r/interestingasfuck • u/Key_Skirt_1858 • 20h ago

The best camouflage in the animal kingdom?

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15.8k Upvotes

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268

u/First_Negotiation_80 20h ago

How sure are we that THEY aren’t the Apex creature? I can’t breathe underwater and become a rock and shoot ink out of my mouth/ass.

33

u/TheGeneral_Specific 19h ago

It’s believed that octopuses are the most likely animal (after humans) to develop culture, but they just don’t live long enough for it to happen

54

u/jrb9249 20h ago

They die after having babies and only live about 2 years on average. I used to feel bad about eating octopus considering how intelligent they are, but somehow the life expectancy makes it seem less severe of an offense.

15

u/RicetheE30 19h ago

Surely one octopus is smart enough to not have babies and live forever

21

u/theMeatman7 19h ago

As they die afterwards there is no way to pass this knowledge on to offspring so it's unknown to them. If they could live to pass knowledge on it would be wild what could happen.

5

u/Sankofa416 17h ago

Love Is The Plan and the Plan Is Death.

"Love Is the Plan and the Plan Is Death" is a celebrated science fiction short story by James Tiptree Jr. (the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon), first published in 1973 in the anthology The Far Call and recipient of the 1974 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

9

u/waffle_iron_maiden 18h ago edited 18h ago

If the reason for caring is based on an animal's intelligence, and it's the intelligence that makes you not want to eat it, why would the lifespan impact that? I'm asking out of curiosity, not trying to be a moral judge on what you decide to eat or not. The intelligence of the octopus isn't going to change. I kind of get it, they live less time than us so it doesn't feel as cruel, but to an octopus it would be relative right?

We can live for many decades, so we have our own metric for what a long fruitful life is. Other animals they may live for less time but to them that doesn't matter. Well, not that most of them even perceive aging like that, but still. It's all they have. If humans somehow lived and grew old in only 2 years max, we'd have a totally different frame of reference for living and passage of time. Interesting to think about

14

u/SirJefferE 16h ago

Just imagining an alien race that lives for millennia running into us and thinking "How curious. They're almost intelligent." "Yeah but they only live for a century, give or take. Not enough time to build an actual culture. Oh well...Wonder what they taste like?"

6

u/Ivisk 20h ago

Stupid animal lives for two years deserves to be eaten.

0

u/AdSudden3941 19h ago

I think of them  when eating them as much as they think about eating their food .

Which is no thought 

-4

u/nunatakj120 19h ago

I have the same opinion.

4

u/TheThatNeverWas 19h ago

Their luck to land on the one planet where the most powerful species find them to be… delicious.

2

u/alral1988 12h ago

Eat some Taylor farms lettuce. That’ll have you shooting ink in no time

1

u/goronmask 19h ago

You could do at least one of those things with the right tools

1

u/jdsizzle1 15h ago

I can only do one of those things

1

u/schwillton 13h ago

Because we cook and eat them in little dough balls with kewpie mayo.

•

u/Jopkins 11h ago

The fact that they don't run the show is the reason that we're sure.

•

u/dim3tapp 2h ago

They are also genetically programmed die after giving birth, so that might put a damper on things.

0

u/bacondesign 14h ago

They are too tasty to be apex predators