They’re handing out Rubik’s Cubes to octopuses. This is good training in logic and pattern recognition, and the next step will be to hand them wrenches and welding torches and put them to work assembling underwater habitats for mankind (so think the deluded hu-mans anyway — they’ll actually use them to build lasers and water-filled assault tanks). Brilliant!
Oh, wait. Never mind. It’s actually simply a test for handedness among the octopuses, and they don’t actually expect them to solve the puzzles. Darn. That’s not as exciting.
The reason they don’t expect them to solve the puzzles, of course, is that the octopod solution would probably involve alien geometries and produce a result that might drive anthropoid brains mad.
(via The Great Beyond)
Five bucks says at least one octopus solves it by peeling off the stickers and reapplying them in the correct configuration.
Well. I for one welcome our cephalopod overlords’ potential solution.
I would have thought it was because cephalopods didn’t have color vision (is that an oversimplification?)
Maybe with the alien geometery, they could solve the Rubik’s Hypercube: http://www.superliminal.com/cube/cube.htm
Little do the humans know that they are actually the 4th most intelligent species on the Earth. First are the mice, then the dolphins, then the octopi. Like the mice, the octopi are pan-dimension beings placed here as part of a research project to discover the answer to question about life, the universe, and everything.
Once the answer is found, then BAM! Its payback time for all those years of calamari appetizers.
Beware, humans. Your time is near.
Azkyroth, I thought the same exact thing. I thought octopuses in particular had excellent vision (comparable to ours) but only saw in black and white. I haven’t looked at the link yet, though, and it may also be that some of the colors are distinct enough that they’re discernible to cephalopod eyes.
Oh, yeah, and they’re not really expecting the cephalopods to solve the damn things. I hope they’ll be surprised, though.
“…whenever the cube was turned, the facing side remained red. Upon further examination, high-speed photography revealed a previously-unknown SEVENTH side!”
–A Child’s Garden of Alien Overlords, published 2012
I’m glad nobody commented on pig intelligence. A few days ago, I actually heard a pig owner say that pigs and chimps are tied for the smartest animal other than humans. I’ve been around pigs, and have one question. Where are these super intelligent pigs and what are they up to!
My big fear is that they’ll figure out the Time Cube, and Gene Ray will have a big laugh at our expense.
Hey, maybe the octos could be put to work designing the atheist version of the Jack Chick tracts that you called for a few posts ago.
Speaking of which: The big, big, BIG problem that the atheists have versus the non-atheists is this: People Don’t Want To Die. Furthermore, they don’t even want to admit that they WILL die, and that death is forever. (This is especially true of Americans, who even if they aren’t actively religious are always looking for ways to cheat death through exercise and vitamins and such.)
You might want to start out the slick pamphlet by getting that big ol’ stumbling block dealt with immediately.
It’s the Rubik’s Cubes which are the most intelligent creatures on Earth. The mice, dolphins, and cephalopods are merely mercenaries and spies working for various alien intelligence agencies, watching each other, and amusing themselves by driving the semi-evolved naked apes batty. The Rubik’s Cubes arranged the whole show, manipulating the mice into thinking they had arranged it all, for a Greater Ultimate Purpose. 42 is merely the latest diversion.
Oh hell; I hope they don’t start making water gods!
Don’t worry, after the newts win the war and drive us to extinction they’ll eat the octopodes.
The other thing they always say about pigs. “Contrary to popular belief, pigs are actually very clean animals. They just role in the mud because they don’t have sweat glands.” I don’t think the pigs motivation is relevant here. Here are 2 comparable statements.
“I don’t stink. I just haven’t bathed in 11 years because I’m afraid of the water.”
“I’m not gay. I just stick my thingy in another man’s hoopty-doo because it feels good”
Sorry for going off subject. I’ve just been itching for a good pig rant. It’s been a while.
Phoenix Woman @ #10:
And, secondarily, people don’t want their deceased friends and loved ones to be dead, forever, either.
As for their deceased enemies…..believing in a Hell is a way to think that they (the enemies) are worse than dead (as well as being a way to keep other people in line, of course).
Brownian, don’t be silly. You can always tell when someone has peeled off the stickers.
What they’ll do is turn one face 45°, then apply pressure to the corner until the blocks come apart. Putting them back together in the correct fashion is a simple and undetectable cheat.
Not that I would do such a thing, mind you. But those octopuses are a sneaky lot.
I’d like to see an octopus get its tentacles on a Rubik’s Cube and then change itself to match the colored squares.
@ Jose:
Uh, yeah, I’ve had a hankerin’ for one of those myself…
I have a pig and I’m not sure where people get their estimations of their intelligence or cleanliness from. I’ll grant that Hammy isn’t as dumb as a sheep but I’ve yet to see any glimmer of problem solving from him, and he loves mud. He also seems to have no idea of the fate awaiting him in the fall.
My goats on the other hand are clearly intelligent, problem solving animals, the sheer number of ways they have managed to escape the pasture is evidence of that. They never go anywhere though just outside the pasture or back into the barn so I’m convinced they do it simply for fun. Now my goats are pets and therefore not destined to be dinner so I have no idea if they would figure it out if they were.
-Back on subject
I hate my stupid pet octopus. He can only solve my lame ass Rubik’s Magic. Do you remember the Rubics Magic? Its commercial jingle went something like this.
Oh Lord, help me to stop thinking about pigs.
Try eating one. Tastes terrible, doesn’t it? Now you know why they eat all that garbage.
There pet pig owners that swear that the pigs are far, far easier to train than dogs.
The other consideration, Noadi, is that you said you have A pig? Solitude is lulling. Piggy might be more inclined to do stuff if he had a companion, who knows?
Btw, if an octopus solves a cube, I’m going to eat one for dinner.
OR! Maybe your pig knows he’s bound for bacon, so maybe he’s suffering from chronic depression! Who knows?
When I clicked the link at the bottom for “further information”, it gave me a list of articles from the paper, the first of which was cooking octopus. Sigh.
Judging by the video PZ linked a couple months back of the Octopus destroying a little jar to get the food inside, I’d wager the Octopus will opt for the break-apart method. We may have to wait a while to see if he can successfully put it back together.
In other oddly related news, my mother told me yesterday that my brothers and their friends are doing a series of short youtube videos, and when I watched one I discovered that one of my brothers is a Rubik’s Cube whiz. He took a fairly scrambled one and fixed it in about a minute and a half. I didn’t even know they were popular again.
But Inky, I don’t think a Rubiks Cube would taste very nice. ;)
Also, I’m not sure if you are talking about pigs or goats, llewelly, but they both can be quite tasty. BBQ goat and homebrewed porter make a very nice Sunday afternoon.
Oh, you can tell those too. After awhile the plastic become loose and you end up with a rattling Rubik’s.
Gasp! Blasphemer! There is nothing so delectable as barbequed goat, and once you’ve staved off a cold with a little goat neck soup you’ll never go back to chicken noodle again.
The woman who said pigs are as smart as chimps, demonstrated this by having her pig play the piano. Well, she actually held a piece of food in front of the pigs face and led until it had its front feet were on a keyboard. To get the pig to play she lifted the food just out of the pigs reach. As the pig reared up over and over again in an attempt to get the food, its feet would inevitably land on the keyboard. Genius! I heard this is exactly the way Mozart got his start.
Jose@8
The Pig
In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn’t read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
He simply couldn’t puzzle out
What LIFE was really all about.
What was the reason for his birth?
Why was he placed upon this earth?
His giant brain went round and round.
Alas, no answer could be found.
Till suddenly one wondrous night.
All in a flash he saw the light.
He jumped up like a ballet dancer
And yelled, “By gum, I’ve got the answer!”
“They want my bacon slice by slice
“To sell at a tremendous price!
“They want my tender juicy chops
“To put in all the butcher’s shops!
“They want my pork to make a roast
“And that’s the part’ll cost the most!
“They want my sausages in strings!
“They even want my chitterlings!
“The butcher’s shop! The carving knife!
“That is the reason for my life!”
Such thoughts as these are not designed
To give a pig great piece of mind.
Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,
A pail of pigswill in his hand,
And piggy with a mighty roar,
Bashes the farmer to the floor…
Now comes the rather grizzly bit
So let’s not make too much of it,
Except that you must understand
That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,
He ate him up from head to toe,
Chewing the pieces nice and slow.
It took an hour to reach the feet,
Because there was so much to eat,
And when he finished, Pig, of course,
Felt absolutely no remorse.
Slowly he scratched his brainy head
And with a little smile he said,
“I had a fairly powerful hunch
“That he might have me for his lunch.
“And so, because I feared the worst,
“I thought I’d better eat him first.”
Roald Dahl
Or worse … the octupuses could build travel machines and come on land to EXTERMINATE ALL HUMANS!
Heh, they gave rakes to rats, well, to degus, with the obvious intent to deprive latinos gardeners of their meager jobs.
I saw this headline, and I’m glad that you’re apparently free on bail already:
man in court over octopus porn pictures
Handing octopuses Rubik’s cube, eh?
Wouldn’t octopuses have a evolsolutionary advantage over humans in solving the puzzle, being eight legged creatures solving a six sided creation?
Although I’d be mighty impressed with an octopus’ being able to solve the cube, I’d think it would be of even greater benefit to humankind if octopuses could figure out how to reset digital watches–and that skill would be even more impressive if they could do so without having to read the instruction booklet, and if they could find said instruction booklet without an hour’s long search.
It’s all Teh Interwebs:
Man’s ‘sex with octopus’ images
Larry said:
octopuses or (pedantically) octopodes, it’s a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous not a second declension Latin word.
[Grammar nazi hat off]
“People called Romane go the house?!…”
I’ve never heard the “downloaded in bulk along with my octoporn” excuse. That even beats “I was doing research for my book”. (also known as the Pete Townshend)
Damn! I always get those second declension Latin words mixed up.
What a missed opportunity. Someone really should make a cube which somehow dispenses food… more of a puzzle box I suppose. My mind has been on this general topic for a bit, since I’ve been trying to come up with more interesting ways to ‘hide’ my cat’s food (just hiding it doesn’t provide much entertainment anymore and she has figured out how to open a flip top box very reliably.) I really should hack together an electronic/robotic setup with a switch which opens a container… then move the switch and box to different locations, put in a time delay, add more switches and a visual feedback panel, make getting the proper sequence of switches required, ect ect.
Anyways, we really need to breed / engineer some extra lifespan into cephalopods.
Remember Churchill on animals: “Cats look down on us, dogs look up tp us, but pigs – they treat us as equals!”
No references yet to the non-Euclidean geometry of Lovecraft?
The X-Prize Foundation needs to offer a prize for teaching a cephalopod how to use a tool.
Octoporn? In (I think) the thirties, censors ordered the producers of a film on the history of life to remove shots of paramecia conjugating.
Let me tell you, being L3-handed (armed?, tentacled?) really makes it a bear to use scissors (unless you buy some from The L3 Store.)
Also Inky @ #23, “Btw, if an octopus solves a cube, I’m going to eat one for dinner.”
You’ll be pooping colored plastic bits for days.
Soon they’ll be bored with the cubes and clamoring for Rubik’s Tesseracts.
And you know how those ‘podes can clamor!
Had I had some Coffee, it would be all over everything @45. L O L
PZ:
Off topic, but would you mind (in your so plentiful free time ;-) ) doing a post or few on the software and methods you use in your research? I’m more interested in the software part as my school doesn’t have any bioinformatics or similar stuff yet, but I figure the methods would be cool as well.
Cheers
…and only now do I see amstrad’s link in #4 for an actual (well, virtual) Rubik’s Tesseract!
. . . well that and aren’t they partially colorblind?
OT-Tonight on AC 360 …”TONIGHT: Atheist soldier’s suit
A soldier’s life threatened, his career ruined. He says it’s because he’s an atheist. Is the military now a Christian organization? Tonight, 10 ET”
P.S. Souls of the animal kingdom come to me – Eagle, Fox, Bottlenose dolphin, OCTOPUS, House cat! :-)
Forget the Rubik’s Cube. I think they should give the octopodes EtchASketches and see how many of them render likenesses of PZ.
In agreement with comment #18. Once the octopus changes color to match the cube, it will consider the problem to be solved. It is only we humans with our peculiar chordate minds that think that it is necessary for every side to be a monocolor.
Re: #13
Shoulda left them on that island.
While I don’t mind the general jocularity of this thread, I would remind some of you to review this site which details the octopodean threat we will all soon be forced to face.
For the sake of pedantry, I have to say that when they say “Octopuses belong to the same family as slugs and snails,” their casual use of the word “family” bothers me. They don’t have to use the word “phylum” or say “they are part of such and such a clade separate from x, y and z”,, since those terms might be unfamiliar to many readers, but they could have chosen something better. E.g. “Octopuses are relatives of slugs and snails,” or better yet, they could have left that sentence out altogether and commented on the intelligence of octopuses relative to invertebrates in general.
Octopus, goat, pig… all delicious. Now I wonder what a stew featuring all three would taste like- I am picturing it as being a lot like a traditional Dominican sancocho.
The first mistake was leaving the cutting torch by the octopus tank…
Maybe once an octupus learns to solve the Rubic’s Cube, it will learn to design better ethological experiments. I mean holy cow, how much can we anthropomorphize? An octopus does exactly what it evolve to do: contribute to the ecosystem around it, and do octopus-type things. Who gives a rat’s behind if it can solve a human puzzle?
Sadly we most likely won’t show respect towards “dumb” animals, like snails, even though they are just doing what they evolved to do. Even more disturbing is that some octopus experiments involve taking them right from the ocean and / or breeding them and dooming them to a life of captivity – which is unacceptable.
Although it would be cool to deep-sea dive and discover that an octopus and his mermaid friends in a game of chess!
their casual use of the word “family” bothers me.
not just casual, but wrong.
I can see why it would bother anyone.
You’re right to call them on it. If they wish to use a casual term, they should use one that doesn’t already have a scientific usage that is incorrectly applied here.
yeah, I agree that saying the three groups are “related” would have been far better.
pelecypods, gastropods, and cephalopods are of course different families, for those confused about the issue.
they are related under the phylum Mollusca.
just to compare, we belong to the phyllum chordata, which includes a rather diverse bunch of orders and families, to be sure.
a cephalopod is not really a snail with 8 arms, any more than we are fish with legs and lungs*.
*to avoid confusion, I’ll avoid references to descendants of Dagon ;)
Even more disturbing is that some octopus experiments involve taking them right from the ocean and / or breeding them and dooming them to a life of captivity – which is unacceptable.
why?
I’ve kept fish in captivity for years. Provided with good habitat and ample food, they behave much as their “wild” counterparts do, including breeding.
sorry, but for some things, there simply is no substitute for being able to study animals under controlled conditions.
…Who gives a rat’s behind if it can solve a human puzzle?
understanding the visual-spatial abilites of any given critter tells us a lot about how it can, or could, interact with its environment.
always useful information for species management, if you simply are uncurious at all as to how any particular species processes information.
for those who ARE interested in how other species process information, it can give us good comparative data to help us understand how WE process information.
or did you somehow think we understand all there is to know already about how humans themselves process information?
Wow, I never new that “Octopuses belong to the same family as slugs and snails, but scientists believe they are far more intelligent than their relatives.”
Wow, I never new that “Octopuses belong to the same family as slugs and snails
please tell me you were trying to provide an example of how someone would confuse the casual usage of “family”, just as was derided by myself and Escuerd?
If not, let me repeat myself:
they don’t belong to the same family (octopuses are cephalopods, and “snails” are gastropods).
they do however, belong to the same phylum (molluscs).
Now wait a minute! How the devil do you determine ‘handedness’ in a creature that’s got EIGHT bloody hands?!?!?!?
Are there words to describe the condition of having the #3 arm dominant over the #7 one?
Dr. PZ, what is the correct word for the plural of octopus? I heard it was Octi, but that was years ago, in a S-F novel that I can’t remember the name of now…
For those commenting on pigs, are you talking about wild pigs, domesticated pigs bred as pets, or farm-type hogs? That might make a difference.
Dr. PZ, what is the correct word for the plural of octopus? I heard it was Octi, but that was years ago, in a S-F novel that I can’t remember the name of now…
the answer is:
it depends on who you ask, and whether you are speaking about a group of the same kind, or a collection of different kinds.
most biologists I know (including myself) consider the plural of a group of the same species to be the same as the singular:
one blue-ringed octopus, a group of blue-ringed octopus.
we add the suffix -es to denote description of a collection of different species:
one species of octopus, many different species of octopuses.
same is applicable to many other common names, for example, fish.
one fish of the same type, many fish of the same type.
one fish of one type, many fishes of different types.
I’m not a linguist, so never can recall what the proper terminology is for this form of the plural, but someone around here mentioned it a while back in another thread.
Hellraiser. Puzzlebox. Octopussys. Rubik’s Cube.
You see where this is heading??
You see where this is heading??
the only difference being tentacles with toothed-suckers instead of chains with hooks?
We have such sights to show you!
Pointless exuberant comment begin>>
Chirality matters biatches!
>>pointless exuberant comment end
Fools. Now Cthulhu will know we still inhabit the upper regions of Earth. How else would his subjects get these creations of Satan?
#67, cory
Cthulhu! Fthagn, Cthulhu! Ia, br’kek eish wmblah, nugga wugga xzxwz? Yarble gffuf ‘dominion’, znargle bffuf Rley’eh. Cthulhu, tik’ty-pu!
The starts are right!
Plural for octopus: octopoi, octopie, octupusen, octopii, octopusmey (klingon), octopoj (esparanto), and octoprim (elven) are all acceptable plurals of octopus, in my not so humble opinion.
I certainly use a variety of plural forms in my computer-code to add some colour of the dreary lives of the maintenance programmers. I’m a generous soul like that.
…and those are different Classes, to those still wed to the orthodoxy of the Linnean hierarchy.
Eh, that’s true for fish and fishes…and not much else. I don’t know any cephalopodologists, so I’ll grant you the usage for octopuses too. Nobody says “5 turtle” or “a group of mouse.”
Use of the singular for the plural is known as the “sportsmen’s plural” because it’s used mostly for animals people like to shoot and hook. “A brace of pheasant,” e.g.