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Comment by i80and | Hacker News Reader

Avian cognition is so darn interesting. We associate the mammalian neocortex with "higher intelligence" (which is hand-wavy), but that structure arose after any common ancestor with birds.

The avian pallium is thought to be the analogue structure in birds, evolved separately.

Which is cool! Birds have separately evolved intelligence!

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Even cooler, IMHO, is that invertebrates evolved intelligence (and almost identical eyes!) parallel to primate's and corvids'.

Squid, octopi, etc have cognitive abilities that sometimes overtake that of "intelligent" mammals or birds. Yet common ancestors are about as far away as is possible in animal kingdom.

(And also please remember this when ordering calamari next time ;)

Edit: I very much enjoyed this bestseller popular science book on invertebrates intelligence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Minds%3A_The_Octopus%2C_...

Since reading about cephalopod intelligence, I cut calamari out of my diet cold. I quip that I have a policy against eating anything smarter than me!

If they're so smart why aren't I on their plate instead? (Though I'm not a fan and don't ever go for calamari personally anyways...)

Wait are any cephalopods vegan?

Slightly joking: but maybe "intelligence" is partly "empathy"? In my view, a truly evolved and highly intelligent species would be one that causes no harm, distress and certainly no pain or suffering to anything else.

So, to answer your question:

> If they're so smart why aren't I on their plate instead?

For the same reason I and grandparent commentor don't eat them: because we know their intelligence. If they were more intelligent that humans, that reasoning would mean they won't eat humans.

Slightly more on topic: humans often show a very narrow world view. In that many humans fail to see that there are other types of "intelligence" for example. We project our own narrow world-view onto others: "Intelligence means, you should eat anything that's less intelligent than you" (very much parafrasing, I know)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_attack

I like how its mainly just a pile of old fisherman tales with very little proven recorded attacks. The Cephalopods have been haunting our nightmares for over a thousand years.

Would you eat a human that was less intelligent than a cephalopod?

I enjoyed the novel “Remakably Bright Creatures” which had an octupus as a main character.

And then we have octopi, with their separately evolved decentralised intelligence !

A mini brain in each arm, orchestrated by the main brain.

The plural is octopuses. Octopi is not a word.

Fun fact:

All words and grammar rules are made up. Entirely. As in... invented by humans. The laws of physics don't really care.

If lots of people use "octopi" (and they do) and most people understand what it means (which they do) then congrats! It is, in fact, a word. If enough people apply an "i" ending to words then that becomes itself a new grammar rule.

English, just like every other language, also has a ton of unwritten grammar rules as well as spoken word only rules.

In short: octopi is in fact a perfectly cromulent word.

> In short: octopi is in fact a perfectly cromulent word.

Webster, is that you ? /s

It’s a hill I’m willing to die on ;)

Both octopuses and octopodes are terrible words.

And words are made by us, you cannot tell me what's a word and what isn't.

Why I took the time to comment: I recently watched an excellent 2-part series entitled "Octopus!" on Prime Video:

https://youtu.be/u1TLQUH43Yw?si=L8Ta4RG1Kp8tkHWU

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the narrator, must have said "octopuses" a hundred times, so it's kind of burned into my brain.

Octopodes is correct if you want a classical (Greek, as it is) word. Octopi is an assumption of correctness by analogy of people who don't know better, like 'if you have any feedback give it to my colleague and I' - it's not all posh and correct to say 'and I', it's wrong (in that sentence).

I've recently gone down the rabbit hole of watching pet bird videos on YouTube. The wide range of behaviors is so fascinating. They can be so affectionate, playful, mischievous, and just plain goofy.

The African grey parrots are fascinating in particular, with their ability to connect words to more abstract concepts like counting.

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