>Each octopus tentacle, however, acts autonomously as it feels around for food or threats. The brain can take over if necessary, but their decentralised nervous systems make octopuses less dependent than vertebrates on transmitting long-range signals through their bodies.
The only way I could imagine this is by holding hands of two toddlers. They are attached to you, acting autonomously, but you could (pretty much) order them around.
It's like trying to imagine what it's like to be blind, you can't.
Right. They can probably let their tentacles drift in and out of their awareness similar to how we let awareness of our breath drift in and out. The buddhist octopus is aware of its tentacles but not controlling of them.
I worked as a crab fishermanin Alaska and we fished for other things sometimes in the off season such as cod or halibut. On time the company we worked for decided to try fishing for octopus using similar methods to how we harvested other fisheries. After about a week or two we all pretty much mutinied and refused to do it anymore. Don't get me wrong we were cold blodded killers of much marine life, I'm sure we massacred millions of fish and such in our time, but there was something about Ocupus we just couldn't do it. It didn't help that the money was shit for octopus at the time, but it didn't matter really for some reason most of us were deeply affected and uncomfortable with killing octupus in exchange for money.
On the other hand, octopus live only long enough to mature and breed (2-3 years for most of them). Octopus aren't thinking deep thoughts with that fascinating nervous system. There will be no Octopi poems or symphonies. They're pretty much just trying to get laid before they die.
Our ancestors (at least going back a few million years or so) could hope to live a dozen or three years and fuck more than once. Octopus has a long way to go to catch up, evolution-wise.
Hardly related: I've heard the phrase 'Scientists discover octopus brains are alien' said out loud several times in the past few days.
Apparently some clickbait site has picked up this article (or the paper), mangled it, and spewed it onto the feeds of more than one of my non-technical friends.
So, 'Strange' --> 'Alien' --> 'Extraterrestrial'. The word 'alien' does appear in the text of the Economist article.
The only way I could imagine this is by holding hands of two toddlers. They are attached to you, acting autonomously, but you could (pretty much) order them around.
It's like trying to imagine what it's like to be blind, you can't.