Pharyngula

Posted by: thinkerspodium.wordpress.com | January 1, 2010 5:48 AM

That's cool. I've been meaning to write a cephalopod post of my own and this just reminds me to get off my backside.

Posted by: Define Life | January 1, 2010 5:54 AM

Hmmm. Squishy.

Posted by: Rachel Bronwyn | January 1, 2010 6:12 AM

Have you even gone to bed yet, PZ?

Posted by: vltava | January 1, 2010 6:26 AM

And oh, huzzah, I can post, for now! The registration page refuses to send me a confirmation email.

Posted by: daveau | January 1, 2010 8:28 AM

What an adorable pet. I don't think the kittehs would like one, though.

Yay, Friday! Yay, bank holidays!

Posted by: UXO | January 1, 2010 8:40 AM

@janegael: Yet the great irony is, the prime motivator for that incredible evolution is largely to eat or be eaten. So, you know, by eating them, we're encouraging them to evolve into better forms! Your soft-heartedness is DOOMING them to an evolutionary dead end! How CRUEL can you be?

Now off to prove white is black and get myself killed at the next zebra crossing...

Posted by: Happy Tentacles | January 1, 2010 9:23 AM

Wouldn't it be fun to come home from work and be greeted with such tentacular affection?

Posted by: FatherNature | January 1, 2010 9:40 AM

I was expecting this to happen.

Posted by: djlactin | January 1, 2010 9:59 AM

How can we know that the ocky's intentions are 'affectionate'?! For all we know, he likes the way she tastes (unsalty?). Or just enjoys having a solid structure to support him when he's reaching out of the water. Or maybe he's worshipping his cult's deity. Maybe he's trying to communicate "This tank tastes like rotting Herring." Pretending to interpret the intentions of a creature so far removed from us is the epitome of hubris.

Posted by: robhoofd | January 1, 2010 10:33 AM

He reminds me of myself when I was four.

Posted by: Insightful Ape | January 1, 2010 10:54 AM

Sorry, PZ, but the only animals that are truly cuddly are mammals.

Posted by: DaveX | January 1, 2010 11:16 AM

Seems that we all agree on at least a couple things:

1) Respect for intelligent life.
2) Dubiousness of our own ability to judge the mental process of an octopus.

Seems to me that the only logical thing to do is to refrain from eating them, since it is entirely possible you'd be consuming an intelligent being.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | January 1, 2010 11:30 AM

Love is slimy.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

Posted by: HorsePheathers | January 1, 2010 12:08 PM

Sven Dimilio, #26 writes: On a sliding scale of comparative "intelligence," where do you draw your line? pigs? lobsters? chickens? swordfish? rutabagas?

For me, the line is drawn at "can it recognize itself as a distinct entity in a mirror". If it can't, it's for the dinner table with no qualms.

Posted by: vltava | January 1, 2010 12:34 PM

HorsePheathers, #27:

For me, the line is drawn at "can it recognize itself as a distinct entity in a mirror". If it can't, it's for the dinner table with no qualms.

I read an interesting book recently, Becoming a Tiger, about animal learning, and there was some discussion of this. Apparently very few animals can do this. Most primates do, but possibly in some species, only the more intelligent members do (would you eat a dull gibbon but not a clever one? what about a retarded human child? I'm sure you wouldn't, which is why I think the mirror test is a strange one for this purpose). Cats and dogs do not. Dolphins do, but killer whales do not.

Aside: I used to be a sort of vegan, although most vegans I knew insisted I wasn't. I abstained from eating members of Chordata or any squids or octopuses. I was trying to base it on capacity to experience suffering. I gave it up for three reasons: one, it was really hard, two, I'm getting married to an omnivore, whom I don't expect to change, and besides, it will be weird to have kids growing up trying to understand why I don't eat what they do, and three, after reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, I thought about how much of civilization we owe to eating domesticated animals and their eggs and milk.

Posted by: shatfat | January 1, 2010 1:13 PM

PZ, are you going to blog on the Tazzie facial cancer story? Evolution is doomed! (Ha, ha, would be funny to see them spin that one.) It's like scifi, a single individual's cancer spreading to all. (Remember "The Establishment" with the man whose cancer took over when he died and tried to infect the entire human race? Er, neither does anyone else, that comic didn't sell well. But it was good, I swear it.)

And those silly primates, trying to save a species bound on a one-way train (due to its behavior) to destruction. Wi' li'l fences acrosst the lan'scape'n such.

What I think is hilarious is that the news article said that cancers that spread from individual to individual are rare! Ha! I bet they're not! I bet they only SEEM rare because they wipe out whole populations, leaving precious little evidence behind. Put THAT in your bubble wand and blow it!

Posted by: HorsePheathers | January 1, 2010 1:36 PM

Here's another way to express the "sentience" line as I see it: if it demonstrably has an idea of self and is smart enough to be able to deduce that this thing it sees in the mirror is not, in fact, another member of its species but conforms so closely to its own actions that it must be a manifestation of "self", it is too smart for me to eat in good conscience. The mirror test isn't the end-all and be-all (I was being a little flip) -- it's just the clearest demonstration of the level of intelligence I'm talking about. Things like seeing octopii learn how to open jars to extract shrimp from watching other octopii put them high enough up the "sentience" scale that I don't know I could eat one without wondering if I was crossing the line.

And to clarify, if some gibbons are smart enough to pass the test, then the whole gibbon species gets a pass from my dinner table -- there's too much chance of accidentally eating something sentient.

Posted by: DaveX | January 1, 2010 1:52 PM

I'm just happy to see people actually talking and thinking about this for once, instead of dropping the usual "it tastes good with butter" comments. As for the usual comments about carrots and trees also being living things, I can only offer that I also have respect for human life (including my own) and don't see how this respect can be maintained by allowing myself to starve to death. Arguing about this sort of nonsense isn't much different than arguing about global warming-- all you need to know is that using resources more efficiently and polluting less is ALWAYS a good thing, and should be a goal regardless of whether we're in crisis or not. There's no need for a human to eat an octopus, even if they turned out to be the stupidest and ugliest creatures on the planet-- so why not err on the side of good and keep them off your plate?

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | January 1, 2010 2:24 PM

Is this on the horizon?

In fact...

Posted by: janegael | January 1, 2010 3:16 PM

The comments about what is intelligent and what isn't here are arbitrary and based on the idea that being human-like is the defining characteristic of intelligence. We are the top predators so, of course, we write the rules. That's being very species-centristic.

Attributing emotions to animals is NOT anthropomorphizing them! Scientists are writing more and more articles on animal emotions and intelligence. We share the earth with more intelligent life than we'd like to think about. It's much easier to exterminate wolves from a helicopter if you don't understand that they have a family structure and culture. Seeing intelligence in other species inconveniences us, so we laugh and ignore it.

I eat chicken because I raised them and they are the closest thing to a walking plant that there is. I loved watching them but honestly Mike pretty much shows what thought processes they have:
Mike the Headless Chicken

And remember: The question, as Bentham wrote, is not "Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"

Posted by: RossM | January 1, 2010 5:37 PM

>Octopus:

"Give me another 20 seconds and I would have had her for dinner ..."

Researcher.

'give me another 20 seconds and I would have had her for dinner..."

Posted by: vltava | January 1, 2010 6:35 PM

eddie #34:

I've always been puzzled that the 'sliding scale' seems to mapped onto relatedness to humans. vltava said they used to avoid chordata and such is a prime example.

I don't think that it is. I based my criteria on capacity to experience suffering, which is why I carved out exceptions for cephalopods, based on their nervous systems.

Posted by: fly44d | January 1, 2010 8:01 PM

Ha! I was at the Cal Academy yesterday and couldn't find the giant octopus in it's display. At least I can now see what I couldn't find! They have several very nice displays on or connected to evolution and in listening to the crowd around me, I didn't hear a single creotard comment. Very much worth the visit!

Posted by: John B Hodges | January 2, 2010 5:43 AM

See http://abstract.desktopnexus.com/get/106785

Posted by: Fred | January 2, 2010 12:57 PM

While fondling your favorite cephalopod, you could wear this.

http://www.cthulhulives.org/store/store.lasso?1=product&2=33196

Weird.

Posted by: Notagod | January 2, 2010 2:42 PM

All kinds of life are important to me. I don't want to be the consumer of any product that comes from an endangered or stressed species, or is harvested in a way that causes more than a minimal impact on the habitat. I don't like trophy hunting because the animals are taken at their prime reproductive stage.

We must eat something though, so I find christian to be quite tasty if marinated properly, don't worry, there is an over abundance of them and the christian is born again devoid of intelligence. But, fresh christian baby with a dash of dill, roasted to a sweet golden brown, you can't go wrong there.

Posted by: toth | January 4, 2010 10:51 AM

Are you sure it's an octopus? Are you sure it's not a...cuddlefish [sic]?

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night.