Isn’t this just the most amazing thing ever? Like we have evidence of non-primate animals not just spreading behavior, but behavior related to abstract concepts/”unnatural” objects. It’s unmistakable evidence that not only are these animals communicating with each other, but doing so with discrete language like constructs across social groups.
So much of human ethological research is based around defining how the rest of the natural world is different from humans, when the reality is we are far more similar than different.
It also reminds me of the whole stranger in a strange land effect, where even tiny differences in behavioral expectation lead to a complete breakdown even on an intra-species level of social activity. Because most animals communicate in just different enough ways to be indecipherable to humans, we’ve simply assumed that they don’t or they are too primitive/rudimentary to convey the same conceits.
Makes me wonder if there wasn’t actually a coordinated cephalopod attack on pre-modern ships, the kraken was real but we hunted it to extinction. Could you imagine how creepy a colossal squid’s foot wide eye would be staring at you as it dragged your boat down?
Edit: Not to mention they would actually be glowing in sufficiently stormy conditions?
I know this started out as a mammal/cetacean post (we can admit dolphins are smert), but cephalopod nervous systems are just immensely fascinating. There are very few animals (humans included) with the same depth of behavioral and physiological adaptability, and had they been just a bit more social, Atlantis (or Splatoon) might actually have existed!
MicroRNAs are deeply linked to the emergence of the complex octopus brain – miRNA, or “how do nervous systems transfer short term information to long term storage?”
Cell types and molecular architecture of the Octopus bimaculoides visual system – Can you imagine how far along we’d be with this whole “cognitive” understanding of nervous systems if we weren’t so obsessed with neurons?