't care. Pfeh, typical. /lh

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[–] baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.de 48 points 1 week ago (3 children)

there are social octopuses, like the larger pacific striped octopus. imo octopuses had 150 million years to rule the planet and they just weren't good enough. skill issue. us humans only had 2-4 million years. i'd say we're doing quite well comparatively.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 63 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maybe their version of "rule the planet" involved mostly just hanging out in their den and thinking interesting thoughts.

[–] LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yep they just hang out and do wtf they want to do. They're not going to work and having politics about whose turn it is to make coffee, or why Will should never have got promoted over Kay. Really they're the smarter species

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[–] scratchee@feddit.uk 55 points 1 week ago (3 children)

They ruled the planet for 150 million years and didn’t ruin the environment once ? What are they even doing?

We’re clearly superior, who else could speed run the mass extinction end game?

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They ruled the planet for 150 million years and didn’t ruin the environment once ?

That's what Cthulhu wants you to think.

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[–] sudoshakes@reddthat.com 24 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Octopi if the base word was Latin. It’s Greek, so octopodes for plural. Technically.

Because English is a bastard if a language octopuses and octopi are fine too.

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[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 13 points 1 week ago

Fire is a major limitation.

[–] BogeyTheSwear@lemmy.zip 38 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

If i was a multi Billionaire i would dedicate my vast wealth to building an Institute that breeds only the most intelligent octopi with each other.

They don't live so long, so generations go by fast. I bet we could speedrun evolution if we just put our money where our tentacles are.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I know that you mean well, but that is an extremely 'Evil Billionaire' thing to do

[–] Silic0n_Alph4@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Perhaps, but one must consider BogeyTheSwear’s Cephalopod:

  1. It is inevitable that super-intelligent octopuses will evolve eventually.
  2. When they do evolve, they will inevitable consider humans to be delicious snacks.
  3. As intelligent beings, they will of course look kindly upon their creators - mythical or billionairical.
  4. Therefore, the only safe and rational course of action is to invest all of one’s energies into bringing forth these humanity-munchers with all due haste, so as to preserve oneself as a creator in their perfect eyes. Either working against their awakening or having nothing to do with it at all is ultimately condemning your bloodline for all eternity to be a nice little midnight snack.
[–] prex@aussie.zone 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 week ago

If you want to read a book about super intelligent cephalopods Children of Ruin the second book of the Children of Time book is interesting.

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[–] Saryn@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Ah, so an octopus is overqualified for the position of US President. Good to know.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

My turd from this morning is overqualified. You set the lowest bar known to men.

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[–] InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 25 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Last time I went to the aquarium there was a specialist on reef ecology talking about all the different species of animals on display and a woman in the group behind me loudly exclaimed "Wait, fish are animals?" so I'm going out on a limb and stating that I believe there's a considerable amount of overlap between the smartest of their species and the dumbest of ours when it comes to intelligence.

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago

Dumb humans survive and are taken care of, dumb octopi dont survive. Most animals dont have the luxury of keeping every mutation and variation viable for survival.

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[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Octopus didn't memorize shit. They saw fish and went to get them. Security guard don't give a fuck about the fish tanks, they were at the gate all night.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can confirm, have been a guard.

'Rounds' were check boxes on a piece of paper. TF do I care whether doors are secure, it's not my department store.

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[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If it was possible to start fire under water octopi would have tribal civilizations already.

[–] thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Did you know that the correct pluralization is octopuses or octopoda, not octopi? This is because the -pus ending in octopus to es from the Greek word for foot, not prom latin.

[–] ADTJ@feddit.uk 11 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Did you know that octopi has long been included in many dictionaries also?

Language is only half etymology and half vibes

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[–] Iunnrais@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

The correct GREEK plural, which would be used because the root of octopus is Greek, could be octopodes. However, in ENGLISH, people have started intuiting that words ending in “~us” pluralize to ~i, akin to cacti. So this isn’t about being a Latin rule, it’s actually an emergent English rule.

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

I'm disappointed that this didn't appear in my feed adjacent to the "teaching an octopus to play piano" video for a nice screenshot.

[–] jabjoe@feddit.uk 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Makes me think of Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. 😀

[–] fakeplastic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago (4 children)

We’re going on an adventure

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[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 week ago

There are many documented Octopus escape/returns. But some of these details could be new/exaggerated.

[–] Hupf@feddit.org 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 week ago

octopi = 25.1327412287183

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[–] monkeyslikebananas2@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’m not scared

Definitely not scared… 😳

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[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

The simpler explanation seems to be that the guard was eating the fish, and blamed the octopus when people noticed something was amiss.

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[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Dude was probably a stealth gamer in previous life.

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[–] Fleur_@lemmynsfw.com 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Do they really have security guards patrolling the aquarium like it's a prison?

[–] Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 week ago

They probably have several checkpoints to scan every hour or half hour, I've seen places with RFID checkpoints that security has to tap on a regular basis. The idea is that security has to not spend the whole night at the desk.

Now they are likely looking for people breaking in, not a small octopus breaking out, so it might not get noticed.

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