Octopus farming is ‘unethical and a threat to the food chain’

[StoneRoad]

A few years ago, one cousin of my OH was been kind enough to let me have a few shots ...

I think I got some but my shoulder was less happy than after the evening on the range with a rifle !

 

[8ball]

I'm actually considering slaughtering some clays. There are two places within twenty minutes of me, and not hugely expensive.

Well, once the...

I've had a go at that on a stag do.
Was fun, but I find guns a bit scary in real life.

Hard to kill a clay pigeon with a knife, though.

 

[8ball]

I think I got some but my shoulder was less happy than after the evening on the range with a rifle !

I found the recoil ok - just a matter of holding it right (you kind of "cuddle" it a bit more than a rifle).
Was expecting a shotgun to be easier than a rifle but was quickly disabused of that notion.

 

[Serge Forward]

"the octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien"

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith | WHSmith

Order a Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life today from WHSmith. Delivery free on all UK orders over £30

www.whsmith.co.uk

Half way through this book... tis dead good

 

[8ball]

Half way through this book... tis dead good

They are very different things to us.
It's an interesting idea that when we find a different form of intelligence that it will be very different to us.

I like their cheekiness and rogueishness, but I think that may be leading us astray a little.

 

[Calamity1971]

I found this absolutely enthralling. Sad that it was in a tank mind. Anybody who hasn't seen it, it's a must watch.

BBC Two - Natural World, 2019-2020, The Octopus in My House, The Octopus In My House - The Octopus In My House

A professor develops an extraordinary relationship with an octopus.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[hash tag]

A blanket octopus

 

[A380]

 

[WouldBe]

A blanket octopus
View attachment 304082

The suckers would stop the blanket coming off while you sleep.

 

[Badgers]

Sickening

 

[hash tag]

There's yet more in today's rag
Octopus farming: critics say plans are unethical for ‘exceptionally intelligent animal’

Captive octopuses have been known to eat their own arms

 

[hash tag]

This weekend -

Do Octopuses Have Feelings?​

Do Octopuses Have Feelings? The Question of Animal Sentience

11am Sat 18 June | Jonathan Birch, Penny Hawkins, Huw Golledge | Free event at the LSE Festival: How do we get to a post-COVID world?

www.lse.ac.uk

 

[hash tag]

spotted Octopus sightings surge in Cornwall waters

"They are such amazing, alien creatures - one of the most intelligent animals in our ocean"

 

[ska invita]

spotted Octopus sightings surge in Cornwall waters

"They are such amazing, alien creatures - one of the most intelligent animals in our ocean"

View attachment 329648

a big brain with legs and eyes basically

 

[Serge Forward]

Their brains extend into to their legs. Proper brainy.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

They’re smart fuckers, confine them together and they’ll start a revolution. I for one welcome our new octopus overlords

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

They’re smart fuckers, confine them together and they’ll start a revolution. I for one welcome our new octopus overlords

I'm sure if we explained climate change to them, they'd make better decisions than our dismal track record.

 

[Serge Forward]

They’re smart fuckers, confine them together and they’ll start a revolution. I for one welcome our new octopus overlords

They may be clever clogs but they have very short life spans (about 3 years) so before they get round to even planning world domination, it's already goodnight Vienna

 

[petee]

The mysterious inner life of the octopus

Octopuses are problem-solvers, mischief-makers and notorious escape artists. They also appear to have a rich inner life – so what is it like to be an octopus?

www.bbc.com

"One of the real challenges we have is to try to work out what experience might be like in a less centralised, less integrated kind of system," says Godfrey-Smith. "In the case of the octopus, people sometimes ask whether there might be multiple selves present. I think it's just one self per octopus, but there might be a kind of partial fragmentation, or just a sort of looseness there."

 

[trabuquera]

"just one self per octopus" - tagline or bandname surely

 

[hash tag]

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-soul-of-an-octopus/sy-montgomery/9781471146756

"Octopuses have varied personalities and intelligence they show in myriad ways: endless trickery to escape enclosures and get food; jetting water playfully to bounce objects like balls; and evading caretakers by using a scoop net as a trampoline and running around the floor on eight arms. But with a beak like a parrot, venom like a snake, and a tongue covered with teeth, how can such a being know anything? And what sort of thoughts could it think?"

 

[maomao]

They don't taste that great either. Like eating rubber.

 

[bimble]

octopus is the only thing i wont eat, because its not that tasty anyway but more importantly its wrong to eat someone who is so obviously clever than you.

 

[Funky_monks]

No, we're omnivores like our cousins chimpanzees. Most of our diet is plant-based (forms of grass), with some meat (if people choose to do this). People eat far too much meat anyway, so moving to a more vegetarian diet would be good for the environment.

We aren't.

We shared a common ancestor with chimps, but deviated from them some 8 million (if I recall correctly) years ago. One of the hypotheses to explain the split is that we (earlier hominins) began to specialise in a more meat based diet, where as chimps remained largely frugivores that hunt semi-frequently. Certainly hominins (including us, neanderthalis etc) were apex predators for the last 2 million years or so - ironically, it was the advent of agriculture that increased the plant matter in our diet as we bred new plant varieties.

Here's a massive metanalysis that confirms this: Humans were apex predators for two million years, study finds: What did our ancestors eat during the stone age? Mostly meat.

That said, Octopus farming seems like a massive waste of resources if they are carnivorous. Plus, there really isn't a way of killing them humanely as far as I'm aware.

 

[Funky_monks]

Not true at all. It's happened a few times for various reasons but it's not general practice, as the antis would have you believe, at all. They basically picked up on a couple of unfortunate situations and told everyone it happens all the time.

Depends on the shoot - the larger shoots closer to London etc often shoot so many that this happens.

Otherwise, they went to yokels like me, who lived on the estate. I ate more pheasant when I was poor in my 20s than you could shake a stick at - all FOC from my landlord. Fed the dogs on it too.

 

[Funky_monks]

Re: octopus sentience
Its kind of pointless and diminishing to anthropomorphise them. Their whole central nervous system is different to ours, and to try and relate their emotional states to those of humans is probably misunderstanding them. Plenty of other animals perceive the world in ways we cannot possibly empathise with. See: Snakes and Jacobson's organs, elasmobranchs and Ampullae of Lorenzini etc etc.

 

[hash tag]

And in the news 1. ‘It was giving me a hug’: video captures rare giant octopus encounter

 

[hash tag]

In the news 2. In an octopuses garden, beneath the waves

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/science/octopus-throwing-silt.html

 

[Serge Forward]

Re: octopus sentience
Its kind of pointless and diminishing to anthropomorphise them.

Agreed. But they are fascinating creatures, clearly intelligent but in a completely alien way.

 

[hash tag]

From wildlife photographer of the year