What does the study of the emergence and formation of human consciousness have to do with octopuses? Philosophers, biologists, physicists, and oceanographers would all say that there is a lot at stake.
The 93rd Academy Award-winning Best Documentary film, My Octopus Teacher, graphically illustrates this point.
This Netflix (Netflix) original documentary follows filmmaker Craig Foster (Craig Foster) as he spends eight years diving in a kelp forest in his hometown of Cape Town, South Africa, to follow the octopus and his journey from physical and mental exhaustion, exhaustion and slackness, to gradually being healed by the wisdom of octopus and other underwater creatures.
The common ancestor of humans and octopuses lived about 800 million years ago, much older than the common ancestor of humans and cats, but the octopus nervous system is extremely developed, an octopus has as many neurons as a dog, or a human toddler. Its intelligence is no less than that of many land and water mammals.
In the laboratory and aquarium can see the octopus will open cans, will guess the riddle, will use tools, can escape from jail, will sneak out of the tank to turn around and then climb back in and then put the lid on, not only remember revenge will be sprayed with water it does not like people; smack house lights are too bright when you can deftly let the bulb short circuit ……
In the wild natural environment, it can also be observed that the octopus has a strong resilience, can adapt to the environment through a variety of complex behavior, and even have the ability to identify and interpret the attitudes and body language of people and animals around them.
Scientists believe that, in terms of consciousness formation and the study of the structure of the nervous system, the octopus is to humans, just like aliens are to humans, comparing the similarities and differences is the way to solve the puzzle.
This is all because it has a highly developed and very strange nervous system, as if all over the body is the brain.
Earth’s oceans “alien”
Octopus belongs to the cephalopod kingdom, with human-like consciousness and intelligence is extremely rare, and although the common ancestor with humans as far back as 800 million years ago, but has a highly developed, plump nervous system, the number of neurons similar to mammals.
The difference is that it has no spine and no brain nerve center.
In other words, the octopus is like an alien that can be used for comparative studies with humans, and comparing the similarities and differences between the two may well help us find the key to solving the “problem of consciousness”. The key to the mystery of consciousness.
Physicist Carlo Rovelli (Carlo Rovelli) once mentioned an anecdote in an article exploring the relationship between octopuses and consciousness.
Many years ago he went sailing with a friend who went into the water to catch an octopus and came back to the boat empty-handed, saying that he had seen an octopus hiding in a hole in the water staring at him, and after a few moments of staring at each other, he suddenly felt uncomfortable because “it was staring at me there, motionless, with big eyes full of is full of fear. “
The octopus is an invertebrate, so it is different from humans and dolphins, which are intelligent vertebrates. Humans and dolphins have tens of billions of neurons in the brain and spinal cord, and these neurons control the senses and movement of the entire body through nerve endings.
The whole body of the octopus is brain
The octopus does not have a spinal cord, the neurons in the brain only accounts for one-third of the total number of neurons in the body, the rest is diffused throughout the body.
Each of its tentacles have a large number of neurons control, can be said to have their own independent consciousness, self-contained system. Usually go their own way, processing simple information and actions do not need to consult the “central”, but when necessary will also start the advanced decision-making process, the whole body to coordinate action.
Octopus tentacles self-awareness, cognition and camouflage than humans or other animal conditioned reflexes more sophisticated, complex.
Cut off an octopus tentacle, it can regenerate in a certain period of time, the severed limb will crawl, adsorption. There is evidence that the cut off tentacle has quite advanced information processing capabilities and can even kill the enemy.
In August 2015, the body of a bottlenose dolphin named Gilligan was found on a beach in western Australia with a large octopus tentacle in its mouth. The necropsy found the cause of death was non-drowning asphyxiation, caused by the octopus tentacle in the dolphin’s tongue, throat and esophagus area with suction cups firmly sucked, tenacious resistance, blocking the dolphin’s airway, so that it suffocated and died.
Octopus will use tools, many people have seen wild octopus with a stone blocking the entrance to their nest, and even seen octopus using empty coconut shells as a temporary shelter.
Octopus good camouflage, in the enemy, sneak attack or communicate with similar can change the skin color and skin pattern at will. Controlling the color of the octopus’ skin is a complex network of diffuse neurons.
The octopus has chemical receptors in its suckers, so they can “taste” the objects it touches. The study found that so many octopus tentacles do not tangle together, the reason is that they have the ability to recognize, and by extension, can also be suspected of a kind of “self” perception One of the evidence is that they do not hesitate to eat the tentacles of other octopuses.
About “consciousness”
So what can octopuses do to help us unlock the mysteries of consciousness and the brain?
According to Rovelli, it is necessary to define “consciousness” first. Consciousness is actually a vague concept with many different meanings.
One of the essays in his 2020 collection There Are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important than Kindness (Allen Lane) discusses the relationship between octopuses and human The relationship between octopuses and the mechanisms of subjective consciousness formation.
For decades, the search for consciousness has centered on the “nature of consciousness,” but before that, consciousness was more often associated with the soul’s meaning, spirit, subjectivity, wisdom Before that, consciousness was more often associated with issues such as the meaning of the soul, spirit, subjectivity, wisdom, perspective, interpretation, ego, and self-awareness. These concepts are distinct from each other, and the meaning of the term “consciousness issues” varies from person to person.
As time passed, the question came to focus on how subjective experience emerged from the natural environment.
What is the “I”? What is self-awareness?
Looking at our close human relatives, as well as other vertebrates, can help us understand and clarify the key points of this question, leading to relevant clues.
These clues, Rovelli writes, come in the form of a series of questions to be solved. First is the nature of the ability to observe, speculate, interact, communicate, love and hate, and suffer; abilities and traits that humans and quite a few other animals possess. Second, if other mammals have subjective consciousness, how is it distinguished from human subjective experience and consciousness?
Again, comparative studies are still the best way to answer these questions.
And so comparability is involved. Mammals have brains and behaviors similar to humans, while those that are too far apart from humans in the biological chain, such as amoebae, are not comparable.
He suggested that the ideal comparable would be an alien race from an alien civilization, possessing the basic elements of consciousness similar to those of earthlings, but whose consciousness or subjective experience is formed through a completely different structure. If this is possible, then we might be able to identify which are the basic elements of consciousness and which are the accessories.
Aliens are, at least for now, science fiction, but the “weird” brain of an octopus is a good substitute.
The universe is infinite, and nature nurtures life in different forms and states, and humans are only one of an infinite number of natural products. Who can say that there are no other advanced intelligent beings in the universe? Maybe one of them lives in the oceans of the earth?
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