Are you smarter than a cephalopod?
13 Feb
Answer: Probably not!
Doug and I geek out to science television whenever there’s a.) nothing good on the sports channels, and b.) nothing worth laughing at on the tube. We heart Nova.
The other night we learned about the amazing brains of cephalopods: Octopi, squid, and cuttlefish. They problem solve (which is more than I can say for a few humans I have observed). I’d love to see us learn more from our successes and failures like the octopus does. Really!
On this video you can see an octopus perform a Houdini-like trick to get a shrimp out of a closed plastic jar (he has to unscrew the lid). But, what’s really amazing? I mean REALLY amazing? They can use their brain-power to change the color of their bodies to match any surface that they are near, so they can hide themselves from predators.
Wouldn’t that be cool if we had that kind of brain power? Like, if I could blend into the Cheerios aisle at the grocery store next time someone approached me with small talk on his brain?
In 7 tenths of a second, a cephalopod could! If I did that, I would be magic. Turns out, cephalopods already are magic.
What’s beautiful about this is the concept of parsimony – the idea that nature works out an extremely simple solution for overwhelmingly complex tasks. A cuttlefish, for instance, can simplify the way it camouflages itself by identifying which of three pattern types are on the surface of its hiding spot and then replicating the pattern.
Simple, right? And amazing.
Parsimony is my word of the week.
Watch the full episode. See more NOVA scienceNOW.
Thanks for this Janelle, what an interesting phenomenon! Loved the clip. And I would totally use the camouflage myself in the same situation you described. Is there anything worse than small talk with people you don’t much care to talk to in the first place?
Pretty solidly first-world problem though, as David Rakoff would say, I admit it.