Moontanman

I am going to be real with you, this image disturbs me, having interacted so much with octopus and the intelligence they showed it's like some one hanging a cat or a dog out to dry on a line. I had real interactions with them and could judge their emotions at least if not their thoughts by watching the colors run around their bodies. I would give them gifts of unusual materials and they acted as thought they really enjoyed the odd objects i gave them to build their houses. They really seemed to relish the oddities, except for ping pong balls they hated ping pong balls. They loved golf balls... go figure. BTW, squid are calamari, and i bet cuttlefish are smarter than octopus...then you have the very brainy mormyrids which i currently keep.

Yes, up until last year I had a culture I'd kept going for 40+years, I got it from a local lake. Azolla

If you set up a kiddie wading pool, maybe one of those 8' ones in a sunny place, add a handful of Azolla, by the end of the summer you'll have a 55 gallon drum full of very nitrogen rich Azolla that can be composted or even plant things directly in compressed Azolla in a pot, I used to use half sawdust and half Azolla for my birds nest ferns, Azolla fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere using photosynthesis. I used to harvest and compost it regularly.

Why is everyone assuming that octopus could not adapt to living on land? Given opening up of evolutionary niches on land by, say a mass extinction of vertebrates, The octopus would seem to be a contender for being amphibious quite easily. Their reproductive strategy could change and they could become land animals, and having nine brains could result in a creature beyond our imagining just like pikaia, I bet no one here would have seen pikaia evolving into humans 450 million years ago. How many changes did pikaia have to go through to become us. Imagine that on an alien planet vertebrates never evolved, pikaia could have gone extinct. There is no guarantee that vertebrates would evolve on another planet. Speculative evolution video

I honestly do not think that assuming that an octopus, given a few hundred million years of evolution, couldn't evolve into a space fairing species is a bit of hubris considering what was to be our ancestor several hundred million years ago. Pikaia

Actually I've kept them in captivity, not much fun as you can't interact with them. I've managed to keep small squids for short periods of time, weeks, I'd love to try cuttlefish I think they are quite special in intelligence and communication. All octopus have a beak and can bite and inject poison but they mostly use it on crabs or other crustaceans. But my point is that on another planet even vertebrates are not a sure thing much less humanoids.

I think it should be said that the octopus in the above video is not your run of the mill octopus, I've never seen one even come close to moving on land like that one did. I've kept dozens in captivity and seen dozens in the wild. I've actually had three, years apart, crawl up out of the surf and attempt to crawl up my leg but in all cases the octopus looked more like a glob of goo with arms flowing along on land. I am fascinated by the above video, the octopus actually is able to maintain it's bodies integrity while moving fast, faster than the crab, which is almost unbelievable on land. If I hadn't seen the video I wouldn't have believed it, I've heard of octopus crawling out of the water around dock and catching rats but that is just hearsay. Oh and an octopus has 9 brains, networked together, but they can act independently as well. Natural selection is a harsh mistress but it does produce surprising results. +

China's navy is a poor rival to the US pacific fleet, if the US went into all out war mode China would lose it's navy quite fast, it's aircraft carrier is a joke even to china and so are the planes that fly from it being called some like a flopping fish in Chinese because of their tendency to take off from the carrier and dive into the water. Of course that wouldn't necessarily keep china from doing it's best to fight the US but my bet is that china would resort to nuclear weapons if the US actually landed on Chinese soil. Russia is a wild card, Putin is an autocrat whose grip on power is based on his image as much as anything. He might do something crazy just to maintain his shirtless horse riding.

I am not a big fan of the super being idea as i think you stated in the ants comparison so maybe you agree with me. How ever natural selection pressures resulting in humanoid aliens is IMHO a big stretch, water selection pressure is quite straight forward.. Every thing from squids to dolphins are under pretty much the same pressure to go through water as fast as possible. This results in a similar body shape due to the physics of moving through water. I'd really like you to elaborate on why octopuses couldn't conquer the land, the only realistic reason i can think of is that vertebrates already dominate the land, remove them and the octopus IMHO could conquer the land given time and selection pressure. Land how ever can be quite different from gravity to air content to pressure, I'm not sure I would place a bet on even vertebrates evolving much less humanoids. Pretty much spot on.

How do you know the octopus form wouldn't be better if they evolved in the direction of conquering land?

I don't think you would think of our chimp like ancestors as star travelers either, I love the elephants too...

It did have legs and my first thought was some sort of giant salamander, they do occur in Asia, but this video is not in Asia. I have to admit to being a little bit stupid, I would have tried to catch it, it wasn't "that" big!

I wouldn't cross out crows or octopus out of hand, crows are very good at solving problems and using tools, even altering natural objects to improve their use as tools Octopus also use tools and some populations actually live in groups and their ability to leave the water seems to mirror the first fishes evolutionary trip to land. Of course we would have to get out of the way. I forgot to mention that off the coast of central America an octopus species was found that lived through at least two or three mattings but the species has not been seen for decades and is presumed extinct. Over fishing may have played a part. If I remember correctly they had fewer young than other octopuses. I ran across this in a book when i was a teenager so i have no source for it so take it with a grain of salt.

I wasn't replying directly to you two but to the whole thread, it is correct I never had a intelligible conversation with an octopus but they do react to my presence and I was able to judge their emotional state as well as interact with them and when they wanted attention they would lift the glass cover and squirt water at me as I passed by. Once one of them actually squirted water on me while I was being intimate with my wife,, his aim was impeccable. The idea that crows, and other intelligent animals, don't fly star ships is missing the point, a couple million years of evolution and octopus might be colonizing Mars due to the low gravity. It took the human linage 6 or 7 million years to get to the moon. How much interaction with crows have you had? I suggest you do a little research about crows, even wild crows do some amazing things with tools and a complex communication system even bonding with humans who are kind to them and ganging up on humans who are mean to them, remembering the specific humans even years later. Beecee I missed your post on the ants idea, I apologize. Other planes of existence is not the same as the multiverse and has even less evidence but UFO abductees and even some researchers, and i mean real scientists, have frustratingly said it's like they pass in and out of existence as they go some place "else" meaning another plane of existence but I was just making a sarcastic joke when I said it.

Oops I forgot the link! 33:59