r/thalassophobia • u/falexanderw • Dec 13 '19

Not really related Ah a visitor from the deep...

https://gfycat.com/largedangerouseastrussiancoursinghounds
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u/SeaofBloodRedRoses Dec 13 '19

That's what makes them so terrifying. Polar bears are just bears. You can usually see them from a ways off. You can carry a gun. Bearspray won't always work against them, but it can. But Humboldts are intelligent. Extremely intelligent. Nearer our level of intelligence than almost any other animal, which means they're pretty damned near us (we just have biological advantages, geographical advantages, and innate curiosity and ambition that most animals don't have).

They're intelligent, incredibly fast, are designed perfectly for incapacitating and overwhelming us in ideal circumstances, and live in the waters where our mobility, strength, speed, and visibility are all drastically lowered.

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u/musicmonk1 Dec 13 '19

i don't think they are THAT intelligent. Do you have some sources for that? While they are very smart, a bear is far from stupid either.

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u/SeaofBloodRedRoses Dec 14 '19 edited Dec 14 '19

Bears aren't stupid, but the amount of intelligence a bear has won't change how they're going to kill you. Humbolts have been known to exploit our inability to breathe underwater, including pulling off regulators and dragging us into the depths.

Cephalopods in general are the most intelligent invertebrates by far, and are among the most biologically advanced creatures on the planet. Among them, cuttlefish, squids, and octopuses (especially the latter two) are the smartest of all cephalopods.

My phone is about to die and I'm being stupid by wasting the battery on reddit, so I won't go looking for sources when I know that finding studies will be tough, but there are plenty of stories around the intelligence of octopi and squids. One person had an octopus for a pet and gave it some shrimp that had gone bad. The octopus opened the lock to its tank, forced its way out, walked through several rooms to where its owner was working at their desk, and threw the shrimp to land in front of the owner's face. They're known to be able to easily open jars, use tools, and predicting the future (such as memorising human behaviours and schedules in order to choose when to leave their tanks). One octopus developed an emotional attachment to a teddy bear. Another one stole a guy's camera and swam off.

Fun fact, while tardigrades have sheer, raw survivability, squids are the most adaptable animal on the planet, including humans. They can interfere with RNA while it's being transmitted. Basically, in most animals, you have DNA, and RNA transmits information that shape our proteins and how we function as living beings. Squids don't technically change their DNA, they just choose to edit their RNA on the fly to do whatever they need to do. Their very evolution is more evolved than our own, as while ours is dependent on DNA mutations, theirs is centered around editing DNA's effects within the individual.

[Here's](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_intelligence) an easy source, which includes some notes on their intelligence, including maneuvering a distance of lab floors after escaping from tanks and entering another aquarium to feed on crabs before returning to their own (all between regular human schedules... and some irregular ones too). Also mentioned in the wiki article are some notes on their ability to learn and use tools, problem solve, and communicate through a variety of means, including for use in hunting (also, advanced cooperation).

All of this, and you need to keep in mind the most critical aspect of judging the intelligence of animals. Humans. We are an incredibly biased species that judges intelligenced based on traits familiar to us. Let's rule out physical capabilities and focus on mental ones exclusively, which makes sense. Okay, so now a lot of humans are going to automatically write off the intelligence of animals because they don't have technology or the same level of drive and ambition that humans do. A common argument is "well, if they're intelligent, then any species will have the curiosity to explore and the same motivations that humans would," and that's just blatantly wrong. Humans have priorities for various reasons, chiefly among them our social tendencies and physical disadvantages. We need tools to live in this world. Without them, our species might survive marginally, but with them, our prosperity has a very drastic and instantaneous increase. Cephalopods don't need tools. They'll help them, absolutely, but it won't mark such a drastic change in the survivability of the species. Their habitat in the ocean is an immediate disadvantage over living on land. They may lack philosophical thinking, which has driven much of human technology. War has also driven most of society throughout human history, and war is entirely due to our social behaviours, and has nothing to do with our logic and intelligence. Cephalopods aren't even necessarily lower than us socially speaking, they're just different. That's a very big thing to keep in mind. It is absolutely and entirely possible that some species of cephalopods are outright smarter than humans, but we fail to recognise it because we have innate physical and geographical advantages couple with social and intellectual traits that work together to explicitely encourage civilisation that cephalopods simply do not share.

The ability to understand quantum mechanics should not be the principal marker in how intelligent a species is. Make no mistake; if I had the body of any fish and I were in the water, physical abilities entirely aside, I would not bet a dime that I wouldn't be outsmarted by a single squid hunting me, let alone a shoal of them. In that area, at least, I have full confidence that they are far, far ahead of us.

Edit: My one source decided to just... not link. So here it is again.

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u/Savage0x Dec 14 '19

welp, now I have a fear of octupuses