They've been around in one form or another for hundreds of millions of years. It would figure they've picked up a few tricks. Plus there's a quality about them, a personality or self awareness, that makes them endearing.
Well, I guess I won't be eating these guys anymore (or calamari for that matter). And too bad for me because I love the taste of them... but I've been having a difficult time for a while now reconciling their intelligence and capacity for emotion with their tastiness. This video seals the deal. Let's hope salmon don't suddenly start using tools or my list of acceptable animal proteins is gonna be non-existent!
@17: 5280, I guess if you make up your own language you can put the damned apostrophes wherever you want, eh? (Nyarlathotep says you got it right, LOL!)
You know what else they do? They decorate the ground in front of their burrows. They set up aesthetically pleasing little displays of rocks and plants so they have something to look at when they come out to look for crabs to eat. (Cue "Octopus' Garden" by the Beatles)
They use tools, they learn by observation, they can distingush between friendly scientists and dissect-y scientists, they have a bizarre nervous system that leaves them with no concept of where the different parts of their body are relative to one another AND they're super-cool awesome looking alienlike things.
I'm a marine biologist. Octopuses are very smart critters. I used to feed the GPOs at the Seattle aquarium when I was a volunteer there, and they definitely saw me coming.
That's not using tools though. To use a tool you have to modify an object and then use it to modify something else. Like carving a spear tip and then killing a deer. Birds pick up stuff to build nests with all the time and they're not using tools.
@27: that was its mouth (beak). the octopus poos through its siphon.
Although, I can't imagine they'll master fire anytime soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_…
Nobody's hailing hermit crabs as brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEm1c-sBR…
I love these tentacly rapscallions! Love them!
That's not using tools though. To use a tool you have to modify an object and then use it to modify something else. Like carving a spear tip and then killing a deer. Birds pick up stuff to build nests with all the time and they're not using tools.
@27: that was its mouth (beak). the octopus poos through its siphon.
But yeah, this is really cool. I love cephalopods.