Deep Sea Spirits – The Past and Present Lives of Octopus
As mollusks, octopuses are usually related to animals such as snails and scallops, but octopuses are more intelligent than their relatives and in many ways similar to fairly advanced vertebrates.
Octopuses are one of the few distinct groups of marine animals that have a variety of strange ways of being funny, but the way they approach strangers is basically the same. Its half-closed eyes will stare at you like a shadow, and at the same time, it will touch your hand with a meter and a half long tentacles, slowly climb up your shoulders along your arms, and the suction cups on the tentacles will be adsorbed or released from time to time, making you feel like you are being sniffed by tens of thousands of chemoreceptors. ‘
When the tentacles as thick as the octopus's little fingers crawl onto your neck, it snaps back like a rubber band, and then it retreats back to its original place with agility, its body shrinks nervously, and the color of its body changes from brown to light red, and it looks at you alertly with the afterglow of the corner of its eyes, until it feels that you are not hostile, and it gradually returns to calm.
When divers perform seabed exploration missions, the most headache is to encounter octopus entanglement. Even divers drive them away with bubbles and exaggerated movements, to no avail. In addition to the close-up exploration described above, they also pester divers to play with themselves. When the requirements are not met, they will go forward and tear the diver's mask and oxygen regulating valve to terminate their work.
The aquarium's octopus teases people with a variety of strange behaviors, they will hide in the hidden places to spit on the face of the keepers, and escape before the keepers find them. They will remove parts from the aquarium's pumps and use them to plug the drainage pipes so that the water flows everywhere. When they're done, they'll quickly return to their place and take on a laid-back look so that you'll never find the perpetrator. When bored, they are masters of making strange noises, tightening the tentacles and popping them out, hitting the side walls of aquariums or locked lids, and loud noises always send a panic. Even more mischievous guys sneak out of the water cabinet in the middle of the night and sneak into other pavilions, where they can eat precious fish and shrimp species at will, and then sneak back. Only intermittent wet and dry water traces can reveal their mysterious whereabouts.
The octopus and its close relatives, such as squid and squid, are freaks in the field of biological evolution, although they have no vertebrae, they have the brains that only vertebrates have, they can perceive and act, and express emotions, which the traditional view is that this is a feature of more advanced vertebrates.
When the octopus is mentally focused on an object, it will squint one eye and rely mainly on the other eye, similar to the human habit of choosing more right or left hands during labor. To a certain extent, this shows that the left and right hemispheres of their brains have different domination effects, so the alternating use of brain functions can improve the efficiency of the brain.
When scientists gave octopuses an EEG, they found that octopuses do have larger brains than most fish and reptiles, and although their brains are coiled around the esophagus, they have the typical characteristics of vertebrate brains, such as wrinkled leaves and obvious visual and tactile memory centers. Their EEG is even very close to that of dogs, dolphins, and even humans, but the brain waves are slightly weaker.
The octopus's way of acting is the most complex, free and intelligent in the world. The octopus's brachiopods have no joints, nor do they have any bone or skeletal muscles, but they can choose the cavity sac to spray and obtain the reaction force when needed; they can also use 8 brachiopods to swing up and down left and right; they can also use brachiopods to support walking, especially on land, they walk quickly and smoothly with brachiopods, and even surpass human close relatives - orangutans and monkeys. Biologists believe that this way of moving the brachiopods in octopuses is very unique, indicating that octopuses have the ability to learn and conceptual thinking patterns, otherwise it is impossible to master such complex action skills.
The octopus spends most of its life resting, to be precise, sleeping. Once asleep, their ability to perceive the outside world declines, but "rapid eye movements" confirm that they are intelligent creatures that are keen on learning and good at memory.
In addition to being able to give its own brachiopod hunting, handling, defense and other different functions, octopus also uses its own water vent as an important tool, such as cleaning the house and moving tiny ones. Obstacles, as well as driving away unwelcome visitors.
Scientists who observe and study octopuses on the ocean floor often see images of them catching a few crabs and then hurried back to their caves to enjoy them beautifully. When the meal is over, they will come out alertly to make a tour, and after making sure that there is no danger, they are not at ease, so they get a few stones, block the entrance of their hole in the most stable order of horse farms, and after confirming that they are strong, they retract back into the cave to rest well. The anticipation, planning, and use of tools that arise in this process are all behaviors that can only be possessed by advanced animals.
The most astonishing thing is the octopus's means of ingesting food, and the extraordinary wit of the improvisation has made the so-called so-called higher animals ashamed of themselves.
Octopuses use different methods depending on how easy it is to feed their prey. If the prey is a mussel with a thin and soft shell, it will take the method of direct mashing. If you encounter a clam with a hard shell and a tight mouth when it finds danger, you need to be patient. When the clam's defense psychology is relaxed, a gap will appear in the closed mouth, and the octopus will easily pry open the prey with its sharp tongue like its own file.
The researchers learned about the cunning of octopuses, so they wrapped the clams fed to them with thin steel wire to see what they did. Faced with such a special food, the octopus squinted and pondered, and finally it did not take long to eat the stubborn clam into an empty shell. Originally, when they could not solve the problem by using old methods such as knocking and prying, they switched to the way of drilling, and finally achieved the purpose of sucking clam meat.
Recently, scientists have found that octopuses only spend an hour or so hunting every day, and the rest of the time they hide in the cave as if they are sleeping, and they can't see a little active thinking and sharpening their wisdom. If human beings survive in this way, they may degenerate back to the era of ignorance of Ru Mao drinking blood.
Magical octopus!