Fun fact worth noting: humans and octopodes split back when our shared bodyplan was effectively a worm who just got legs. Octopuses have been shown to be able to learn and memorize letters, patterns, their different keepers (e.g., spitting at one particular keeper they didn’t like), etc., and all the intelligence they’ve been demonstrated to learn evolved separately from humans.
So we’ve actually got two examples of “worm with newly-evolved legs” becoming pretty damn smart on Earth, not just one - which makes my bet more on the “if the biosphere got to worms with legs, there’s a lot of smart stuff there”
Wow I had to look up their lifespan because I thought they were theoretically immortal (it was a jellyfish i was thinking of). Only 5 years and octopus can be this smart? The psychotic hairless apes got off easy this time.
Fun fact worth noting: humans and octopodes split back when our shared bodyplan was effectively a worm who just got legs. Octopuses have been shown to be able to learn and memorize letters, patterns, their different keepers (e.g., spitting at one particular keeper they didn’t like), etc., and all the intelligence they’ve been demonstrated to learn evolved separately from humans.
So we’ve actually got two examples of “worm with newly-evolved legs” becoming pretty damn smart on Earth, not just one - which makes my bet more on the “if the biosphere got to worms with legs, there’s a lot of smart stuff there”
I hear a biologist once say that if the octopus could live to be 80 like humans, they would be in charge of the planet instead of humans.
Wow I had to look up their lifespan because I thought they were theoretically immortal (it was a jellyfish i was thinking of). Only 5 years and octopus can be this smart? The psychotic hairless apes got off easy this time.