Called home, finally » « Another lecture online

I’d better mention this again

Yes! I’ve seen the octopuses using coconut shells, and it’s very, very cool. Here’s the video:

(This is one of the dilemmas of having a popular blog. I just checked my inbox, and I’ve been getting notifications about this observation at the rate of about 20 per hour since yesterday. Thanks everyone, I really appreciate it, and you should feel free to send me links to appropriate material — but I may have to repost stuff two or three times to make sure everyone notices that I caught on to the really hot topics of the day.)

Called home, finally » « Another lecture online

Comments

  2. artconserv says

    This was a wonderful video–I loved how the octopus was walking while hanging onto that coconut as hard as it could. Thank you for posting this.

  3. cervantes says

    I’d be a lot more impressed if it used a hammer and nails to construct a really big house out of multiple coconut shells.

  4. Nakarti says

    Makes you take another wonder at the monster octopi in old movies: they’re clearly smart enough to do all that, as long as they manage to get big enough.

  5. Janine, She Wolf Of Pharyngula, OM says

    Dammit, cervantes, you have dredged up memories of listening to Rush Limbaugh in the early nineties. He made the argument that dolphins and porpoises could not be that smart because they have not built cities at the bottom the sea.

  7. cervantes says

    Forget about cetaceans, Rush obviously doesn’t know about Sponge Bob and Patrick the sea star.

  8. https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawl3TpOVyxxwCT5cVU3M80c_cpxoMBZmiOQ says

    Or you could set up a public google wave for others to suggest stuff to you.

  10. CanonicalKoi says

    We may never know how many swallows it takes to move a coconut, but at least we know how many octopuses.

    I especially liked his/her final reaction to the camera. Annoyance? Frustration? Just wanting to (finally!) have a little privacy? It’s so easy to anthropomorphize this.

  11. recovering catholic says

    Why does this remind me of the walking bathtub that the evil little kids used to kidnap Santa (and the Easter Bunny) in The Nightmare Before Christmas?

  12. nejishiki says

    You’re a lot more patient than I would be. If I were getting spammed with emails telling me to go see a video that was already prominently featured on my page, my response would be something like “you people need to LURK FUCKING MORE.”

  14. Zeno says

    I would like to point out that I did not send an e-mail to PZ about this video. (I specialize in more obscure items.)

  15. abb3w says

    Nakarti: Makes you take another wonder at the monster octopi in old movies: they’re clearly smart enough to do all that, as long as they manage to get big enough.

    And the real reason they’re attacking the submarine is they think it’s a really big coconut shell, and they want it!

  16. SC OM says

    The cameraman then went online to see if people were enjoying the video. Surfing, he came across a poll on whether “In God We Trust” should be removed from the currency. Just as he was casting the 11-millionth vote, a flood hit. When the rescue workers came to tell him to evacuate, he replied “Don’t worry about me. I have faith that God will save me.” Unable to change his mind, they drove on without him…

  18. PZ Myers says

    I must emphasize that I am NOT complaining about lots of people sending me email notices about this. It’s good stuff. I’d rather an excess than that everyone sits and assumes someone else sent it, so no one does.

  19. littlejohn says

    On the off chance this post makes it (I’m an old guy who doesn’t know how to register or whatever it is), Keith Olbermann played this clip last night.
    Someone mentioned this was an example of “tool-using” by the octopus, which would suggest hermit crabs have been using “tools” forever. It seems to me it doesn’t qualify as a tool unless the critter modified it in some deliberate way, like chimps stripping leaves off twigs to hunt termites.
    Also, Olbermann pointed out that somewhere a mermaid is missing her bathing suit.

  20. says

    Proof that coconut shells were designed by God so that they fit perfectly under and over an octopus.

    What more proof of Him do you people need?

  24. Lynna, OM says

    I was going to send PZ an annoying email about the octopus/coconut miracle, but then I found out that the octopus was not mormon.

  25. Sven DiMilo says

    It seems to me it doesn’t qualify as a tool unless the critter modified it in some deliberate way, like chimps stripping leaves off twigs to hunt termites.

    Behavioral-biology types often parse fine lines between goal-directed object use, tool use, tool modification, tool making, etc.

  26. John Emerson says

    Our nearest common ancestor to the octopus is the urbilaterian, which is hypothesized to have existed (no fossil evidence) at least 555 million years ago. So apparently the tool-using gene is present pretty much everywhere, but is not expressed in clams and rotifers.

  28. Sven DiMilo says

    apparently the tool-using gene is present pretty much everywhere, but is not expressed in clams and rotifers

    phylogenetic bracketing ftw

  29. Glen Davidson says

    I’d rather an excess than that everyone sits and assumes someone else sent it, so no one does.

    Well you know, PZ, there is this poll about whether or not “In God we trust” should be on our coins…

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

  31. Strider says

    Wasn’t this footage shown WAY back in Attenborough’s “Trials of Life” program? I would swear I’ve seen it before relatively long ago.

  33. amphiox says

    #3:

    I’d be a lot more impressed if it used a hammer and nails to construct a really big house out of multiple coconut shells.

    Give ’em time. . . .

    #5:

    He made the argument that dolphins and porpoises could not be that smart because they have not built cities at the bottom the sea.

    Give ’em time. . . . (And are we really, absolutely certain they haven’t already? :-))

    #19:

    It seems to me it doesn’t qualify as a tool unless the critter modified it in some deliberate way, like chimps stripping leaves off twigs to hunt termites.

    To simplify a complex issue, modifying the object would constitute tool-making, but not necessary for tool using. Then there’s the issue of whether the behavior is learned (indicating cognitive flexibility) or innate/preprogrammed.

    But I would say that the use of two coconut shells counts as modification, particularly when you wouldn’t expect any octopus to have had much chance to get prior experience with whole coconuts in the original setting, attached to the tree.

  35. says

    How about a “submit link to PZ” Web form/script/database? You wouldn’t have all these emails clogging your inbox, and it could easily sort submissions by popularity. If you don’t feel like writing it yourself, there are plenty of LAMP nerds here who would gladly set this up for you, myself included.

  36. Don says

    When it paints it magnolia, adds laminate flooring and a patio and sells it on for a quick profit, then I’ll be impressed.

  37. Planecrash says

    Just create a filter/rule in your email client that searches for the URL of the video, or some other common element, like “octopus” or “coconut”, and send these messages to your trash.

  38. Bob Williams says

    Not only did the octopus transport a coconut halve, he transported it to another coconut halve, and joined the two, fitting the smaller inside the larger. Navigation, memory, purpose? Seems to be a lot here.

  39. Lorne says

    So we now know the truth behind how coconut shells go to King Author and Knights of the Round Table.

  45. Sili says

    May I make a (socialist) suggestion?

    Anyone who emails you about something prominently displayed on your blog*, has to go to Donors Choose and make a donation as penance.

    *Has anyone ever actually emailed you one of your own posts, asking if you’ve seen this?

    PS: The plural of “octopus” is “blæksprutter” (quite conveniently works for “squid”, too).

  46. John Emerson says

    Octopus is a Latinized Greek word coined by scientists. “Octopuses” is the regular English plural. “Octopi” is by analogy to rhinoceri, but it’s grammatically wrong for Greek. Octopodes is a good Greek plural if you want to use it, though octopus should be “oktopous” or thereabouts.

    IIRC it’s even more complicated than that, but that’s what I remember.

  48. Natasha Yar-Routh says

    It’s coconuts now but wait until the little eight armed thieves start grabbing tools from sea side construction sites. Before you no it death rays and walking crab tanks to overrun the world.

  51. SEF says

    The word “octopus” isn’t even in my 1867 English dictionary. It only has “octopod”. There’s no “okto…” at all.

  54. Peter G. says

    Isn’t science wonderful. At last the age old question about the presence of coconuts in medieval England is answered. Neither European nor African swallows were involved. The coconuts were hurled onto the beaches by octopuses who had outgrown them. That settles that.

  55. Sarah says

    I was amused by the way the octopus checked out the camera at the end of the video–lots of opportunity for anthropomorphic comments to be injected here.

  56. blf says

    The octopus did not help the coconut migrate. The octopus operated the fecking big outboard motor that migrated the island to Coconut Central where they are cheap and easily found.

  57. Sven DiMilo says

    But “octopodes” would translate as “eight feet,” whereas what we wish to express is “eight-footed animals.”

  60. Nusubito says

    What evolution took away over millions of years, intelligence brought back over the course of a lifetime. Pretty cool, I think. Though I wonder if one octopus learned that trick a long time ago and transmitted it through ‘culture’, or if they each figure it out independently.

  63. Richard Eis says

    I think its more about super intelligent coconut trees cruelly using humans and octopodes just to have their babies go swimming in style.

    I mean who wouldn’t want to ride the latest in octopode transportation around the bottom of the ocean.

  64. puseaus says

    Any chance we could get these guys (the octopus family) to wear sweaters with a similar message.

  66. littlejohn says

    Since we know for certain that mermaids split coconuts in half to make bikini tops, doesn’t that qualify as non-human use of tools?

  69. And-U-Say says

    I for one welcome our octipode overlords.

    Tool making? I don’t think the item needs to be modified to be called a tool. Pick up the femur of a dead gazelle and you have a tool right there, fit to eventually allow you to build a space station.

    An octopus seems so intelligent sometimes (perhaps its my imagination) that I have to wonder. If we screw up, maybe these guys will be the next in line to be the intelligent species on earth. Then they will have to deal with the creationists.

  70. https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawncr0FDc8gdl7yJBz0SJ15D0etcTIOtL0s says

    Linksnip from #62: Theres-probably-no-God-coming-to-a-bus-near-you/

    These days, there’s probably no bus coming either.

    Somebody somewhere compared this octococonuttiness to using an umbrella rather than, hermit-crabwise, moving into a shell and staying there; the coconut shells are useless until flipped over and ducked* under, as a furled umbrella is not good for its avowed purpose.

    I suspect that the “tool-using vs not-really” splintering is, like the related “only-humans-can-whatever” argument, a mug’s game. Fortunately, I don’t have to opine on the divide. I just get to re-run those clips and giggle helplessly. And read The Cuttlefish’s responses, ditto. Yay!

    Ron Sullivan

    *no matter how much the duck weighs

  71. Mr T says

    Is the plural of mongoose “polygoose”?

    That’s a good question, ‘Tis Himself.

    What about all of these???!!!1!1!?

    monarch butterfly – polyarch butterfly
    Monday – Polyday
    money – polyey
    Mongolian – Polygolian
    Mongoloid – Polygoloid
    monk – polyk
    monkey – polykey
    monsignor – polysignor
    monsoon – polysoon
    monster – polyster
    montage – polytage
    month – polyth

  72. hackerguitar says

    I wonder what the weight of the coconut shell is versus the body weight of the octopus? Even allowing for buoyancy, it suggests that our cephalopod overlords are prodigiously strong for their size.

    SO.COOL.

  73. Gregory Greenwood says

    Now remember everyone, when our Lord Cthulhu awakens from his sleep of ages we the faithful must house him in a giant, genetically engineered coconut.

    It is obvious that this noble octopus, being an entity of clearly superior intellect to we vertebrates, was sent as a prophet to show us the accomodation preference of our tentacled overlord.

    What? It is no more crazy than the stuff the Xians come out with everyday.

    Kneel before the tentacled chosen of Cthulhu lest we know thee for a heretic!

  74. mythusmage says

    I recall video of octopodes using amphora for shelter in the Mediterranean. Anybody else?

  76. https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawncr0FDc8gdl7yJBz0SJ15D0etcTIOtL0s says

    Did y’all see the second link Cuttlefish embedded? Forget tools; it’s a vehicle!

    Ron Sullivan

  78. Mark says

    I may have crossed some sort of line…I almost turned into a spittle-blasting Bill Donohue clone upon hearing some Weather Channel flunky describe the coconut-wielding octopus of the now viral (surely thanks to Pharyngulites) video refer to our eight-limbed friend as a “crustacean”!!!!!

    This means I must surely have fallen prey to the evil atheist spell (utterly unlike the mindless groupies for Jesus, who have, we all know, the most excellent reasons for believing as they do).

  79. says

    Well it seems pretty clear that since the octopus fits so perfectly inside the coconut, it’s impossible to doubt that coconuts were intelligently designed by a benign deity who made coconuts for octopuses to use for their protection. And it only further makes sense to infer that at one point in time that same God must have wanted to his octopus creations to know him and so incarnated himself in the form of an octopus who was miraculously both fully God and fully octopus.

  80. Ragutis says

    Posted by: Strider | December 15, 2009 1:23 PM

    Wasn’t this footage shown WAY back in Attenborough’s “Trials of Life” program? I would swear I’ve seen it before relatively long ago.

    Not sure if it was Sir David, but I remember seeing something similar as well. IIRC, it was the same area, but the observed octopus was using a bottle for a hideout. Didn’t lug it about, however. Might have been a NOVA special.

    I’d be interested in how common this coconut thing is/becomes. We know Octopods have great problem-solving skills, but are they figuring this out on their own, or are individuals copying another octopus’ good idea that they witnessed?

    Totally off-topic, but WTF: Does anyone here remember a kid’s/YA book about a boy that brings home a Mermaid’s Purse and hatches a shark at home, which then proceeds to fly? For the life of me I can’t find or remember the title.

  81. Anti-theist says

    I am not a sci nerd like the majority who post here. However, that is really F’N awesome. Way cool!

    I guess I am a nerd after all.

  82. Citizen of the Cosmos says

    I heard this is the first case of an invertebrate using tools, is that true?

    That video was so cool.

  84. eli says

    I absolutely love octopus and not only because P.Z. love them ;).They are one of the most mesmerizing creatures on the planet.I even had the pleasure to see one close and personal when I was swimming at Mediterranean sea with only goggles.It was so little and cute.Actually because of him I went scuba diving.
    By the way I am pretty sure I have stumbled upon video like this before.Sadly I can’t remember where.
    And I am not surprised that octopuses are using coconut shells – after all they are very intelligent creatures.

  86. says

    A friend and I just watched this. We both had the same thought: West Virginia mobile homes (truth in blogging: I used to live in WV.

    I think this may argue against octopi intelligence if, rather than build cities, they live in mobile home parks. Then again, there aren’t nearly as many tornadoes as there are in, say, Kansas, right?

  87. mikeprocario.myopenid.com says

    I first saw this link in Uncertain Principles, http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2009/12/links_for_2009-12-16.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2Funcertainprinciples+%28Uncertain+Principles%29. I thought this should have been on Pharyngula. I came and found it was already posted, so I did not need to email it to PZ.

    However, you have not posted the great Onion story on how the Sumerians reacted when God created the earth.
    http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sumerians_look_on_in_confusion_as

  88. Strider says

    @Ragutis
    That’s SO funny you mentioned that because I have very fond memories of the book in question; I read it in grade school. If I recall correctly it’s called “The Shark In Charlie’s Window”.

  90. mythusmage says

    #87

    I got this reaction from the Great Dragon Abzu (aka Tiamat, aka Leviathan, aka The Serpent etc.) regarding the Onion’s story concerning God’s creation of the Heavens and the Earth when both already existed. You’ll note that Abzu was not happy with his former husband*

    *N.B.: Abzu is what you’d call gender flexible.

  91. Calilasseia says

    For those who are interested, the full scientific paper is available as a free download, courtesy of here. That page has links to the two Quicktime movies toward the bottom, and a link to the downloadable PDF of the scientific paper near the to right hand corner. Don’t all kill me in the stampede now! :)

  93. Peter Magellan says

    So how is it that an octopus carrying a coconut shell is a tool-using invertebrate, whereas a hermit crab carrying a conch shell isn’t? Just wondering…

    But apart from that, agreed – awesome! And fun.

  94. hades says

    just to point out no necessarily sign of intelligence. Cadis flies and crabs do similar things and in some ways more complex and theyn are evolved behaviours. Not cognitively aquired.