Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Tagoctopus

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Gallipoli, Canakkale, Turkey; close up of an octopus eye (Octopus vulgaris Cuvier, 1797). Generative AI

Octopus Intelligence Shakes Up Darwin’s Tree

There does not seem to be a Tree of Intelligence, which deepens the mystery of intelligence
The octopus is a short-lived, exothermic, invertebrate loner - how can it be intelligent? Yet it is. Read More ›
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coconut octopus underwater macro portrait on sand

Loving Goodbye… From an Octopus?

Did the octopus really know she was dying? Was she trying to say goodbye?

The film My Octopus Teacher (2020) paved the way for studying the intelligence of the remarkable eight-armed creature. One outcome has been more attention paid to other remarkable stories of human–octopus friendships. At Hakai Magazine, we learn about a part-time science teacher who befriended an octopus and learned a sad truth about her eight-armed companion: One of the first octopuses Nitz raised was an algae octopus (Abdopus aculeatus) she named the Once-ler after the narrator of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. She and her daughters would stand in front of the Once-ler’s tank and wave their whole arms as though they were undulating blades of kelp. Eventually, the Once-ler started waving back, imitating their movements with a single arm while Read More ›

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close up of a red ant face in white

Can Insects, Bacteria, and Plants Have Personalities Too?

If personality amounts to observed individual differences in behavior, the answer is yes, though the issues are more complex for plants

Yesterday, we looked at a paper in which researchers reported that marmosets (a South American monkey) have personalities. Most of us would simply assume that they do and we are right to think so. Research on many vertebrate animal species shows that even reptiles and fish have personalities. Of course, the number of dimensions a vertebrate’s personality can have varies with its intellectual and lifestyle complexity. But now, what about the vast world of the invertebrates, the life forms whose body is not organized around a spinal cord terminating in a brain? Their body plans can vary from that of a starfish through to a honeybee. Can they have personalities, despite very different brain arrangements, including — in some cases Read More ›

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Scientists Clash Over Why Octopuses Are Smart

New findings show, the brainy seafood breaks all the rules about why some life forms are smart
For many years, we’ve been trying to understand why the octopus is uniquely smart among cephalopods. Research answers some questions only to raise others, as a recent controversy shows. Read More ›
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A green lizard eyeing the camera

Yes, Even Lizards Can Be Smart

If you catch them at the right time. But can we give machines what the lizard has by nature?
What is it that we want machines to be and do under our guidance that these—often seemingly strange—life forms are and do spontaneously? The life forms do those things to stay alive. Does it matter then that machines are not alive? Read More ›
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Is the octopus a “second genesis of intelligence”?

Can its strange powers provide insights for robotics or the human mind?
What’s really interesting about these stories is that, while we are learning that there is much intelligence in the animal (and plant) world, including some that can be applied to robotics, very little sheds light on explicitly human intelligence. Read More ›