https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220720-do-octopuses-feel-pain
"It was a big night for Inky the octopus. The day's visitors had been and gone,
and now his room in the aquarium was deserted. In a rare oversight, the lid of
his tank had been left ajar. The common New Zealand octopus had been without
female company for some time, sharing a tank with only a fellow male, Blotchy.
The loose lid provided Inky with an opportunity. With eight strong suckered
limbs and, quite possibly, intimate concerns on his mind, Inky hauled himself
out of the water, made his way under the loose lid, and off across the aquarium
floor.
He made it about 13ft (4m) when he found something else – not a mate, but a
drain that emptied into the Pacific Ocean. With that, Inky was gone.
(No one, besides Blotchy, was there to witness this great escape. But with the
help of a wet trail and a few telling sucker marks, Inky's movements were later
pieced together by the staff of the New Zealand National Aquarium in the city
of Napier.)
As Inky demonstrated in his famous escapade, octopuses are enterprising animals
adept at problem solving. They are acutely intelligent and able to learn novel
tasks and orient themselves within their environment. There is also growing
consensus that octopuses are most likely sentient."
Via Danny ter Haar and Kenny Chaffin.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
