Quite right, they should be given badges and guns.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 16 hours ago
Something smart enough to recgonize the people, what they mean, learn their schedule, and understand how to decieve them, is something that should not be kept in captivity for our amusement.
Agent641@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 11 hours ago
Eight guns.
snooggums@piefed.world 10 hours ago
Four. They need the others to move around!
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 10 hours ago
They can walk on guns.
ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
This octopus, let’s give him boots, send him to North Korea
snooggums@piefed.world 10 hours ago
Every animal can react to their environment, including avoiding predators. Not all of them do it perfectly, but it is a basic survival skill for mobile life forms.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 58 minutes ago
It could also hide from predators in an aquarium where it will be brought food every day and get medicine from a veterinarian if it gets sick. An Aquarium is the safest place for the octopus to live, so why wouldn’t it’s survival instinct tell it to live there to hide from predators?
We should set up an experiment with an aquarium that allows the octopus access to the ocean. Do you really think the Octopus would run away from the aquarium where it’s safe from predators and gets fed every day?
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 8 hours ago
The stories I here about Octopi make them sound more like an intelligent creature we don’t understand rather than “lots of creatures escape their cages to go hunting and then return before anyone notices. This is natural behavior for an animal.”
Yes, the mind of an octopus is unknowable, and it could be just acting on instinct. It could also have some measure of sentience, and there is no way to really know. As such maybe we should err on the side of caution and not keep them in little pens for us to gawk at.
ameancow@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I do agree we need to respect them a lot more and make a much stronger public message that they’re not food and certainly shouldn’t be tortured and treated as inhumanely as we routinely do.
Yes, the mind of an octopus is unknowable, and it could be just acting on instinct.
As someone who studied a lot of neurology, I could make a very strong argument that much of our behavior, no matter how well-reasoned we think it is, no matter how complex it is, is actually also just a very sophisticated system for facilitating our instinctual needs. The brain has a very real tendency to post-hoc justify our decisions and actions so much that we never notice it, but if you start to explore it, you will realize really quick that a lot of what we do and think we’re choosing to do, are just products of very basic wants.
This isn’t to diminish either them nor us, only to say that whatever is going inside that incredibly ancient brain of theirs, it’s still a lot like us and needs to be respected as such.
ameancow@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
And especially should not be farmed or eaten alive for clicks on youtube. We did good as a society reducing the barbaric practice of eating shark-fin soup and other exotic animal products, and made great strides in ending torturing sea mammals in amusement parks. We have to add octopus to this list of things we now know better about.
Octopus feelings and are higher animals with unique personalities and ways of experiencing the world. They are curious, they are intelligent, they dream and seem to show emotions in a variety of ways.
And our last common ancestor didn’t even have a backbone. This fact alone should amaze us and give us hope for the greater universe - that we can share so much with something so very distant from us gives hope that if we ever do contact aliens, we might share more than we think.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
The octopus went back to it’s tank after getting a snack. That’s at least some indication the octopus likes living there.
You are assuming the octopus prefers living out in the wild where it could be eaten alive. Who are you to assume what an animal wants?
Are you currently living in some kind rectangular structure where you have easy access to regular meals? Why are you living in this way and assuming an octopus wouldn’t also prefer this? There’s nothing preventing you from leaving the rectangular structure you’re currently living in and going out into the wilds and fending for yourself to survive. Why don’t you do the thing you’re assuming the octopus wants to do?
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
Who are you to assume what an animal wants?
I am quite literally not doing that. I am saying “we don’t know so we shouldn’t imprison it for our amusement” which does not strike me as a very extreme statement.
flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
Or it was too much of a gamble raw-dogging it in the outside.
All it did was take the ‘bait’ it was aware of and sneak back undetected. For all we know it might have been exploring, but in a hostile environment you wouldn’t venture far…
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
Yes and for all we know the octopus prefers to live in a place safe from predators, always has lots of food, and a veterinarian on call when it gets sick.
It’s strange to me that people anthropomorphize animals to make big claims about the animal wanting to live in the wild. If you release that animal into the wild it will likely be eaten or starve but everyone assumes the animal wants that based on absolutely nothing.
Why not anthropomorphize animals under the assumption they would want a life similar to what we’ve built for ourselves? Is the validity of the complete guesses about what an animal wants gain merit based on how holier than thou the people making the guesses are acting about it?
Bottom line, the octopus is safer living in an aquarium with ample food than living in an environment amongst predators where food is scarce. All animals have a strong survival instinct (they’d be extinct if they didn’t) so it’s more likely if an animal could communicate it’s preferences, it would choose the option where it’s most likely to survive for a very long time, so it would choose living in an aquarium.
If a I scream “RELEASING ANIMALS INTO THE WILD IS MURDER!!!” over and over again, does that make it a more compelling argument?
flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 54 minutes ago
Yes, but it’s even more simplistic (I agree with wider principle you’re using).- The octopus is going to have a much harder time finding a safe environment.
Unless it stays in the fish aquarium - I wonder why it didn’t just stay where the tasty snacks were? (Not wanting to project a humanised, moralistic perspective on its delightfully naughty behaviour…).
Maybe there was nothing good to hide under, perhaps?
thejoker954@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I mean the government stops you - at least in the USA. If they find you, no matter how ‘responsible’ you are being they will charge you/kick you off the land unless you “own” the land.
FatVegan@leminal.space 7 hours ago
But “dumb” animals are fine? We even torture them because we think they taste cool.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
Where did I say that?
aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 hours ago
A lot of animals are capable of learning. More importantly they’re capable of feeling. They should not be exploited in the same way that octopi should not be exploited.