[FRIAM] something serious from something silly

[Prof David West]

Octopi probably do "see" the ground behind them. They have more neurons in their skin than in their brain and the chroma-cells (forgot the technical name) are bi-directional "camera and display." So one side "sees" and transmits to opposing side for display. All without entering the central nervous brain.

davew



On Fri, Apr 30, 2021, at 9:12 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> Octopus ground mimicry is the thing I cannot understand.   How do you copy
> what you are not looking at?
> 
> n
> 
> Nick Thompson
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Friday, April 30, 2021 8:57 PM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] something serious from something silly
> 
> A discussion of UFOs occupied some time in FRIAM today, including the
> observation that despite looking for "intelligent signals" ala SETI have
> failed. 
> 
> Made me think of octopi (& other cephalopods) that communicate with
> brilliant displays of rapidly changing color. We think that these displays
> are more than reactive, that they are "intelligent communication." Mostly,
> it seems to me, we infer this because we have a lot of context, including
> interacting octopi, but if all we had was the "signal" absent the context,
> would we recognize it as "intelligent?"
> 
> I am not phrasing the question very well, but if we had nothing except a
> 5-minute video of an octopus' surface changing color, would we be able to
> detect a hidden order or structure that would allow a reasonable
> determination that it originated from an intelligent species?
> 
> davew
> 
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