Octopus' use of tools

geo · Thu Dec 17, 2009 8:39 pm


	weaver wrote: 8,000 years old???? WHO believes that???

The guy with Y.E.C. after his name. That's Young Earth Creationist. And I wouldn't mention it except that he infiltrates science related threads and berates them for no reason that he just can't wrap his mind around the concept of an animal showing any kind of intelligence. You see, it doesn't jive with the whole literal interpretation of the Bible thing he's got going on.

But I have to say it's always entertaining when this particular YECer gets all skeptical on us. Those fine critical thinking skills honed to such a sharp point.

weaver · Fri Dec 18, 2009 12:34 pm

Thanks for clearing that up----or as clear as anyone can make it.
So, he gets his jollies by attacking. Hmmmm. Sounds angry to me.
Let's do a Freudian interpretation of this. Yep, it's anger.

etudiant · Fri Dec 18, 2009 4:26 pm

HG Wells envisioned octopus shaped creatures coming from an advanced technological civilization on Mars in his classic The War of the Worlds.

This seems to make sense to me. Having eight arms would facilitate tool use tremendously. The tentacle shape would ovoid the need of an opposable thumb. Heck, anyone that has done mechanical work on their car would appreciate the possibility of employing eight appendages simultaneously.

Maybe these creatures are poised for an evolutionary fast-track

geo · Fri Dec 18, 2009 4:41 pm

I stumbled across this article in Slate Magazine. It explains pretty well why we may consider the octopus intelligent, but certainly not in the same arena as human beings.

An excerpt: "Octopuses can learn, they can process complex information in their heads, and they can behave in equally complex ways. But it would be a mistake to try to give octopuses an IQ score. They are not intelligent in the way we are—not because they're dumb but because their behavior is the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution under radically different conditions than the ones under which our own brains evolved."

Here's the article.

http://www.slate.com/id/2192211/

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