Sorry to be “that guy” that points out that the correct pluralisation of octopus is octopuses not octopi, or octopodes if you want to surpass me in pedantry!

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Octopus#Etymology...

Sorry to be that guy, but I do believe the actual correct etymological term is "octopizzle".

Haha! I'll steal that one!

Fun Fact; ALL pluralizations are 'correct' (via Merriam Webster's: Ask the Editor series) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PWP8uL-1o

Ignorami is probably right though!

Fo-shizzle!

I have been thinking for a while that if you want to practice communicating with aliens, try octopi. If you can actually have a reasonable conversation with some of them, like you can with a house trained dog, then you are making some kind of progress.

I don't think dogs are a great example of an intelligent species just because we can communicate with them reasonably well. They have evolved to be able to participate in human society. With the exception of some breeds of herding dogs, they're probably stupider than (to pick one example) raccoons. But dogs possess a key trait that raccoons lack: they can understand human emotion reasonably well.

My parent's dog makes them indirectly do what she wants => direct communication is potentially overvalued.

This is almost literally the plot of Arrival :-)

Which is particularly relevant given their similarities to an octopus, albeit a 4th dimensional version of one.

That makes me wonder - do they have what we would consider reasonable conversations with each other?

Chimp communication is complicated enough that it can probably be called conservation, but I think they're one of the only species for which that is true.

I think most animals lack a wide enough range of responses to have a conversation.

In most cases humans have not yet figured out anywhere near the full range of particular animals’ communication, so this is hard to judge.

For example, prarie dogs https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/magazine/can-prairie-dogs...

I’d be happy with dolphins or whales.

it's interesting that you left off one of the most intelligent species: orcas. they are arguably more intelligent than any of the other species you named.

> Only one example of human-level intelligence

this made me think about the relationship between intelligence and technological development. i think they are related but does technological advancement mean a species is really more intelligent than another species with less technological developments? i am not for sure. for example, i have thought about orca intelligence quite a bit. they are severely limited in their technological development simply due to their environment. the aquatic environment naturally prevents the recording of information and development of tools.

I believe that the lack of prehensile appendages is a bigger problem than aquatic environment.

Aquatic is not anti-tool; octopuses can use tools. https://twitter.com/i/moments/935038333654372354

There are other intelligence tests beyond just technology, such as the ability to recognize a mirror for what it is.

orcas and dolphins do use tools. so do fish. and of course octupuses use tools. and i didn't mean that tools are impossible in the ocean. it's just that their use is made difficult.

orcas also easily recognize mirrors. i have watched many animals look into mirrors, and orcas and dolphins are by far the most interested and intrigued and show off many behaviors that easily show they recognize the object in the mirror as themselves.

of course there is more to intelligence than technology, which was what I was getting at. orcas use smooth pebbles as a massage center. they coordinate attacks with special roles, including behavior such as signaling to prey that they are leaving while leaving a silent orca behind to catch the prey as they relax. orcas are one of five known species, including humans, to go through menopause. they have complex social structures and dialects and have even been shown to communicate with dolphins.

Ethics aside, octopuses also seem like a great candidate for "domestication" a la the Russian domestication of the silver fox. Except rather than select for the most docile offspring, selecting for the cleverest. With their relatively short lifespans, one could probably achieve some success in a relatively short amount of time.

That's not domestication, that's uplift :D

Regarding intelligent life in the cosmos:

If [most] life begins at the microscopic scale, wouldn't there be a higher chance of intelligence developing at much smaller sizes than the average human body?

Have we even learned if there's a minimum body size required for sapient intelligence to develop?

We can already see different types of intelligence in comparatively-small creatures like octopuses, but even overlooked organisms as tiny as the ant show forms of intelligence! Social communication, tool usage, agriculture, even domestication of other species (e.g. aphids.)

Well, our massive brain needs a pretty massive support system. There's probably a lower threshold to how efficient you can be at achieving the same level of intelligence.

Intelligence could be distributed across multiple, smaller bodies. Again, taking ants as an example.

At the scope of the Drake equation octopi are still pretty close to us since we both have neurons, so it's a few steps past life "seeding" (good way to phrase it btw). If we saw intelligence in something descended from a pre-neuron fork in the short time that we have existed, that would be pretty good odds.

> Only one example of human-level intelligence.

It's better to think of this as "human-like intelligence."

Talking about "levels" implies a hierarchy of which there's no proof, and what evidence has been trotted out for it is backed by highly questionable religious and species-centric reasoning over a long time.

There might be an octopus on Proxima Centauri b that is incredibly good at being an octopus, but if it can't build a radio, we can't talk to it. In this context, intelligence is defined in practical terms and we're interested in civilizations that can communicate with us over distance.