Name: 【TED】Greg Gage: How octopuses battle each other (How octopuses battle each other | DIY Neuroscience, a TED series)
Uploaded: 2018-09-15T14:10:55.000Z
Duration: 3 min 53 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Joanna Pietrulewicz

Greg Gage: The octopus is a rather strange-looking animal

that exhibits amazingly complex behaviors.

They have the most impressive nervous system in the entire invertebrate world.

that are distributed throughout their body,

such that two-thirds of the neurons are actually in its legs.

Now mix this in with camouflaging cells, jet propulsion and a razor-sharp beak,

and you have all the makings of a formidable predator.

And then throw in the fact that the octopus is a solitary creature,

and suddenly, we have ourselves a real cephalopod fight.

We know that almost all animals fight -- for food, for territory, for mates.

The octopus is no different, and knowing their fighting behavior

could help us better understand these fascinating creatures

My friend Ilya has been observing the classic fighting behavior

Ilya Chugunov: Most people think that it's "octopi,"

The correct plurals are either "octopuses" or "octopodes"

IC: First, I like to set up the chamber just so it's ready,

so I get a jug of water, I aerate it by shaking the jug.

It seems that if the water is well-aerated, they're a lot more active.

This gives the octopuses some room to breathe.

put the second octopus in, cover it up and leave it alone.

There's always one octopus on defense, one on offense.

Usually the one that's taking up more space, that's more boastful,

definitely the aggressor, most likely the winner of the fight.

They get pushed around, they curl up, hide in a corner.

A lot of the time, when there's initial contact,

if one of them is too much on the defensive side,

the second one will sort of poke at it, grab at its tentacle and see,

"Hey, do you want to fight me, do you want to turn around?

So it'll just poke and run away. Come back, poke and run away.

When the octopuses come towards each other to begin the fight,

The defensive octopus tries to face away from the attacker

until it's the critical moment it knows there's no way to avoid a fight.

GG: Really, the one who's waiting to the last moment

The aggressor in a fight will quickly and sharply flash bright black on his arms

GG: Right. So now he's going to come -- He's approaching, but not directly at him.

IC: Yeah, they're like almost completely antiparallel.

IC: Yeah. They contact, and then their arms clash together.

GG: So we've taken the first steps in understanding fighting in the octopus.

And you might be asking yourself: Why does this even matter?

Well, these types of curiosity-based research questions can often lead

to some unexpected insights and discoveries.

We've learned a lot about ourselves from studying marine animals.

Squid have taught us about how our neurons communicate,

and the horseshoe crab has taught us about how our eyes work.

So it's not too far of a stretch to say that some of these behaviors

that we're seeing in the California two-spot octopus are similar to ours.

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【TED】Greg Gage: How octopuses battle each other (How octopuses battle each other | DIY Neuroscience, a TED series)

approach

obvious

critical

grab