octopus climbing out of tanks
Greg Goss wrote:
Bill Turlock "Bill Turlock wrote:
Nehmo wrote:
That story seems to say the crabs would win against the octopus. I
suppose it depends on how big they were. But, yes, you're right,
there's no video. Certainly, videos back then were rare.
I'm beginning to conclude the traveling-oct story has no truth to it.
Since plenty of people keep them as aquarium subjects, behavior as
bizarre as this would have been better documented by now.
But they are strange and probably smarter than we give them credit
for. I knew a girl who used to take walks on Portuguese fishing boats.
She said there were piles of freshly-caught still-alive octopuses on
the deck. When you walked past, the octopuses would follow you with
their eyes. She said you could see the expression of resignation an
pleading in their eyes.
Don't anthropomorphize the octupii, they hate that.
But, all seriousnes aside, I clearly remember seeing a film a
long time ago where an octupus would crawl out of its tank and
unscrew a mason jar with a food-critter in it. I suspect that
they are very intelligent. But not intelligent enough to avoid
getting caught.
The version of that story that I'd heard was to prove that an octopus
could generalize from watching something. They left the screwtop jar
in one octopus tank and the octopus had no idea what to do with it.
Then, in an adjacent tank, they added an octopus that had been trained
to open such a jar to get at dinner. After watching a few times, the
"naive" octopus was able to open the jar, too.
OK. Then, what I remember is an octopus and a screw-top jar.
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