I’d also love to hear in the comments what updates other people had from this.
My (distilled and cleaned up) thinking was as follows:
Humans recognize each other mostly by face. I know this because people with face blindness routinely don’t recognize people, even if they know them well. I believe that face blindness partially refutes your #3.
Octopuses almost certainly have no particular ability to distinguish human faces. Thus they’re probably doing something very different from us.
What are octopuses good at? Mimicking fish and avoiding predators. Maybe they’re using some of these skills to recognize humans.
Even so, what are the sensory modalities they might be recognizing us with? Many animals are good with smell, but I presume that doesn’t work in the water. Voice, likewise, seems like it might not carry over well. There are a bunch of big visual characteristics: height, skin color, clothing (variable), hair style (may be variable). And gait. I could imagine octopuses being very good at recognizing gait.
My (distilled and cleaned up) thinking was as follows:
Humans recognize each other mostly by face. I know this because people with face blindness routinely don’t recognize people, even if they know them well. I believe that face blindness partially refutes your #3.
Octopuses almost certainly have no particular ability to distinguish human faces. Thus they’re probably doing something very different from us.
What are octopuses good at? Mimicking fish and avoiding predators. Maybe they’re using some of these skills to recognize humans.
Even so, what are the sensory modalities they might be recognizing us with? Many animals are good with smell, but I presume that doesn’t work in the water. Voice, likewise, seems like it might not carry over well. There are a bunch of big visual characteristics: height, skin color, clothing (variable), hair style (may be variable). And gait. I could imagine octopuses being very good at recognizing gait.