Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
More and more animals are being given the status of being "sentient" beings, latest example: squids.. [...]
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A bit OT in the context of self consciousness, but this has been thought of before.
I remember this little octopus living in an aquarium with neighbouring tanks sideways and above, inhabited by all kinds of sea life.
After some time animals from other tanks began to vanish.. the owner put up a camera and the records clearly showed how the small 'kraken' lifted the heavy glas, climbed into the next tank, even changed vertical shelves, sometimes to play, sometimes to eat .. in the morning he always was in 'his' tank, behaving like "go on, nothing to see here".
He (not
it i'd say) clearly remembered me and other guests, and behaved differently. I have also met some underwater, in the mediterranean, but you have to be careful: even smaller ones have an unbelievable strength.
" The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness" by Sy Montgomery is a very good book about those earth-developed eight-armed aliens.
Now there is a new study about how some squid species became what they are. Their genome was almost similar to humans (only other 'switches' activated in the sequence), but after a while it began to divert drastically.
"How octopuses and squid have broken away from the previously known pattern of evolution"
https://www.myscience.at/en/news/202...on-2022-univie
They are clearly intelligent, but in a (understandably) very different way. And they do not live very long, otherwise mankind would probably find an underwater civilisation..
Sorry for OT, they are a bit of a hobby of mine
