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2008-12-23 13:53:14
Richard Macey
December 21, 2008 - 12:30PM
Sharing a movie with an insensitive eight-armed animal may not be every woman's perfect date.
Renata Pronk did it for science, and made two significant discoveries.
Her unsettling news for Christmas revellers preparing to tuck into seafood platters is that octopuses can watch television and understand at least some of what they see. Discriminating viewers, however, they enjoy only high-definition programs.
In a second finding, the Macquarie University marine biology researcher resolved a long scientific debate, discovering that octopuses, despite their intelligence, lack individual personalities.
"Octopuses," Miss Pronk said, "are very smart. I have seen my octopuses open Vegemite jars by unscrewing the lid. They can find their way through mazes to reach food rewards at the end.
"And they can learn simple puzzles", recognising that symbols, such as squares or circles, mean food is available.
"The definition of personality," she said, "is having repetition in your responses, for example, being consistently bold, or consistently shy, or consistently aggressive."
To resolve the debate she collected 32 common Sydney, or gloomy, octopuses from Chowder Bay, near Mosman, and showed them a series of three-minute videos screened on a monitor in front of their tank.
One video featured a crab, an octopus delicacy.
A second starred another octopus, while a third had a "novel object" they would not have seen: a plastic bottle swinging on a string.
Miss Pronk then watched each octopus for any consistent response pattern, such as boldness or aggression.
When the crab movie was screened "they jetted straight over to the monitor and tried to attack it", she said, adding that was strong evidence they knew they were watching food.
When the octopus movie was screened some became aggressive while others changed their skin camouflage or "would go and hide in a corner, moving as far away as possible".
On viewing the swinging bottle, some puffed themselves up, just in case the object was a threat, while others paid no attention.
But significantly, when the experiment was repeated over several days, she found no consistent response from any octopus. Such random responses implied octopuses have no individual personalities.
She suspected previous efforts to show movies to octopuses failed because their sophisticated eyes were too fast for the 24-frame per second format of standard-definition video.
"They would have seen it as a series of still pictures," said Miss Pronk, who had success using high-definition, operating at 50 frames per second.
She confessed that her work made it difficult to dine on octopus. "I know how smart they are. They are beautiful animals."
Source: The Sun-Herald
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Posted: 2008977@614.10
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stranger
Octopusses announce Reseacher has no Personality
Oceanianica News (Deep under Chowder Bay): In an important press release today the octopuses involved in the Cowderbay Excursion report on their scientific excursion into the ape territory to assess the intelligence and personality of the horrific to look at four creatures with four limbs that only move on two of them that call themselves humans. The 32 members of the scientific team were specially trained in observational techniques that emphasized uniform behaviors so as to minimize the impact of their presence on the lower life forms being studied.
A four limbed creature who self identifies as "Miss Pronk" was extensively interviewed and examined. She attempted to use primitive externalized colored skin image projectors to get the 32 excursion members to react. Her primitive attempts at communication failed with what she called "PAL". Then the subject attempted to communicate using something she called "HDTV" by showing images of food. At the sight of a captive octopus the excursion members elected for a quick withdrawal back to the forward base camp in Chowder Bay (human's name for it). The members of the excursion ensured at all times to not reveal any individuality by using the uniform motion training instilled in all octopus from birth.
An assessment from the team after their safe return to Aquatica City was that the human subject lacked any personality during any of the tests. She failed to move on her two upper limbs and also failed to use her lower limbs except for moving about. In addition she had enclosed herself inside an flexible and rigid outer shell and refused all attempts to leave her shell so that we could examine her personality up close.
Naturally the humans require additional study. Under no circumstances should attempts be made to communicate with them until the safe return of the captive octopus hostages can be executed.
In addition it was discovered that while some humans have an additional appendage that is usually kept in the shell the human self identified as Miss Pronk failed to accept any of the advances by the others to have her interact with this appendage. For this reason we conclude that Miss Pronk has no personality.