alt Hacker NewsLarger Pacific Striped Octopus
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Irony: Nowhere on that page does it say how large that octopus actually is. An inch? 2 meters? Unclear.
To save you the google search, it's about "tennis ball size" according to https://30a.com/larger-pacific-striped-octopus/ . Somebody should add that to the wiki.
One critical feature of these octopuses is that they don't just die after mating (most species of octopus do)... Which opens up possibilities, like teaching their young skills they have acquired.
Something about seeing "gregarious nature" used to describe a non-human animal feels so... whimsical? I like it. Likewise with "intimate embrace" and other descriptions that follow.
> The species was first documented in the 1970s and, being fairly new to scientific observation, has yet to be scientifically described. Because of this, LPSO has no official scientific name.
Is that a joke? It takes over 50 years to come up with a scientific name for a species?
Despite the efforts of many of centuries, we are still so ignorant of the vast variety of life that surrounds and supports us on this planet. We should have more humility about this, but we (collectively, as a species) do not.
Some will say that AI can solve this, as is the fashion. But so far the things people are interested in doing with the new potential for synthesizing and translating animal sounds does not inspire any confidence[0].
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-04/ai-s-next...
Apparently one of them doing gig work as an personal OS agent now, too.[0]
I've been fascinated by Cephalopods since reading (the excellent) book "Other Minds" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. They are probably the closest we'll get to an alien intelligence. Their nervous systems evolved along a completely different evolutionary path from us vertebrates. It pains me that they are so short lived, though. I wonder what potential could be unlocked by their intelligence if they lived for 40 years or longer.