"She's bouncing the ball" – the uncanny way octopuses play

I had a joyful experience at the octopus farm near Kona Hawaii (now sadly closed because they were even more sadly apparently not treating the animals well).<p>With hands in the tank, I was able to play catch with a small plastic ball and a roughly 2 month old octopus. It was definitely catch — I could scoot the ball anywhere and the octopus would grab it and throw it back.<p>Possibly a trained behavior, who knows? It was really charming and delightful.

There’s a part of me that kind of wonders whether the Jewish Kashrut laws are meant to protect the most intelligent animals: the best-known laws (cloven feet, does not chew the cud, that which swims in the sea but does not have scales) end up protecting pigs, cetaceans and cephalapods (plus other stuff that’s not so bright, but put that aside).<p>There’s no rational reason to believe this, of course, but it’s still fun to imagine in a sort of Erik von Däniken way.

I&#x27;ve just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts - a First Contact sci fi. This discussion echoes it. Take that as a book recommendation, if you will.

&gt; &quot;Since the octopus was not reacting to any existing threat, but rather in anticipation of one, it had demonstrated foresight and planning.&quot;<p>The journalist is hopefully misunderstanding a more correct explanation by the scientists. That most certainly <i>isn&#x27;t</i> demonstration of foresight and planning. Nature is perfectly capable of encoding that sort of information as an instinctual response. Something like [trying to sleep] -&gt; [get distressed by exposure to open ocean].<p>It is like how humans feel cold and put on a jumper. It isn&#x27;t a demonstration that we all understand heat flow equations and have modelled out that we need to consume less food if we put another layer between us and the outside world, increasing the long term economics of our survival, demonstrating an advanced knowledge of thermodynamics and economics. Our body has encoded &quot;heat leaking through skin&quot; -&gt; &quot;feel uncomfortable&quot; into our senses and that is all we need to respond to without considering the consequences of the response.

I wish there was a video of this in that article. The reading was very descriptive, but would have loved to see the video of the octopus playing with the bottle.

I listened to an interesting podcast on octopus cognition recently: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.preposterousuniverse.com&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;2023&#x2F;09&#x2F;11&#x2F;249-peter-godfrey-smith-on-sentience-and-octopus-minds&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.preposterousuniverse.com&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;2023&#x2F;09&#x2F;11&#x2F;249-...</a> Peter dives into the weeds and offers both philosophical and biological insights.

Here we go again anthropomorphizing creatures that live 1-2 years by misrepresenting data for clicks.