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and the unique evolutionary journey of
the octopus come on heidi
makes this intelligence particularly
intriguing
for a start
the intelligence of an octopus is not
just gathered as one lump in its head
like it is with us
parts of the octopus intelligence are
distributed in its arms
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and that means that to some extent the
body can be its own controller rather
than having a body being driven entirely
around by the brain
eight arms
independently gathering data
and reacting to the world around them
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all kinds of intelligence require
feedback
i think that’s why humans are
intelligent is because we just
know you try and you learn from your
errors
so trial and error is really the
intelligent thing
and octopuses make trial and error do
more than you might expect
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heidi and i are playing around
recreating an early one of these
experiments into octopus cognition
in 1959 a harvard scientist asked a
simple question
can an octopus learn to pull and release
a lever to get a reward
that experiment was successful
and so
i thought wouldn’t it be fun to play
with whether heidi would be interested
in manipulating something outside of her
tank
and so this is sort of a way to see
if she can learn that
when she gets the light to turn on she
can bring us into the room um it’s kind
of an interesting thing to play around
with
when you pull on the string a light goes
on
oh and the buzzer
chase the ball
come on up here
come on the concept which didn’t get
fully explored was by the way can she
learn that by doing something in the
tank
she can affect my behavior when i’m not
actually in view
that’s it come on
there you go that girl
oh
oh you got it
oh
you vicious predator
so i was curious about does the octopus
retain enough of a concept of the person
not present in her view but present in
her mind
gonna get it heidi
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well hi
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oh you did it
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it didn’t take her any time at all to
learn that there was a queue over here
you want some shrimp
but the rest of it you know
that was
challenging
this idea was more fun in the concept
than at any point in the execution
yeah
heidi got fairly insistent
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and i decided to take this all apart
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