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"A Thousand Worlds" explores the mysterious inner world of octopuses: what is it like to be an octopus?

author:Kathmandu nights

There is growing evidence that octopuses and other similar creatures are sentient (Credit: Getty Images)

The octopus is a problem-solving, trouble-making animal and a well-known escape artist. But they also seem to have a rich inner life, so what does the octopus's inner world look like?

It was an important night for Inky, the octopus. The day's guests were gone, and his exhibition room in the aquarium was empty. Due to a rare oversight, his water tank lid was half open. The common New Zealand octopus, which has been without a female companion for some time, shares a tank with a male octopus named Blotchy. The loose lid gave Ich a chance. He had eight strong limbs, probably still thinking of something in his mind, and he crawled out of the water, drilled through the loose lid, and crossed the floor of the aquarium.

He found something, about four meters away. It wasn't a female mate, but a drainage ditch that led to the Pacific Ocean, from which Ich disappeared.

(Except for Broch, no one witnessed the Great Escape.) Later, staff at napier's New Zealand National Aquarium pieced together Itch's whereabouts with the help of a damp footprint and visible suction cup marks. )

As Itch shows in his pranks, the octopus is a problem-solving animal. They are very smart and able to learn new tasks and orient themselves in the environment. More and more people think that octopuses are likely to have the ability to perceive.

People who work with or spend a lot of time with octopuses will say that when you look at an octopus, they will also look at you.

Peter Godfrey-Smith, a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney in Australia, said, "When you're dealing with a curious octopus, it's hard to imagine it not going through things. He is also the author of Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life. Seems irresistible. This in itself is not evidence, just an impression. ”

With this hunch as a starting point, how do you begin to explore the consciousness of animals that are so different from humans?

Octopus's body structure and nervous system are very different from those of humans, but they can experience pain, or other sensations as humans (Credit: Getty Images)

First, in this case, what do philosophers and scientists mean by "consciousness"? Godfrey-Smith thinks this means "there's a certain feeling of being that animal." The philosopher Thomas Nagel asked in a famous article, "What is it like to be a bat?" Nagel describes the problem that when the point of reference is the human body and your own mind, imagining the inner experience of a bat is very difficult, or simply impossible.

Similarly, from a human perspective, imagining the inner world of an octopus is a difficult task. Try to imagine what it's like to be suspended on the bottom of the sea in the cool twilight, with perhaps a slight resistance to the current pulling you this way and pulling you there, with eight arms swinging gently around you. Imagine being moved by limbs, what is it like? Maybe something like wiggling your fingers and toes?

Plus the octopus is an invertebrate with no bones at all. Its legs have no femur, tibia or fibula, no feet, and no toes to swing. However, the octopus has a hydrostatic skeleton that combines muscle contraction and water resistance to compression to create motion. This is very different from the human experience of moving limbs. The feeling of being a little closer may be that when we move our tongue, we also take advantage of hydrostatic pressure. In fact, the octopus's limbs are covered with suction cups with unique sensors on them that allow you to taste everything you come into contact with.

Godfrey-Smith said, "In some ways, an octopus's arm is more like a lip or a tongue than a hand. Every time an animal does something, there's a whole bunch of taste-based sensory information coming in. This is very different from the human situation. ”

A closer look at the octopus's nervous system reveals something even stranger. Octopus arms have more autonomy than human arms and legs. Each has a miniature brain that makes it somewhat independent of the animal's central brain. However, the human nervous system is highly concentrated, and the brain is the center of sensory integration, emotion, initiation of movements, behaviors, and other actions.

Godfrey-Smith said, "The real challenge is how to find out what experience looks like in a less centralized, less integrated system." In the case of octopuses, people sometimes ask whether there are multiple selves in octopuses. I think each octopus has only an ego, but some of it may be fragmented, or loose. ”

The more closely you look at the octopus's body and nervous system, the harder it is to understand what the octopus's consciousness looks like. After all, the last common ancestor of humans and octopuses lived six hundred million years ago (a mediocre-looking animal, a bit like a flatworm).

Godfrey-Smith says it's hard, but it's worth knowing if the octopus is conscious and what it would look like if it did. "We just need to think about it and try to piece together a whole."

This is an increasingly pressing issue. The multinational seafood company Nueva Pescanova is preparing to open the world's first commercial octopus farm in the Canary Islands. The announcement drew opposition from animal welfare activists who considered it immoral to raise these intelligent, potentially sentient animals. As one article put it, "When thinking about animal consciousness, there is no answer as to whether human beings, as a civilized society, are guilty or innocent of committing a great deal of cruelty." ”

Nueva Pescanova told BBC Future that the company is conducting research on "the cognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms of octopuses" and that its aquaculture conditions allow the company to "objectively improve the welfare of octopus". Nueva Pescanova said its aquaculture conditions will mimic the natural habitat of octopuses in the wild. A spokesperson for the company said, "This is a novel system that works well in terms of specimen growth, survival and donation." ”

Octopus is a genius escape artist who can open the lid of a container from the inside (Credit: Getty Images)

Heather Browning, a postdoctoral researcher on animal perception and welfare at the London School of Economics, pointed out in an article, "Octopus's thinking may be very different from that of humans, but only by trying to see the world from their perspective can we find out what is good for them and thus safeguard their welfare."

Browning is working on a project on the basis of animal perception at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and his team tried to answer the question of whether octopuses are conscious, producing an influential report.

One way to do this is to start with what we know to be sentient. Browning said, "If we study this seriously, we will assume that we are sentient, and we will assume that other people are like us, which is very reasonable." You can then study whether other animals share common traits with us. ”

For example, the ability to feel pain – this is the focus of a research team at the London School of Economics and Political Science on cephalopod molluscs (including octopus, squid and squid) and decapod crustaceans (including crabs, crayfish, lobsters, shrimp and shrimp). Browning and her colleagues reviewed more than 300 scientific papers and summarized eight criteria for how animals can feel pain:

  • 1. Possess pain receptors (receptors that sense harmful stimuli, such as heat to burns or cuts)
  • 2. The part of the brain that integrates sensory information
  • 3. Have a connection between pain receptors and the integrated area of the brain
  • 4. React to being affected by local anesthesia or analgesics
  • 5. Motivational weighing mechanisms for taking threatening measures to balance action in order to reap the rewards
  • 6. Flexible self-protective behaviors to deal with harm and threats
  • 7. Ability to learn associations beyond habits and sensitization
  • 8. Shows that the animals value local anesthesia or analgesia at the time of injury

Animals can meet criteria with high, moderate, or low confidence, depending on the conclusive or inconclusive nature of the study. Browning and her colleagues argue that if an animal meets seven or more criteria, there is "very strong" evidence that the animal is sentient. If five or more high levels of faith are met, there is "strong evidence" that it is sentient, and so on.

From this measurement, Browning and her colleagues concluded that there was no doubt that octopuses could feel pain and therefore be perceptual. The octopus meets all the criteria, except for a high or very high level of confidence, and a medium level of confidence. Of all the creatures studied, they scored the highest, even higher than their cousin cuttlefish. Cuttlefish are considered smarter. (Browning notes, though, that much less research has been done on squid and other cephalopods other than octopuses, which affects their scores.) )

The report was used as evidence of the UK's Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill amendments, which recognize cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans as sentient.

Godfrey-Smith said, "I think that's a good thing because in the UK, octopuses and crustaceans are gaining a new animal rights recognition. ”

The ability to feel pain is just one of many aspects of consciousness — the ability to feel pleasure, the ability to feel boredom or interest, the ability to experience companionship, and more. As the study progresses, scientists may be able to design similar scales to measure more different aspects of animal consciousness.

Understanding the perception abilities of octopuses can help improve their living conditions in captivity and spark debates about ethical issues in keeping (Credit: Getty Images)

In addition to looking for something relevant to human experience, there is a second kind of evidence. That is to consider the biological role of consciousness and why it evolved. "It's something that people are just starting to question," Browning said.

One possibility is that consciousness evolved with complex behaviors such as learning, decision-making, and motivational trade-offs (would you risk running out from under shelter to grab passing food if you saw a predator?). A complex situation like this can give rise to conscious experiences.

Godfrey-Smith said, "People think that humans can't do certain things unconsciously. This includes dealing with new things in a smart way. ”

Sometimes, when something novelty appears in the tank, such as a lever, the octopus will react with its own ingenuity. For experimenters, this ingenuity can be a bit frustrating.

In a 1959 experiment, psychologist Peter Dews trained three octopuses. They were named Albert, Bertram and Charles, respectively. Pull a lever in the fish tank, which will light up the bulb and release a small piece of fish. Albert and Bertram learned it easily. But Charles was even more stubborn. Luce writes, "Charles fixed several tentacles to one side of the tank, and some around the levers, exerting a great deal of force. The lever bent several times and broke on day 11, resulting in an early termination of the experiment. ”

As Godfrey-Smith puts it, the octopus was "particularly aggressive" (Charles developed a habit of spraying water at people near tanks), and it showed obvious interest in light bulbs, but Albert and Bertram basically didn't. However, Charles surrounded the lamp with his tentacles and brought it into the water tank.

Godfrey-Smith believes that these focused curiosities are telling. "Some of the major theories agree that animal consciousness is an attentive orientation toward things that cannot happen unconsciously in humans, nor can it happen in other animals," he said. So it's a sign of highly suggestive experience. ”

We don't yet know exactly why consciousness evolves, which may be closely related to complex behaviors and learning to deal with new situations (Credit: Getty Images)

If an octopus is really sentient, it also leaves a bigger question: What does it feel like to be an octopus? Marta Halina, an associate professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge, said the question was difficult to answer, in part because science did not provide results in a useful form of assessing subjective experience.

"From the first-person perspective of an organism, we don't have a chance to understand what it looks like," Harina said. "Science looks at the organism in the third person, so we have a problem."

This leap from objective to subjective is known as the "puzzle of consciousness."

The conundrum of consciousness

As the philosopher David Chalmers put it, the question is: How do physical processes in the brain produce subjective experiences of the mind?

Although neuroscience has studied phenomena such as sleep, wakefulness, perception, and problem solving for decades, the conundrum of consciousness remains. Chalmers argues that we can understand the neuroscience underpinnings of a large number of human behaviors without invoking subjective, first-person experiences of the world to understand it.

Chalmers believes that this conundrum will ultimately be answered by scientists. However, it remains to be seen whether the current scientific method is qualified to do so.

There may not be a simple solution to this puzzle yet, but there are one or two practical approaches. One is to study the "behavioral associations" or "neural associations" of consciousness. In other words, we question behaviors and nervous systems that are closely related to states of consciousness. "You can use these as markers of consciousness," Harina said. (That's what Browning and her colleagues at the London School of Economics and Political Science did, using markers such as the presence of pain receptors.) )

But this is risky and will fall into its own human perspective. Harina said, "What we are most certain of is human consciousness, so the neural and behavioral connections we rely on are often based on human cases." The further we are from humans in terms of structure, behavior, and function, the more uncertain we are that we are really tracking consciousness. ”

For example, looking at creatures like Fruit Flies, looking for a human-like nervous system to perceive and respond to pain, but not finding it, does not rule out that Fruit flies are able to perceive pain. "It just means they might be doing it a little differently," Harina said.

That's why octopuses are so interesting. It can be seen as an "alien consciousness," or as Harina wrote in an article on the subject, as a very unhuman consciousness example. Octopuses are very different from us, so many of our assumptions about them are questioned, even our assumptions about ourselves.

"Asking if an octopus is as conscious as a human may not make much sense because we don't fully know what conscious looks like," Hallina said.

Borrowing an analogy from a technique by consciousness researcher Susan Blackmore, she set the task of going to sleep, eat breakfast, or talk at any time of the day— asking herself the question, "Am I conscious now?" ”

"You'll find that at any given moment, you're less confident about what consciousness is," Harina said.

From the perspective of commercial farming, we can not only understand the consciousness of octopus for their own interests, but their ideas can also tell us some information about humans themselves.

Harina said, "It's valuable to think about what it's like to be an octopus, and that can lead us to reassess what it's like to be a human being." Perhaps, reflecting on how little we know about how we feel about humans can make us feel more open to how we feel about being an octopus. ”

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