Moontanman

This may be relevant due to Russa asking china for help. If the video is accurate it would seem China's military is not exactly a fighting machine but rather capitalism at it's finest. https://youtu.be/-5hENyRScto

I have a prophecy to make, "someone" is going to use a weapon of mass destruction before this is over with. I'm betting he will use a tactical nuke when cornered and dare the west to do something about it. Someone's cheese has slid off his cracker and can't grok the present or the future due to his desire to go back to the good old days.

Best Yet!

Does Putin understand that his nuclear saber rattling is hollow and meaningless? Who is he trying to scare? We may not be in the era of MAD but it is still as insane as it ever was to use nuclear weapons.

Ok, I acknowledge your experience on this but scientists at NOOA seem to take a different view, possibly the areas with only lionfish and lacking in small fish is a transient phenomena.

I am not sure you are seeing the tree due to the forest, seasonal variations in fish populations do not match the density of the lionfish populations. In general native fish do not prey on lionfish. This seems to be changing but is takes a quite large predator to eat an adult lionfish, they spread their pectoral fins to make themselves appear much larger than really are. This makes predators view them as too big to eat even if the predator is in fact plenty big enough to eat them. I've seen films that show dozens just swarming a isolated rock in the ocean. Divers can go down and spear hundreds of them in one day and not make a dent in the populations. I am a certified open water diver, it's been a long time since I dived, but I have seen how fish swarm around isolated rocks and I have never seen fish thickly cover areas like lionfish, not even close btw. The almost absolute lack of the small native fish that normally school around such rocks is probably the most disturbing thing, this indicates the bottom of the food chain has been disrupted. I am sure that eventually the ecosystem will absorb these lionfish but is has not happened yet. Native predators will learn to recognise them as food but scientists have told me it is a slow go so far. I've had native octopus climb from one aquarium to another and eat captive lionfish so I know they are not invulnerable but as i said lionfish are good to eat and a fishery has sprung up in some areas and restaurants are listing them on menus so maybe they will prove to be a boon to commercial fishermen in the long run. As for invasive species, Florida is famous for it's fresh waters being full of nonnative fishes released by the aquarium industry as well as by home hobbyists. The Florida DNR is also famous for releasing non native fish for their sportfishing industry and tourism... the peacock bass comes immediately to mind. I tried to lobby for Pseudoscaphirhynchus hermanni to be released into a smallish river in WV that was recovering from years of pollution and fish populations were beginning to recover. In it's own range is is rare and dying out due to habitat destruction. Being so small i thought it would be a great addition to the biodiversity of this river but I was shot down do to the possibility, no mater how remote, that it would become invasive. I guess i should have lobbied for it be released in Florida.

I've been following this "invasion" for many years, home aquarium release is being blamed but at the very beginning it was assumed that a large number of individuals escaped from a public aquarium/lab during a hurricane and the spread began from there. I have no doubt many have been released by thoughtless home aquarists as well. The actual volume of biomass represented by the hordes of large lionfish currently occupying the ocean where there was once nothing but small native fish is very concerning if nothing else. They have even invaded the water of my coastal Carolina area, mostly deep water, but the sheer numbers being caught have only one enduring quality, they are very good to eat. Anytime a nonnative species begins to reproduce in huge numbers it is a threat and considered invasive. Sometimes, over long periods of time the ecosystem will find a new balance with the invasive species, European carp are an example of a long established species that still has negative consequences long after it's introduction but it's effect on native populations cannot be ignored even now some 250 years after it's introduction. Asian carp are an example of an evasive that has not, as of this time, settled into the ecosystem and is still very disruptive. Introducing large native predatory fish to the Asian carp's new range that had been hunted to extinction are one of the efforts currently being used to try and control them... alligator gar being one of carnivores of choice. Again the unnatural hordes of lion fish are a quite good indicator they are not harmless and native predators are not, for the most part, interested in eating them. That may change as time goes on but for now we are pretty much stuck with them. BTW, I predicted the Asian Carp invasion, not because I am smart but because I can see the writing on the wall, I was told it could never happen because of hormonal problems caused by some species of native fish that wouldn't allow Asian carp to reproduce in water where the natives lived... never say never.

Well it looks like excrement has made contact with the rotating air movement device, I live near a first strike zone so I guess I will not feel it... I might live long enough to see the flash, if the missiles are targeted accurately.

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

Mormyrid fishes have the largest branes compared to body size of any vertebrate and it would seem the part that is the biggest is the part we use to think! I knew they had large brains but this video astonished even me. I have a mormyrid right now, I've had his for 6 months and he has some quite interesting behaviors. One of which is his interest in moving magnets and his voracious apatite. He uses his electric field to bully the other fish away from food and eats like a pig. This video, if anyone is interested, at least partially explains his eating habits and the composition of his brain.

What the hell is this at 33:59?