Octopuses seen hunting together with fish
Interpretation of octopus–fish behavior
- Some see the “punching” as cooperative herding: octopuses pushing fish to contribute to group hunts or repositioning them over prey.
- Others are skeptical, suggesting simpler explanations: defending food from thieves, keeping competitors away, or noise/distraction for hunting.
- Debate over whether this implies “theory of mind” between octopus and fish; some argue basic conditioning could explain it without complex mental models.
- Several commenters caution against “Disneyfying” the footage or over-reading a short video, while others point to the underlying study with much more data.
Intelligence, sentience, and ethics of eating animals
- Many express awe at octopus intelligence and social complexity; some say this has motivated them to stop eating octopus.
- Others argue intelligence alone isn’t a sufficient reason to avoid eating a species, prompting comparisons to humans and cannibalism.
- Discussion broadens to pigs, cows, horses, veal, and cultural taboos around which animals are acceptable to eat.
- People propose frameworks that weigh animal intelligence, suffering, meat yield, and diet needs to minimize cruelty, with some pointing out that meat is not nutritionally necessary for most.
Language and pluralization rabbit-hole
- Long tangent about the “correct” plural: octopuses (standard English), octopi (popular but etymologically shaky), and octopodes (Greek-derived but rare).
- Similar arguments about plurals of virus, fish, and other loanwords, plus the general principle that usage ultimately determines “correctness.”
- Some advocate using just “octopus” as both singular and plural to avoid pedantry.
Octopus biology and cognition
- Commenters highlight octopus traits: multiple localized “brains” in arms, advanced camouflage, regeneration, short lifespans, and apparent dream-like color changes.
- Comparison of arm ganglia to distributed processors; pushback that brains aren’t literally CPUs.
- Noted parallels to alien intelligence and many references to science fiction exploring uplifted octopus civilizations.
Domestication, cooperation, and sociality
- Speculation on whether octopuses are effectively “domesticating” fish; others reserve “domestication” for multigenerational genetic change, labeling this mutualism instead.
- References to ants “domesticating” fungi and hemipterans as analogies.
- Broader point that social attention and cooperative behavior may be more widespread across life (including plants) than often assumed.
Study methods and tools
- Brief technical discussion of the cited study’s methods: manual video annotation, 3D reconstruction of scenes, and specialized software for multi-view animal tracking.
- Some wish there were more software projects and jobs focused on non-human behavior and ecology.