Last week I ran an article on the Colossal Squid, an agile, wickedly-armed, 75 foot long+ predator that may just be the most fearsome creature on the planet. Could it also be somewhat intelligent?
I'm not talking about human level intelligence, or even anything at the chimpanzee level. Still, consider some of the things we know about its cousins. Octopi are known to be pretty smart creatures, using tools, having identifiable "personalities," and learning tasks as complex as opening jars to get at food just by watching. Smaller squid and octopi are strongly believed to use their split-second color changes to communicate, possibly enhanced by polarizing filters in their eyes that would let them communicate in ways their predators can't see. Jaron Lanier even sees their abilities as a goal for computing and multimedia specialists.
Put all this together, and one is forced to wonder just how many of these smarts might transfer over to their larger cousin. Size is certainly no guarantee of smarts, but memory and intelligence are valuable to longer-lived creatures. If the Colossal Squid even matches its smaller cousins, those Sperm Whales are up against an formidable foe indeed.
UPDATES: Maybe not. See comments.
IIRC, squids have very different brain structures than octopi. The octopi have centralized brains, and squids have lower-order neural nets, which means no center for cognition.
Interesting, wonder how that connects to their apparent signalling behaviour.
Does this mean that octopi have socialist brains and squids have capitalist brains?
A certain scientist did some really interesting experiments with smaller squid. Since their bodies are able to change colors instantly, he concentrated on training them to write using their colour changing ability. He would pin up a sheet filled with a certain letter ex. O, Z, X etc, on the aquarium. And then show the squid food. After some training, with their colour changing abilities they were able to present X’s or O’s on their own skin in exchange for food. Pretty neat I’d say. And pretty intelligent for Calamari!
squids are yummy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
squids are sexy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
squids are sexy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
squids are crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!