Man, some days I’m so embarrassed for my phylum. In this video, a bait container is lowered into murky South African waters, and you can see all the fish swirling about, quite excited by the tasty flavors, and ineffectually pecking at it (or the camera. Stupid fish.) Then the King Mollusc slithers purposefully into view, wraps around the container, fends off all the fish, and unties and escapes with the bait.
Foiled by an octopus … from Lauren De Vos on Vimeo.
It’s settled. When I die, I want to be reincarnated as a more advanced organism — a cephalopod.
(I know, what I want and what I will get are very different things. I guess I’ll settle for being mollusc food.)
28 comments
Skip to comment form ↓
rq
2 October 2012 at 8:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
When’s the Molluscan Revolution to occur? I’m pretty sure they’re watching us for signs of weakness, to facilitate their own advance onto dry land every touch-screen on the globe.
W. Kevin Vicklund
2 October 2012 at 8:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PUNY SHARK.
Gregory in Seattle
2 October 2012 at 8:09 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
How much time passed, between the arrival of the octopus and its departure? They sped up the film, so it was difficult to gauge. And I take it that the point of this exercise was NOT to test octopus intelligence?
No One
2 October 2012 at 8:10 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
That’s an awesome bait-cam shot. A magenta filter would have cleared the green tint up: http://static.bhphoto.com/images/images150x150/249717.jpg
w00dview
2 October 2012 at 8:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Alright PZ, I appreciate you fighting against the deluge of cat nonsense on the internet but please, leave fish out of this. They already get shit on enough for that whole three second memory myth and for a biologist to go and call them stupid just for being excited around food and making a teeny tiny mistake with a camera just adds more fuel to their undeserved reputation for stupidity. I suggest you do some reading on fish cognition, it will really open your eyes to some of the incredible things they can be capable of.
/rant
Otherwise, cool video. If highly derived relatives of snails and oysters get their due respect for their intelligence then so should our fellow vertebrates.
butchpansy
2 October 2012 at 8:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Loved the shark pwnage, hated the fast-motion-with-annoying-banjo-music.
Tyrant al-Kalām
2 October 2012 at 8:42 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If octopi ever acquire some mutation that lets them live to be 50 years old and one to do active child rearing, we’re in trouble.
PZ Myers
2 October 2012 at 8:47 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Relax. Fish are my preferred lab animal, so I get to indulge in a little mockery now and then.
Gvlgeologist, FCD
2 October 2012 at 8:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hey, as a banjo player, I liked the music! Agree with the comment about the fast-motion.
The question I had was, did the octopus just fiddle with the ties until they came loose, or did it decide that the cable ties were the problem, and take steps to release them?
AJ Milne
2 October 2012 at 9:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I could totally hear it, over the banjo music, muttering to itself: ‘Geez… They call that a knot? Lessee… Looks like some gomer tied a double half hitch here… Now the rabbit goes through the hole like sooo…’
A. R
2 October 2012 at 9:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I prefer flies as model organisms. Perhaps because I can do anything I want with their genes without PETA blowing up my lab.
w00dview
2 October 2012 at 10:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Fair enough, I did overreact a bit. Working in an aquarium gets you attached to the little buggers after all! Definitely see them as more than just food nowadays. :)
unclefrogy
2 October 2012 at 10:24 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
the easiest way to remove a nylon cable tie is to just cut it. He left one still hanging on the the rig so it took some time to figure out what was keeping the bait thing there a cut enough to get it away having zero experience with it before.
clever creature.
uncle frogy
Glen Davidson
2 October 2012 at 10:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Glen Davidson
2 October 2012 at 10:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Smart fish, realizing that if it achieved fame in front of the camera it would likely have a lifetime of eating calamari.
Squishy thing just thinks of food.
[may be double posting, if the original eventually takes]
Glen Davidson
richardwolford
2 October 2012 at 10:47 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s a trick, get an axe.
chigau (違わない)
2 October 2012 at 10:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
He’ll just take the axe away from you.
Beatrice
2 October 2012 at 10:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And then you better swim fast.
Pyra
2 October 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Amazing stuff. Wouldn’t know little things like this without this blog. So much goodness here. Thanks for this.
Muz
2 October 2012 at 12:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
These things are pretty darn clever. I had some notion once that the only thing holding them back from some almost scary learned intelligence is their short life span (well, granted ‘scary intelligence’ is a hugely vague term).
But I don’t really know a thing about it. Would that help? Are some of the big ones long lived enough to show anything if it did?
Glen Davidson
2 October 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No one knows for sure how long giant squid live, but,
http://invertebrates.si.edu/giant_squid/page4.html
Somehow, though, I doubt that short-lived organisms (including giant squid if the above is true) have evolved the mechanisms for long-term learning and integration of that knowledge that they’d need to make much use of a long life, if, say, we genetically engineered long-lived squid (not that we have a clue how). They’d probably just stay clever, not slowly build the sort of integrated worldview that we develop.
Glen Davidson
woodsong
2 October 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Did the octopus actually untie the ties, or just bite through them? It’s rather hard to tell.
I love the way the ‘pus keeps the shark down during the process!
David Utidjian
2 October 2012 at 1:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I recommend watching some of her other videos. All of them are very cool. I also like her choices in music.
In my next life I want to come back as a scientist… they get to do all the cool stuff… oh wait.
A. R
2 October 2012 at 2:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This video from Lauren is pretty sweet too: http://vimeo.com/46152093
Ichthyic
2 October 2012 at 2:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I love the way the ‘pus keeps the shark down during the process!
interesting that since the shark didn’t seem to care a whit if the octo grabbed it (just kept coming back), that the octo didn’t instead simply nom the shark instead of trying to take off and open the much more difficult bait cylinder.
makes me think that either the shark is basically inedible to the octo (which would be interesting in and of itself), or..
the octo is not as clever as some have suggested here…
woodsong
2 October 2012 at 4:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
makes me think that either the shark is basically inedible to the octo (which would be interesting in and of itself), or..
the octo is not as clever as some have suggested here…
Or the octo was interested in the challenge of the bait? Maybe it was bored with shark steak? :-)
Glen Davidson
2 October 2012 at 4:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Giant octopuses don’t mind eating spiny dogfish sharks (possibly not the healthiest specimens).
There’s always the possibility that the bait was rather tastier than the shark–and less likely to cause damage to the cephalopod.
Glen Davidson
Ichthyic
3 October 2012 at 1:32 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
There’s always the possibility that the bait was rather tastier than the shark–and less likely to cause damage to the cephalopod.
that shark was… handled.
it was no more a threat to that ceph than the bait in that bucket.