Idle Notes from an iPad

~ tidalscribe.com

A strange place to put a gate? Rather like the internet, many of us don’t know which gate to go through, if we should go through it or what to do when we get to the other side. At present I am still using igate -I mean iPad orMePad…. and I don’t trust it with too many words….

So let’s go underwater for a change. I know there are bloggers who actually go underwater, but I just listened to BBC Radio 4. Book of the Week in five parts and I only needed to listen to the first part to learn something about an amazing creature…

Picture may not be accurate representation of the ocean floor.

Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith explores what is known about octopus intelligence in ‘Other Minds: the Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life’. The first part concluded with the words ‘Your best chance of meeting Alien Intelligence is to meet an octopus.’

To protect its identity octopus is played by an actor.

The gist of what I have heard so far is this. Octopus seem to be very intelligent, even when assessed by our limited land based human perspective. Our common ancestor was a very basic tape worm living at the bottom of the sea many trillions of years ago. Since then humans and octopus have evolved along totally different lines. So intelligent life has evolved in more that one totally different species; all life on earth has not been totally about aiming towards a human pinnacle of excellence. If any of you have met an octopus or perhaps just eaten one please add your enlightened comments. If any reader is actually an octopus it will be very interesting to read your comments.

22 thoughts on “Idle Notes from an iPad”

  4. All life on earth has likely been totally aimed towards an octopus pinnacle of excellence. The octopi may be only part way on that journey while humans will be another footnote like the dinosaurs. I am going to do more research on my IGate.

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  6. Hi, Spiros Octopus here. Indeed we are intelligent. Name another animal that can play bridge with itself? Just a warning for the ladies; some of us have been able to hybridise with human males, as some of you will have discovered while you were dating.
    Farewell, or as we Greek octopi say, calamari.

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  11. I’m not an octopus, but I’ve recently come to learn how intelligent they are. One of the people in my writing group worked with octopi in an earlier career. Some of the things in her work in progress seemed far-fetched until I became educated about their intelligence.

    Your photo reminds me of one that used to be in my hometown. There was a sign the read, “Sidewalk Ends,” which struck me as rather humorous because it was rather self-evident. I always thought of the author Shel Silverstein when I saw that sign who famously wrote the book “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”

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