I just saw a fossil of a 294 million year old octopus. It was around before the first mammal, before the first turtle, before the first pterosaur, before the first dinosaur.

An octopus is exceedingly intelligent. They have been known to outsmart humans. In one recorded instance climbing out of its fish tank overnight to feast on fish in another tank and returning to its own tank before morning. And there are plenty of other examples of octopus intelligence.

An octopus is dextrous. It has the arms, grip and musculature to operate for instance a spear gun or a fishing line using a fishhook made of shell. It had plenty of material available for building things, both undersea, and floating and on the coast.

So the paradox is this. Given the intelligence, dextrousness of the octopus. Why didn’t it develop a civilization in the 294 million years it had available?

Or did it?

mollwollfumble said:

I just saw a fossil of a 294 million year old octopus. It was around before the first mammal, before the first turtle, before the first pterosaur, before the first dinosaur.

An octopus is exceedingly intelligent. They have been known to outsmart humans. In one recorded instance climbing out of its fish tank overnight to feast on fish in another tank and returning to its own tank before morning. And there are plenty of other examples of octopus intelligence.

An octopus is dextrous. It has the arms, grip and musculature to operate for instance a spear gun or a fishing line using a fishhook made of shell. It had plenty of material available for building things, both undersea, and floating and on the coast.

So the paradox is this. Given the intelligence, dextrousness of the octopus. Why didn’t it develop a civilization in the 294 million years it had available?

Or did it?

How do we know? Did an octupus have a one nighter with an ape?

Likely the inability to make fire, and therefore metals.

However, they could have gone from hunter gatherer to basic farming, but didn’t because there was no way to keep out other predators in a 3D environment. Fences don’t work when you can swim over them.

I dunno. Good question.

A few points:

I’m not convinced that octopuses have a similar level of intelligence to humans. Being inquisitive and deciding to go for a little exploration, then going back home may be pretty clever, but it’s a different sort of clever to that needed for language and design of complex tools.

Even if they are human-level clever, we don’t know when that evolved. It might have been 50 years ago or so.

Using fire was a significant part of human development, and not having fire available would be a significant block to developing any sort of technology.

mollwollfumble said:

I just saw a fossil of a 294 million year old octopus. It was around before the first mammal, before the first turtle, before the first pterosaur, before the first dinosaur.

An octopus is exceedingly intelligent. They have been known to outsmart humans. In one recorded instance climbing out of its fish tank overnight to feast on fish in another tank and returning to its own tank before morning. And there are plenty of other examples of octopus intelligence.

An octopus is dextrous. It has the arms, grip and musculature to operate for instance a spear gun or a fishing line using a fishhook made of shell. It had plenty of material available for building things, both undersea, and floating and on the coast.

So the paradox is this. Given the intelligence, dextrousness of the octopus. Why didn’t it develop a civilization in the 294 million years it had available?

Or did it?

A few random thoughts:

A) Although there were broadly octopus-looking things that existed previously, octopuses arose around 170 million years ago.

B) Maybe doing so wouldn’t have improved its survival chances.

C) We don’t really know when the octopus become intelligent. Maybe it was recent. Mammalia (which has the same taxonomic rank as Oktopoda: an order) has been around about the same length of time as Oktopoda but it took a very long time before a technological species arose: it basically just happened yesterday. The octopus might be as smart and dextrous as a chimp but the chimp hasn’t build a rocket… yet.

The most obvious thing why the octopus has not evolved intellectually to a similar extent as ourselves, is they simply do not live long enough to acquire an extensive memory bank on which to build.

>>Octopuses have a relatively short lifespan; some species live for as little as six months. The Giant Pacific octopus, one of the two largest species of octopus, may live for as much as five years. Octopus lifespan is limited by reproduction. For most octopuses the last stage of their life is called senescence. It is the breakdown of cellular function without repair or replacement. For males, this typically begins after mating. Senescence may last from weeks to a few months, at most. For females, it begins when they lay a clutch of eggs. Females will spend all their time aerating and protecting their eggs until they are ready to hatch. During senescence, an octopus does not feed and quickly weakens. Lesions begin to form and the octopus literally degenerates. Unable to defend themselves, octopuses often fall prey to predators. The larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO) is an exception, as it can reproduce repeatedly over a life of around two years.

Octopus reproductive organs mature due to the hormonal influence of the optic gland but result in the inactivation of their digestive glands. Unable to feed, the octopus typically dies of starvation. Experimental removal of both optic glands after spawning was found to result in the cessation of broodiness, the resumption of feeding, increased growth, and greatly extended lifespans. It has been proposed that the naturally short lifespan may be functional to prevent rapid overpopulation.<<

Wiki

PermeateFree said:

The most obvious thing why the octopus has not evolved intellectually to a similar extent as ourselves, is they simply do not live long enough to acquire an extensive memory bank on which to build.

>>Octopuses have a relatively short lifespan; some species live for as little as six months. The Giant Pacific octopus, one of the two largest species of octopus, may live for as much as five years. Octopus lifespan is limited by reproduction. For most octopuses the last stage of their life is called senescence. It is the breakdown of cellular function without repair or replacement. For males, this typically begins after mating. Senescence may last from weeks to a few months, at most. For females, it begins when they lay a clutch of eggs. Females will spend all their time aerating and protecting their eggs until they are ready to hatch. During senescence, an octopus does not feed and quickly weakens. Lesions begin to form and the octopus literally degenerates. Unable to defend themselves, octopuses often fall prey to predators. The larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO) is an exception, as it can reproduce repeatedly over a life of around two years.

Octopus reproductive organs mature due to the hormonal influence of the optic gland but result in the inactivation of their digestive glands. Unable to feed, the octopus typically dies of starvation. Experimental removal of both optic glands after spawning was found to result in the cessation of broodiness, the resumption of feeding, increased growth, and greatly extended lifespans. It has been proposed that the naturally short lifespan may be functional to prevent rapid overpopulation.<<

Wiki

This.

>Why didn’t it develop a civilization in the 294 million years it had available?

you mean evolve and venture onto land, become a land-dwelling creature, and evolve further, or what?

the proposition of civilization under the sea is interesting

but then maybe human civilization is partly illusion, or worse

I mean octopus been around 295 million years not fucked up much, really

transition said:

>Why didn’t it develop a civilization in the 294 million years it had available?

you mean evolve and venture onto land, become a land-dwelling creature, and evolve further, or what?

the proposition of civilization under the sea is interesting

but then maybe human civilization is partly illusion, or worse

I mean octopus been around 295 million years not fucked up much, really

Maybe it found that it didn’t need to evolve furrther but just wait, if it has survived this long, it is way ahead of us in terms of climate change and the evolutionary treks that takes.

roughbarked said:

transition said:

>Why didn’t it develop a civilization in the 294 million years it had available?

you mean evolve and venture onto land, become a land-dwelling creature, and evolve further, or what?

the proposition of civilization under the sea is interesting

but then maybe human civilization is partly illusion, or worse

I mean octopus been around 295 million years not fucked up much, really

Maybe it found that it didn’t need to evolve furrther but just wait, if it has survived this long, it is way ahead of us in terms of climate change and the evolutionary treks that takes.

well, I was thinking humans had to have some ‘interesting ways’ regard their own species to have helped evolution along this far, it hasn’t all been a happy story, no shortage of sacrifice (if you will) for the evolution

transition said:

roughbarked said:

transition said:

>Why didn’t it develop a civilization in the 294 million years it had available?

you mean evolve and venture onto land, become a land-dwelling creature, and evolve further, or what?

the proposition of civilization under the sea is interesting

but then maybe human civilization is partly illusion, or worse

I mean octopus been around 295 million years not fucked up much, really

Maybe it found that it didn’t need to evolve furrther but just wait, if it has survived this long, it is way ahead of us in terms of climate change and the evolutionary treks that takes.

well, I was thinking humans had to have some ‘interesting ways’ regard their own species to have helped evolution along this far, it hasn’t all been a happy story, no shortage of sacrifice (if you will) for the evolution

Which is why I brought it up, yes.

Through language, humans have the ability to pass on collective social experience to the next generation. Living underwater the communication options are a bit more limited. Various octopus and cuttlefish species can communicate by changing colour but it probably not as complex and abstract as human language.

party_pants said:

Through language, humans have the ability to pass on collective social experience to the next generation. Living underwater the communication options are a bit more limited. Various octopus and cuttlefish species can communicate by changing colour but it probably not as complex and abstract as human language.

Yes I get where you are going with that but sadly we cannot ask an octopus if that was the actual case.
Who knows what a cuttlefish translates the information into.

roughbarked said:

party_pants said:

Through language, humans have the ability to pass on collective social experience to the next generation. Living underwater the communication options are a bit more limited. Various octopus and cuttlefish species can communicate by changing colour but it probably not as complex and abstract as human language.

Yes I get where you are going with that but sadly we cannot ask an octopus if that was the actual case.
Who knows what a cuttlefish translates the information into.

we can actually measure the amount of information in various communication scenes.

roughbarked said:

party_pants said:

Through language, humans have the ability to pass on collective social experience to the next generation. Living underwater the communication options are a bit more limited. Various octopus and cuttlefish species can communicate by changing colour but it probably not as complex and abstract as human language.

Yes I get where you are going with that but sadly we cannot ask an octopus if that was the actual case.
Who knows what a cuttlefish translates the information into.

So far the observed behaviours are limited to camouflage, signalling danger/aggression, and courting a mate.

mollwollfumble said:

I just saw a fossil of a 294 million year old octopus. It was around before the first mammal, before the first turtle, before the first pterosaur, before the first dinosaur.

An octopus is exceedingly intelligent. They have been known to outsmart humans. In one recorded instance climbing out of its fish tank overnight to feast on fish in another tank and returning to its own tank before morning. And there are plenty of other examples of octopus intelligence.

An octopus is dextrous. It has the arms, grip and musculature to operate for instance a spear gun or a fishing line using a fishhook made of shell. It had plenty of material available for building things, both undersea, and floating and on the coast.

So the paradox is this. Given the intelligence, dextrousness of the octopus. Why didn’t it develop a civilization in the 294 million years it had available?

Or did it?

We don’t actually know that they didn’t develop civilization, but the intelligence they leveraged to do so proved to not be a good long term survival strategy leading to the collapse of the civilization and the emergence of something other than civilization-building levels of intelligence which came to dominate their evolution.

Deep time is big enough that octopus ancestors could have developed advanced civilizations all traces of which have since vanished.

Look just in case my post got lost in the rush…

You didn’t see an octopus fossil 294 million years old. It’s kind of a basic design so there were plenty of somewhat octopus-looking things.

The order Octopoda arose 170 million years ago, around the same time as the mammals. There are hundreds of extant species: a few of them show intelligent behaviour, and this may be a very recent development. Mammals existed nearly all that time before developing civilisations a few thousand years ago. I don’t see that there’s anything to explain here. An alien looking at the Earth a few thousand years ago could well ask “how come mammals having developed a civilisation after all this time?”

dv said:

Look just in case my post got lost in the rush…

You didn’t see an octopus fossil 294 million years old. It’s kind of a basic design so there were plenty of somewhat octopus-looking things.

The order Octopoda arose 170 million years ago, around the same time as the mammals. There are hundreds of extant species: a few of them show intelligent behaviour, and this may be a very recent development. Mammals existed nearly all that time before developing civilisations a few thousand years ago. I don’t see that there’s anything to explain here. An alien looking at the Earth a few thousand years ago could well ask “how come mammals having developed a civilisation after all this time?”

people are probably ignoring your input as it kills the discussion and people hate that.

Cross out “having”, put in “haven’t”.

ChrispenEvan said:

roughbarked said:

party_pants said:

Through language, humans have the ability to pass on collective social experience to the next generation. Living underwater the communication options are a bit more limited. Various octopus and cuttlefish species can communicate by changing colour but it probably not as complex and abstract as human language.

Yes I get where you are going with that but sadly we cannot ask an octopus if that was the actual case.
Who knows what a cuttlefish translates the information into.

we can actually measure the amount of information in various communication scenes.

there is that.

party_pants said:

roughbarked said:

party_pants said:

Through language, humans have the ability to pass on collective social experience to the next generation. Living underwater the communication options are a bit more limited. Various octopus and cuttlefish species can communicate by changing colour but it probably not as complex and abstract as human language.

Yes I get where you are going with that but sadly we cannot ask an octopus if that was the actual case.
Who knows what a cuttlefish translates the information into.

So far the observed behaviours are limited to camouflage, signalling danger/aggression, and courting a mate.

Yes.

esselte said:

mollwollfumble said:

I just saw a fossil of a 294 million year old octopus. It was around before the first mammal, before the first turtle, before the first pterosaur, before the first dinosaur.

An octopus is exceedingly intelligent. They have been known to outsmart humans. In one recorded instance climbing out of its fish tank overnight to feast on fish in another tank and returning to its own tank before morning. And there are plenty of other examples of octopus intelligence.

An octopus is dextrous. It has the arms, grip and musculature to operate for instance a spear gun or a fishing line using a fishhook made of shell. It had plenty of material available for building things, both undersea, and floating and on the coast.

So the paradox is this. Given the intelligence, dextrousness of the octopus. Why didn’t it develop a civilization in the 294 million years it had available?

Or did it?

We don’t actually know that they didn’t develop civilization, but the intelligence they leveraged to do so proved to not be a good long term survival strategy leading to the collapse of the civilization and the emergence of something other than civilization-building levels of intelligence which came to dominate their evolution.

Deep time is big enough that octopus ancestors could have developed advanced civilizations all traces of which have since vanished.

There does exist a possibilty we likely have no way of knowing before we develop deep sea archaeology.

dv said:

Look just in case my post got lost in the rush…

You didn’t see an octopus fossil 294 million years old. It’s kind of a basic design so there were plenty of somewhat octopus-looking things.

The order Octopoda arose 170 million years ago, around the same time as the mammals. There are hundreds of extant species: a few of them show intelligent behaviour, and this may be a very recent development. Mammals existed nearly all that time before developing civilisations a few thousand years ago. I don’t see that there’s anything to explain here. An alien looking at the Earth a few thousand years ago could well ask “how come mammals having developed a civilisation after all this time?”

This.

proverb:
“necessity is the mother of invention”
iow
when the need for something becomes imperative,
you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it.

you are projecting our priorities onto something else
…as if civilization is our crowning achievement… :-p
when the individual creature has everything it needs
within arms reach. (pun intended)

Ogmog said:

proverb:
“necessity is the mother of invention”
iow
when the need for something becomes imperative,
you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it.

you are projecting our priorities onto something else
…as if civilization is our crowning achievement… :-p
when the individual creature has everything it needs
within arms reach. (pun intended)

You see, quite possibly it’s the exact opposite, and that boredom is the father of invention.

The octopus would benefit greatly from the invention of ways that make food-getting and survival easier.
The spear/pike. The fish hook and line. The booby trap.

mollwollfumble said:

Ogmog said:

proverb:
“necessity is the mother of invention”
iow
when the need for something becomes imperative,
you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it.

you are projecting our priorities onto something else
…as if civilization is our crowning achievement… :-p
when the individual creature has everything it needs
within arms reach. (pun intended)

You see, quite possibly it’s the exact opposite, and that boredom is the father of invention.

The octopus would benefit greatly from the invention of ways that make food-getting and survival easier.
The spear/pike. The fish hook and line. The booby trap.

TOP THAT

Went to the dennis this morning, can’t take the tooth out because the root is too far into the sinus so it’s a dental surgeon job.

Peak Warming Man said:

Went to the dennis this morning, can’t take the tooth out because the root is too far into the sinus so it’s a dental surgeon job.

An eye tooth?

Peak Warming Man said:

Went to the dennis this morning, can’t take the tooth out because the root is too far into the sinus so it’s a dental surgeon job.

Bugger. Couldn’t the fire engine fix the tooth?

The Mystery of the Octopus

roughbarked said:

The Mystery of the Octopus

And that’s the octopus’s doing is it?

AFAICT no one has mentioned the possibility of aquatic octopus first evolving in tidal zones and then more purposefully onto the land. Now they would need to develop some mechanism like a skeleton made of a bone/cartilage substitute but once they’re out of the water they’d be free to conquer the planet apart from one thing: predation.

Juveniles would most likely require parental care so they might need to evolve from procreating using many, many eggs and more towards less numerous but better cared for young.

The Rev Dodgson said:

roughbarked said:

The Mystery of the Octopus

And that’s the octopus’s doing is it?

The mystery?
I think we are the ones mystified.

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

roughbarked said:

The Mystery of the Octopus

And that’s the octopus’s doing is it?

The mystery?
I think we are the ones mystified.

Did you check where that link actually takes you?

The Rev Dodgson said:

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

And that’s the octopus’s doing is it?

The mystery?
I think we are the ones mystified.

Did you check where that link actually takes you?

Oh. My bad.
Didn’t check that it was in my clipboard or not.here is the right one

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

roughbarked said:

The mystery?
I think we are the ones mystified.

Did you check where that link actually takes you?

Oh. My bad.
Didn’t check that it was in my clipboard or not.here is the right one

Will have to put that on my lengthy “to watch later list”.

The Rev Dodgson said:

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Did you check where that link actually takes you?

Oh. My bad.
Didn’t check that it was in my clipboard or not.here is the right one

Will have to put that on my lengthy “to watch later list”.

It does make 26 minutes disappear from your life.

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

roughbarked said:

Oh. My bad.
Didn’t check that it was in my clipboard or not.here is the right one

Will have to put that on my lengthy “to watch later list”.

It does make 26 minutes disappear from your life.

that was 26 minutes well spent

Ogmog said:

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Will have to put that on my lengthy “to watch later list”.

It does make 26 minutes disappear from your life.

that was 26 minutes well spent

Indeed.

roughbarked said:

Ogmog said:

roughbarked said:

It does make 26 minutes disappear from your life.

that was 26 minutes well spent

Indeed.

not only was it informative & educational it was also entertaining
+ it addressed the comments generated above concerning
the Original Post Question, (including mine)

Ogmog said:

roughbarked said:

Ogmog said:

that was 26 minutes well spent

Indeed.

not only was it informative & educational it was also entertaining
+ it addressed the comments generated above concerning
the Original Post Question, (including mine)

At least I thought it may help the discussion.