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In this video an octopus appears to lead a woman to a small cashe' of human artifacts including a photo of a human. Is it a reasonable conclusion that the octopus realized the possible value of a picture of a human or somehow thought a human would be interested in a picture of a human or even that the octopus connected the artifacts with the human due to the picture? If this is accurate it raises some real questions about just how intelligent an octopus really is. The video is 01:34 long, in my experience I've seen octopus do some unbelievable things but I never was able to decide if it was my own perspective that decided the octopus was acting as an intelligent agent or if the octopuses actions were actually intelligent independent of my own perception of its actions?

I've wondered about octopus intelligence because of their intelligent behavior (they test smarter than human toddlers, in some respects) and also things like having the highest encephalization quotient of any invertebrate, a degree of synaptic plasticity more associated with learning and memory centers of vertebrates, sophisticated control of 5 different types of chromatophores, and the whole "embodied" brain thing which is so unlike vertebrates. My guess is that they do have a unique form of intelligence that we are only starting to be able to measure. I have wondered if someday we discover that they are able to use chromatophores as a sophisticated language system, and not just for camouflage or basic emotions. Half a billion neurons is a lot, when you are invertebrate and weigh 6-20 lb. Another factor is that they are both predators and prey. This dual role usually makes more higher overall intelligence in the animal kingdom.

Your welcome

No the Higgs field does not interact with gluons nor does it interact with photons. Both being massless particles.

Because this is how "toward" and "away" are defined.

I recently re-joined Facebook and have been doom-scrolling endless animal videos by amateurs, and I have to say that there's more to many animals than meets the eye. Animals are not robots, completely driven by instinct.

The electoral college is more of a root cause for that than democracy, IMO Also, gerrymandering and a lack of ranked choice voting FWIW

A rather sudden exit, over 4 months ago, of a longterm and active member, without any valedictory post - are you okay, Studiot? I hope you are exploring realms of gold, wherever you are.

I've been watching cable TV since lightning took out my electronics and streaming services...its no wonder our country is so damn stupid. Ancient aliens on the History channel, bigfoot on animal planet, love in paradise on the learning channel, I'm glad we don't have a science channel... no wait!

"Democracy is the worst form of government ... except for all the others that have been tried." W Churchill's cynicism is only exceeded by our own Phi. Besides, I did say 'in simplest terms', and did not go into the nuances. Thank you. It's about time you said something nice about me 😄 .

I would like to distinguish the observable universe from the part of the universe that we can observe with our most powerful telescopes. I think that the observable universe is much larger than most people think. If there is an object distant 10100 light years, we could see it if we had a telescope enough powerful.

Some astronomical objects that we observe are accelerating away, but I doubt that the whole universe is expanding.