"An intelligent race of octopods is certainly a possibility"

[LawBeefaroni]

NY Post

Kaku takes this thought experiment back to Earth. The one Earth-bound underwater animal that nearly fits all the above criteria — stereo vision, graspable appendages — is the octopus, he writes. The cephalopod, which has survived on Earth for at least 165 million years, only lacks language.

On a different planet, however, cephalopods could easily develop language — in fact, if conditions changed drastically on Earth, Kaku says it could even happen here, too.

“On a distant planet under different conditions, one can imagine that an octopus-like creature could develop a language of chirps and whistles so it could hunt in packs,” Kaku writes. “One could even imagine that at some point in the distant future, evolutionary pressures on Earth could force the octopus to develop intelligence. So an intelligent race of octopods is certainly a possibility.”

So that’s what we can expect? An intelligent race of octopods, like in the movie “Arrival”?

Shudder.

Shudder? Applause!

[Punisher]

Is this where we, in fact, welcome our New Octopod Overlords?

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

In a cavernous laboratory [in Woods Hole, Mass.], scientists are raising thousands of octopuses, cuttlefish and their kin as part of the Cephalopod Program, a three-year-old initiative to transform these sea creatures into the next lab animals. Cephalopods ooze scientific appeal: They have complex bodies, unusual genetics, impressive spatial skills and intelligent minds. Yet the animals can be reluctant to breed, hard to raise and difficult to keep from escaping their tanks. Few laboratory protocols — and, in the United States, no legal regulations — offer guidance.
...
“They know when you’re not looking at them anymore,” said Bret Grasse, who manages the cephalopods at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Something once splashed Grasse when, near a tank of cuttlefish, he turned to talk to a colleague. He whirled around to catch the culprit. Nothing was out of place; the animals floated near the bottom of their tank. He resumed the conversation and was splashed again. Grasse set his phone to take mirror-mode video and, on the screen, watched the animals over his shoulder. Several cuttlefish rose to the top of the water and began squirting at the back of his head. “And as soon as you turn around they go right down to the bottom.”
...
California two-spot octopuses are normally solitary, but when they are dosed with psychoactive drug commonly called ecstasy, they appear to be more social. That’s what Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist Gul Dolen and Eric Edsinger, a cephalopod scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, described in 2018 after they bathed five octopuses’ gills in liquid MDMA. The animals, which typically avoid other octopuses, seemed to relax while drugged. They swam much closer to tank-mates, and even began to touch. This result, the authors concluded, suggests that octopuses have molecules in their brain cells similar to our serotonin receptors.
...
Neither the Animal Welfare Act nor the National Research Council’s guide to lab animals covers invertebrates. At the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, cephalopods are treated under protocols developed for mice. Its animal ethics committee is developing specific rules for cephalopods, Dolen said.

“I’ve heard, on the ground, that some people are also drawn to using them specifically because there is no regulation,” said Joanna Makowska, a scientific adviser to the Animal Welfare Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for the three Rs. She was concerned that “no validated protocols” exist for cephalopod surgery, anesthesia or euthanasia. “We just don’t know enough about them.”

A 2018 study suggests that a magnesium chloride bath may be a good way to anesthetize an octopus. The Marine Biological Laboratory has developed protocols for cephalopod anesthesia, Rosenthal said. “But it’s an open question, and a difficult one. We don’t know how they sense nociception.” (The word “nociception” means painful feelings).

[coopasonic]

...and now I am feeling bad for them. More than that though, I am starting to be scared. They are intelligent and we are abusive to them... I think I have seen this episode of Doctor Who and I don't like how it turns out.

[LawBeefaroni]

Just keep the MDMA coming, doc.

[hitbyambulance]

WaPo

“I’ve heard, on the ground, that some people are also drawn to using them specifically because there is no regulation,”

chilling. some people really are evil.