{"id":202450,"date":"2024-12-26T11:45:09","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T17:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/octopuses-are-a-new-animal-welfare-frontier-what-scientists-know-about-consciousness-in-these-unique-creatures"},"modified":"2024-12-26T11:45:09","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T17:45:09","slug":"octopuses-are-a-new-animal-welfare-frontier-what-scientists-know-about-consciousness-in-these-unique-creatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/octopuses-are-a-new-animal-welfare-frontier-what-scientists-know-about-consciousness-in-these-unique-creatures","title":{"rendered":"Octopuses are a new animal welfare frontier\u2014what scientists know about consciousness in these unique creatures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ogCIqaCe2zI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We named him Squirt\u2014not because he was the smallest of the 16 cuttlefish in the pool, but because anyone with the audacity to scoop him into a separate tank to study him was likely to get soaked. Squirt had notoriously accurate aim.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=ygaelf8AAAAJ&hl=en\" target=\"_blank\">As a comparative psychologist<\/a>, I\u2019m used to assaults from my experimental subjects. I\u2019ve been stung by bees, pinched by crayfish and battered by indignant pigeons. But, somehow, with Squirt it felt different. As he eyed us with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Common_cuttlefish#\/media\/File: Sepia_com%C3%BAn_(Sepia_officinalis),_Parque_natural_de_la_Arr%C3%A1bida,_Portugal,_2020-07-21,_DD_62.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">his W-shaped pupils<\/a>, he seemed clearly to be plotting against us.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I\u2019m being anthropomorphic. Science does not yet have the tools to confirm whether cuttlefish have emotional states, or whether they are capable of conscious experience, much less sinister plots. But there\u2019s undeniably something special about cephalopods\u2014the class of ocean-dwelling invertebrates that includes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/animal\/cephalopod\" target=\"_blank\">cuttlefish, squid and octopus<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We named him Squirt\u2014not because he was the smallest of the 16 cuttlefish in the pool, but because anyone with the audacity to scoop him into a separate tank to study him was likely to get soaked. Squirt had notoriously accurate aim. As a comparative psychologist, I\u2019m used to assaults from my experimental subjects. I\u2019ve [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}