FAQ
A contribution of The Cephalopod Page
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On Wed, 5 Feb. 1997, Alexander Feinman wrote: I was reading your Cephalopod page (great! I was just starting to think about an octopus as a pet, and your page had just the sort of info I was looking for...) and noticed a bit of uncertainty in some of the FAQ discussion that I might be able to clear up. Katz had written in asking about octopus learning, and was wondering about learning by demonstration. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I was watching another PBS program (I *believe* it was Scientific American Frontiers, a program on learning and cognition in general), in which they demonstrated an experiment set up as follows: There were two small octopods (I believe they were vulgaris, judging from your pictures), in separate tanks sharing a common glass wall, so that they could observe each other. One of the octopods, they said, didn't know how to extract a crab from a bottle closed by a rubber plug; the other did. They demonstrated that one had solved the problem of popping the cork, and the other hadn't. Anyway, they let the unlearned one watch the learned one; after that, it was able to perform the same trick, when given a similar bottle. This is about the time I decided I ought to have an octopus as a pet -- I'm a grad student in Artificial Intelligence, and here was an example of Real Intelligence in an unexpected place! Update: my other hand has been surfing while I wrote this, and I've succeeded in dredging up a reference for the Frontiers program. It was called 'Creatures of the Deep', episode 604 -- you can read a full transcript of the program at: http://www.pbs.org/saf/600guide/604guide/604transcript.html if you skip down to the section marked 'Spineless but Smart', you'll see their (much clearer) explanation of the experiment. Anyway, I hope this clears things up... oh, and by the way, you have reinforced once again my belief that info on *everything* is available on the web! :-) Alex Feinman afeinman@cs.brandeis.edu |
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| Dear Alex,
Well, that seems pretty convincing! However, as a scientist I have to be conservative. Before making any conclusions I would want to see the experiment replicated with several octopuses. I would also want to see some stats and I would need to be convinced that the octopuses weren't cuing off the scientists (I can't see how they could in this case) before I was sold. I am also a bit jaded when it comes to "evidence" from the media; animals are often manipulated to get the 'story' at the expense of the truth. I hope Dr. Fiorito continues with his interesting work - it certainly seems like he is on to something. Pretty amazing, especially from a non social creature! Dr. James Wood |