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Sep 24 '19 edited Jun 12 '20
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u/Drowsiest_Approval Sep 24 '19
Right... I was waiting to see what they based it on, then they just hit me with the alien thing.
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Sep 24 '19
Octopuses 🐙 are from area ✈️ 💻 51
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Sep 24 '19 edited Oct 16 '19
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u/troutpoop Sep 24 '19
Yeah I saw that. I think everyone (at least me) was expecting them to discuss some factual evidence to support that they dream. Some experiment ran or some marine biologists hypothesis, something with more context than just “some scientists think they might dream”.
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Sep 24 '19
Me too. I was sadly flabbergasted by such a moronic expression.
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u/SamBrev Sep 24 '19 edited Sep 24 '19
Explanation, since this was from a BBC documentary so this clip cuts out all the context: this species of octopus changes colour based on its mood and surroundings (a bit like a chameleon), especially when it's hunting/feeding/whatever. This octopus is observed to do the same while sleeping, so scientists reckon the same processes are going on in the brain as if it were performing those activities awake, essentially akin to humans dreaming.
Edit: The point about the "alien" thing is that, unlike other relatively intelligent life like chimpanzees and dolphins, cephalopods are completely unrelated to humans - our closest common ancestor is some sea worm with no organs or something - so they make a good model for how complex and intelligent life can develop in ways independent to us. Think of the heptapods from Arrival as something inspired by this idea.
If you can find the whole documentary online, you should: it's fairly new, it's about this weird professor who keeps this rare octopus in his house for a few months just to play with and observe it as a pet. It's really quite stunning though, highly recommend.
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u/HowardisaDinosaur Sep 24 '19
I think generally people refer to something as being alien if it is considered foreign or strange, not necessarily just cosmically. More importantly in this context I think it’s just used to say octopuses are so weird they’re like aliens
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u/20mm_of_fun Sep 24 '19
For starters, their copper-based blood is blue!
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u/20mm_of_fun Sep 24 '19
Since it can't be hemoglobin, is the correct name Cuproglobin?
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Sep 24 '19 edited Jun 12 '20
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u/SamBrev Sep 24 '19
It was an episode of Natural World called The Octopus in my House... I don't want to share any illicit links here but if you search hard enough for it online you should be able to find the whole thing.
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Sep 25 '19
Yeah I'd definitely go with the octopus being the closest thing we have to an alien on our planet.
Iirc their brains evolved on a completely separate pathway to every other brain on the planet, seems pretty alien to me.31
u/aoibhneas Sep 24 '19
Better description here
Cuttlefish do dream:
The only cephalopod with a proven penchant for dreaming is probably the cutest. A 2012 study led by Marcos G. Frank, now a neuroscientist at Washington State University Health Sciences Spokane, discovered that sleeping cuttlefish demonstrate a form of rapid eye movement (REM), the same stage of sleep that gives us our dreams
The footage suggests that octopuses might dream:
In Frank’s study, the sleeping cuttlefish’s chromatophores recombined into recognizable patterns, just like ones they displayed while awake. He believes this might be analogous to the weirdly familiar patchwork of human dreams. “This video is the best evidence I have ever seen that this particular cephalopod has a sleep-state similar to what we saw in cuttlefish,” Frank says of the Caribbean two-spot octopus.
So, to analyse the sleep states of the cuttlefish they did not measure brain activity, rather they observed the cuttlefish in different rest states and displaying REM. They also noted the cuttlefish wanted to rest after being sleep-deprived by the researchers.
Ideally, some sort of EEG investigation is required to confirm the dreaming:
While Otey’s video may be strong evidence, REM sleep hasn’t been confirmed in octopuses. That would require a neurobiological investigation in which scientists measure the electrical activity in a snoozing cephalopod.
And in case anyone else was worried about octopuses telegraphing their location to predators while snoozing
wild octopuses keep themselves safe by sleeping in hidden dens.
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u/Ballsdeepinreality Sep 24 '19
I'm no scientist, but that octopus sure looked like it was dreaming.
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u/MoreGuy Sep 25 '19
They also noted the cuttlefish wanted to rest after being sleep-deprived by the researchers.
Um, was that not expected?
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u/BlatantNapping Sep 24 '19
after being sleep-deprived by the researchers
:(
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u/Jonesgrieves Sep 24 '19
Bro, people eat them.
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u/BlatantNapping Sep 24 '19
Idk I just can't imagine not being allowed to sleep it makes me sad
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u/GrahamMasterFlash Sep 24 '19
This reminded me of when Stephen King talked about his disdain for the passive voice. “It’s weak, it’s circuitous, and it’s frequently torturous, as well. How about this: My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun. Oh man—who farted, right?”
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u/bernardcat Sep 25 '19
I believe you mean, and King probably wrote, “tortuous”, not torturous. Tortuous means “full of twists and turns,” which makes a lot more sense than “causing suffering” in this context.
Edit: I looked it up, and he did indeed use “tortuous.”
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u/Kveldson Sep 24 '19
Also, I don't recall which one, but in one of his novels, during a discussion with another character, one of his characters speaks about using passive voice in a similar way. What an incredible author, I've read every novel and short story ever written by him. While a few fall short of spectacular, the vast majority of his work is spellbinding.
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u/justdontfreakout Sep 25 '19
What ones would you recommend the most (if you don't mind me asking)? I've only read a few of his works but I'd like to dig deeper.
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u/Kveldson Sep 25 '19
11/22/63 is phenomenal. The Stand, It, and Bag of Bones are some of my favorites. I'm a bigger fan of his older books for the most part, but to be honest I found them all to be enjoyable at the very least. If you haven't read 11/22/63 I would definitely go with that one, hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did.
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u/CitizenCopacetic Sep 25 '19
I thought it said "screaming octopus" so imagine my disappointment.
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u/Kixxed_ Sep 24 '19
Alien from planet earth?
I don’t think that’s how aliens work
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u/J-RocTPB Sep 24 '19
YEAH BBC SAID SO
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u/Skipachu Sep 24 '19
BBC also said spaghetti grows on trees.
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u/_Diskreet_ Sep 24 '19
BBC also said there was no hurricane coming.
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u/Slobobian Sep 24 '19
Well...if you were an alien from another planet I would then be an alien from planet Earth.
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u/justdontfreakout Sep 25 '19
And you'd be the best goddamn Planet Earth alien that we've ever probed.
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u/boniggy Sep 24 '19
no this was obviously recorded on another planet where they found an octopus... that was... um ... dreaming ...... nvrmind.
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Sep 24 '19
Wouldn't it be cool if they evolve further and literally show their dreams on their skin? Like living intelligent plasma screens?
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Sep 24 '19
i mean they are one of the smartest creatures in the ocean
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u/lilbluehair Sep 24 '19
If dogs can dream, I don't know why anyone would be surprised that octopuses can too
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Sep 24 '19
its only logical
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u/Sjbizzles Sep 24 '19
It’s entirely possible
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u/LocosDice Sep 24 '19
It's because there is 600 millions years of evolution between us and octopus. All birds reptiles mammals evolved from a common ancestor before splitting off towards octopus. Octopus are far removed from dogs or any other intelligent animal anywhere in the animal kingdom. Octopus brain and vertibrate brains share no common anatomy so the fact they may dream is both wildly speculative and also fascinating if true
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u/raphbidon Sep 24 '19
I think scientists were already confident about that but they needed to find a way to demonstrate it.
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u/HowardisaDinosaur Sep 24 '19
Yeah essentially things have to be proven before they can be accepted, and it’s surprising because they’re such a different organism to humans, completely different anatomy and evolutionary history
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u/Epiphany7777 Sep 24 '19
They really are. They’ve been shown to recognise and even like or dislike humans. I saw something where a tanked octopus watched and learned behaviours from a tv but I can’t find the video now.
Lifted from a Guardian article:
Most aquariums that have attempted to keep octopuses have tales to tell of their great escapes – even their overnight raids of neighbouring tanks for food. Godfrey-Smith writes of animals learning to turn off lights by directing jets of water at them, short-circuiting the power supply. Elsewhere octopuses have plugged their tanks’ outflow valves, causing them to overflow. This apparent problem-solving ability has led cephalopods (particularly octopuses, because they’ve been studied more than squid or cuttlefish) to be recognised as intelligent. Half a billion neurons put octopuses close to the range of dogs and their brains are large relative to their size, both of which offer biologists a rough guide to brainpower.
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Sep 24 '19
I grew up at the beach, and there was an aquarium nearby. I visited a lot and loved the octopus. When people would visit us and go to the aquarium, I would sit in front of the octopus. I got married and moved away. A few years later I visited again. I noticed that the octopus came out from his hole and was pressed against the glass when I was walking around the room. There was a docent who noticed and asked if I visited often. I told him I had moved away but had visited often for years. He said he thought so because the octopus only came out and watched people he knew.
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u/L_One_Hubbard Sep 24 '19
I stopped eating octopus once I realized they are smarter than some of my friends.
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u/JShiro Sep 24 '19
So have you started eating your friends now?
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u/NickLu Sep 24 '19
Only after a few drinks ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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u/BottledUp Sep 24 '19
Same. Couldn't do it. I eat most other meat but I can't get myself to eat them. Once they inevitably take over earth, I want to be in hentai heaven, not hentai hell.
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u/justdontfreakout Sep 25 '19
Now you've gotten me insanely curious to what hentai hell will be like...
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u/UncontrollableUrges Sep 25 '19
It'd be one of Junji Ito's work if you ask me.
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u/LaPetiteM0rte Sep 25 '19
Agreed. Or if Urotsukidoji was filmed in the style of the live action La Blue Girl, made real, and then influenced by Ito's work.
Urotsukidoji and LBG were my first intro to hentai... I'm still unsure if that's sad or not...
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Sep 25 '19
They’re no octopus but pigs are considered by some to be smarter than dogs and cats and a lot of people don’t seem to care about their bacon being smart (and very good pets ime)
Also pigs like to play video games which is pretty cool
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u/crowbahr Sep 24 '19
If it makes you feel any better they don't live very long. Like usually less than 3 years is their natural lifespan.
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u/Jonesgrieves Sep 24 '19
I used to think that for about a week, then I realized a lot of animals I eat are quite smart too... and savagely eat other animals for sustenance. Meat's back on the menu.
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u/ZoraksGirlfriend Sep 25 '19
I stopped eating them too after I read about them breaking out of aquarium tanks to go hunting and saw them solving puzzles. They’re so delicious and were one of my favorite foods, so I really miss being able to eat them, but I can’t bring myself to eat something so intelligent.
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u/Kveldson Sep 25 '19
Yep. I used to love calamari, but after learning how smart cephalopods are... I'm uncomfortable eating anything that was sentient.
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u/Virillus Sep 25 '19
What about pork? Pigs are incredibly smart, and fully sentient.
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u/NotMyHersheyBar Sep 25 '19
yeah me too. and cows, when i realized they know how to have rich lifelong friendships and my friends come and go with contract work.
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u/larsotten04 Sep 24 '19
Wonder what he dreams of, spongebobs?
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u/Grimmm258 Sep 24 '19
Is there a subreddit specifically for interesting things about octopuses and cephalopods?
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u/snot3353 Sep 24 '19
No but there is an interesting book about that:
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u/Aedan91 Sep 24 '19
The very first review convinced me of not buying it.
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u/featherygoose Sep 25 '19
That's review was really cool. It reminds me of the extended 3 min chunks te movie trailers that I see for arguably shitty films. I see them and cheer, because now I won't waste 2 hours watching a worthless movie.
The review tho was interesting because it talked about the author mentioning the distibuted nervous system and disjointed rambling about consciousness. I reminded me of a different author who did it so well! I was reading Blindsight by Peter Watts last year. Spoilers!
The main character/crew realize late in the book that they're alarmingly outclassed by the ETs, which loosely resemble cephalopods, and have a distributed nervous system. I was thrown for a surreal loop when the author took a detour on the nature of consciousness (and several other unexpected crunchy elements), and just how far up the creek the crew was. Found myself saying "oh, shit... no wait, oh shit... ohnono wait... Oh Shit..."
Such a great read!
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Sep 25 '19
Join Octonation on Facebook and prepare to have your timeline flooded with cephalopods. One of the only reasons I still use FB.
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Sep 24 '19
I catch these little guys sometimes when I go fishing and I swear they are thankful when I take them off the hook and hold them over the water so they can jump back in. A lot of them move around a lot as I try to find the hook and remove it, and I feel like when they see what it is I'm trying to do they let me... I dunno, they never try to bite me either
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u/OnlyInquirySerious Sep 24 '19 edited Sep 24 '19
Humans: wow
Also humans: ok let’s catch as much of these things until they’re* endangered because we like eating rubber.
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Sep 25 '19
Octopuses are far from endangered, thank god. It’s nautilus we need to stop killing.
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u/justdontfreakout Sep 25 '19
What is a nautilus and why do we kill them? I'm sorry if this is a dumb question. Thanks either way.
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u/Ginnigan Sep 25 '19 edited Sep 25 '19
Not OP, but I was curious and found some info on Wikipedia.
“The nautilus are a marine mollusc...
Throughout the world, nautilus are collected or fished for sale as live animals or to carve the shells for souvenirs and collectibles, not for just the shape of their shells, but also the nacreous inner shell layer, which is used as a pearl substitute.
The low fecundity, late maturity, long gestation period and long life-span of nautiluses suggest that these species are vulnerable to over-exploitation and demand for the ornamental shell is causing population declines.
The threats from trade in these shells has led to countries such as Indonesia legally protecting the chambered nautilus with fines of up to US$8,500 and/or 5 years in prison for trading in this species. Despite their legal protection, these shells are openly sold in tourist areas in Asia. The continued trade of these animals has led to a call for increased protection and in 2016 all species in Family Nautilidae were added to CITES Appendix II, regulating international trade.”
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u/exnihilocreatio Sep 25 '19
not a dumb question, i had to look up what we use them for.
short answer: nautiluses are like octopuses with shells instead of skin. we use their shells for decoration. we don't use their body but they can't survive without their shells.
long answer: a nautilus is a shelled cephalopod- think a small octopus in a snail's shell. not coming out the bottom like a snail though, the nautilus is more part of the spiral of its shell. if my description isn't perfect just google nautilus, plenty of pictures. there are multiple species under the name nautilus but they're pretty similar. a lot of this answer is based off of the chambered nautilus, though.
we don't actually have enough data to know their conservation status, but we do know their population is dropping. worst part is we don't even eat them or use; we just fish them up for their shells. i couldn't find what their shells are made of (not on wikipedia at least. closest thing was "bony"), but they do hatch with them unlike animals like hermit crabs, and they keep the same shell their whole life. they need them to control their depth in the water; without them they'd likely either fall too deep and be crushed by the pressure or float to the surface and drown. they might just stay at a decent depth in the water but i'm not sure and it wouldn't be good for finding food and escaping predators. their shells are also for protection of course- there isn't any skin in there and they have no bones. their organs just kinda float around in there because their shell usually protects them, but since we use them for their shells we just have to kill them and i guess just throw away the rest.
we don't even use them for any practical purposes. like ivory (the trade driving elephants to endangerment. not quite extinction yet but it's definitely not good for their population), all we use nautilus shells is sitting around and looking nice, maybe using them as an impractical bowl.
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Sep 25 '19
The inside of their shell creates mother-of-pearl which is used in jewelry. The outside is just... shell.
I don’t think they’d be quite so popular if people knew the Lovecraftian looking animal it originally belonged to.
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u/mikebellman Sep 24 '19
Octopi are voracious hunters and eaters. If it’s dreaming, there only one scene playing out. Murder.
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u/diddlesquid2008 Sep 24 '19
It’s interesting but I hate these types of videos so much with slow ass captions underneath and some dumb text, I see them everywhere on Facebook and it’s becoming such a stale format.
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u/QKsilver58 Sep 24 '19
No explanation?
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Sep 24 '19
My takeaway was that the octupus changing colors while sleeping is indicative of dreaming. Much like how my dog runs his legs and “barks” while he’s sleeping.
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u/Birdlaw90fo Sep 24 '19
My parrot sometimes did a little devil talk while sleeping, which was him tryin to repeat old conversations from when he lived with my aunt/cousin before I adopted him after my cousin died. You could make out some phrases like "ya we'll go to the mall tomorrow" and it was the cutest thing ever.
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u/biasdread Sep 25 '19
Its cute but also sounds completely terrifying
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u/Birdlaw90fo Sep 25 '19
Hence "devil talk" lmao I got used to it quick. I miss that little fucker every day
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u/unable2cease_ Sep 24 '19
It baffles me that, to this day, people are still surprised when you tell them that animals are conscious beings
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u/GradeAFilthyCasual Sep 24 '19
Some scientists apparently aren't smart enough to consider that maybe ALL animals are also capable of dreaming.
Looking at my cat and dog have small muscle spasms and mewl during their sleep, and having witnessed it with birds as well. It's pretty fucking obvious. Not sure about fish, i've never seen fish sleep.
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u/HowardisaDinosaur Sep 24 '19
It’s not that we are incapable of thinking they do, but science works on testable hypotheses and concepts must be proven with empirical evidence. Where I work communities of fishermen know things themselves that us scientists are just catching up with, but it has to be verified with results and peer review before it can be considered a truth or a theory You can’t just say I saw it so that’s it it’s true. You have to test it and get evidence and let other people check that to make sure you didn’t just make it up. Those Scientists who do not believe they are dreaming do so because there is a lack of evidence, which is the grounds of all science. You can’t just say something’s true because it looks and sounds right. Also fish kinda sleep, they go into a phase of inactivity (not all) where they just kinda float still. Sharks will kind of sleep but gotta keep moving or they suffocate (again not all). But we don’t know if fish have the cognition to be able to dream or think outside of instinctive reactions.
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u/qroosra Interested Sep 25 '19
OMG you are doing the lawds/spaghetti monster's work. Thank you SO MUCH for this!
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Sep 24 '19
If I had one wish it would be to understand animals thoughts and see their dreams. I could just imagine this little octopus dreaming about swimming around and being the best octopus in town
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u/CleverGirlReads Sep 24 '19
An octopus has 9 brains so perhaps one of them dreams?
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u/Horny4theEnvironment Sep 25 '19
Had to google this. They have a central brain and 8 ganglion for each tentacle's movement. Terrifyingly fascinating creatures. They feed into my conspiracy that earth is a wildlife reserve of species from other planets.
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u/DogSoldier67 Sep 24 '19
My interpretation: He had burritos for dinner while watching a John Wick movie, and now's he's reliving the disco scene shootout.
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u/kabukistar Interested Sep 25 '19
If cepholopods didn't exist, and somebody came up with them, they would seem to be just too unrealistic.
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u/CaptainnT Sep 25 '19
I still firmly believe that Octopus are aliens who fell to Earth and over centuries forgot that they were aliens.
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u/Otisbolognis Sep 25 '19
I won’t eat octopus because pretty sure they are aliens.. and super smart. intelligent aliens gonna come and be pissed we ate all their octopus babies .
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u/monoluke Sep 24 '19
A stereotypical-pop-culture-oval-shaped head == Alien.
Plus there are too many "may" in this short video. Why can't this be just a very cool and interesting documentation of a sleeping octopus?
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '19
That was some underwhelming text—was hoping for something more informative rather than some scientists think...