Environment

Octopuses like HDTV, but Have No Personality

by Jordan Yerman | December 22, 2008 at 09:18 am

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First of all, I thought it was supposed to be "octopi". Second, I had no idea that octopuses/octopi had such high-performance eyes, for which standard-def television appears as a series of stills.

Anyway, the octos showed no consistent response when shown the same videos over time. The researchers interpreted this to mean that the 8-armed couch potatoes had no individual personalities, but I'm not sure. Maybe they just wanted to watch something else.

Miss Pronk's insight was that the octopus eye is so refined that it might see standard PAL video, at 25 fps, as a series of stills. She tried HDTV (50 fps) and her subjects reacted to the videos of a crab, another octopus, or a swinging bottle on the end of a string.

"The definition of personality," she said, "is having repetition in your responses, for example, being consistently bold, or consistently shy, or consistently aggressive."

To resolve the debate she collected 32 common Sydney, or gloomy, octopuses from Chowder Bay, near Mosman, and showed them a series of three-minute videos screened on a monitor in front of their tank.

I'd like to see what happens if they're shown something like The Wire.

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reefbubbles

at 14:59 on December 22nd, 2008

This picture was taken in Belize.After a beautiful display it decided to tuck itself into this small crack and peer out.These eyes were so expressive. It was an experience that I will never forget.

reefbubbles has contributed a photo to this story.