@Ionus,
Ionus wrote:
We may not have to go to other worlds to find ‘alien’ intelligence. The humble octopus may be the most intelligent creature on the planet, cleverer than people. Give an octopus its favourite crustacean in a sealed screw lid glass jar and stand back. After a short time it will work out the principle of a thread and will unscrew the jar to get the tasty food. The next time it will unscrew the lid with lightning speed. I know of people who can’t open milk cartons the tenth time around.
Researches have come to work in the morning to find the octopus looking happy in its tank and all the other tanks empty of fish. They toyed with the idea of cats, rats and birds eating their experiments.
No one even suspected the octopus until this occurred several times and it was the only creature surviving these mafia style disappearances. Then the cameras were installed and it was caught on film. The octopus has got out of its tank, and taken the dangerous measure of crawling across the floor, climbing up into the other tanks and eating all the undergraduates’ hard work. Yet another example of complete disdain for undergraduates. Security cameras confirmed it was the eight-armed bandit.
But why go back to its own tank? Crawling around outside the water is a particular dangerous undertaking, one they do not do in the wild. Climbing up and down tables whilst risking a fall is also very dangerous. The tank where it had eaten the fish had hidey-holes and was perfectly comfortable if you like that sort of underwater thing. It was far safer to stay put in the ex-fish tank. A reason such as if it left then the fish would come back demands a high level of intelligence anyway, but it fails to justify the risk. Both tanks could be associated with food. Why did it go back? It would have watched the fish being fed. Did it think it was eating someone else’s dinner and was lying by hiding the evidence or some equally diabolical intelligent reason?
I wonder how big he is and how much he weighs.
He seems to like seafood; I wonder if he 'll be interested in turkey for Thanksgiving.
(Who knows? Maybe he is grateful.)
I wonder whether he just feels at home in his own tank
and that he returns out of habit n nostalgia?
Maybe we can communicate with him with a code based on numbers.
He is not likely to know the Morse Code.
I 'd love to know his opinions.
Have any efforts been made to communicate with him ?
Is he able to breathe? or does he just hold his breath
until he gets back under water? Do we know how long
he is able to live out of his own element?
Does he have preferences in music?
I wonder if he is a Republican or a Democrat.
I bet that he is a libertarian or he might be an anarchist.
Its hard to conceive of how alien life on other planets
coud be more different than he is, relative to humans.
David
