Telling stories: why your elderly relatives are the best storytellers.The mystery of language: how children learn to speak their mother tongue.Music: How it affects your brain, changes your mood and helps you focus.These are the characteristics that make them a valuable case study for those concerned with consciousness. An octopus may have as many neurons as a dog, or a child. They have at their disposal an extremely rich and complex neural network. Octopuses have complex intellectual abilities that are decidedly unusual for creatures of their realm and are rather comparable in many respects with those of mammals.
Octopus brain how to#
In the laboratories where they are being studied, scientists tell of octopuses capable of opening tins, of clandestinely escaping from their tanks and returning, closing the lid behind them of recognizing the individual scientists in a research group and spraying the annoying ones with water of working out how to short-circuit light bulbs when the light bothers them… In natural environments, they have been observed behaving in complex and adaptable ways, and they seem to have the ability to recognize and interpret the attitudes and body language of those around them. What on earth do these appealing marine creatures, all head and arms, have to do with consciousness?Īccounts like that of my friend are legion in the literature about octopuses. But the second on the list was something of a surprise – Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith, a book about octopuses.
![octopus brain octopus brain](https://image.shutterstock.com/image-vector/octopus-illustration-glasses-doing-writing-260nw-635311301.jpg)
![octopus brain octopus brain](https://dingyue.ws.126.net/2021/0613/082b4f52j00qumbdd008sc00104011gg.jpg)
Number one, predictably enough, was Daniel Dennett’s classic Content and Consciousness. A few days ago, the Guardian published a list of the ten most important books on the nature of consciousness.