I remember reading about how some biologists took some wild foxes, and allowed ones which were friendlier to humans to breed. In the next generation of fox offspring, they let the friendliest ones of those litters reproduce. They repeated this several times. After some number of generations, they found these friendliest of foxes had droopy ears like domesticated dogs. This demonstrates how a simple process of artificial selection, like just selecting for friendlier animal companions, may have been sufficient to lead to the domestication of dogs.
Now, my question is, could we humans do the same thing with octopi? Could we just take a population of octopi, and identify the ones which can meaningfully interact with humans in a friendly and docile way, and let them breed, and iterate this process until we have some kind of domesticated octopi?
If they’re not long-lived, they wouldn’t make good work animals, but I want to know if octopi could at all be domesticated regardless. The fact they’re short-lived might mean humans could breed domesticated octopi even faster.
I imagine a lot of the selection was indirect selection for neoteny. I think it would be much, much harder to select for domestication in octopi, as they do not raise their young.
I’d speculate that if you did an identical breeding experiment with octopuses (as in, the breeding criteria of non-aggressively interaction with human hand) you’d breed for curious, bold, or playful octopuses which tend to approach novel stimuli … but not friendly in the sense of affectionate.
It’s not that they’re asocial, I think they sometimes lay eggs cooperatively and obviously seek each other out for mating… but primarily octopuses see others of their species as predators or prey. (I mean, cats do eat each other but only in bounded contexts, like infanticide, not hunting.)
Or could we breed them for intelligence...? With such short periods between generations, we could reach superintelligence, maybe faster than other methods!
I would imagine that using foxes give you a lot more to work with though. Foxes in nature live in pairs or small groups. The children stay around the parent for a long time. So they already have mechanisms in place for social behaviours. (And even if they are not expressed, there probably are some latent possibilities shared among mammals? E.g. this article about the evolution of housecats notes that they independently evolved a lot of the same behaviours that lion prides use to socialise, even though wildcats are solitary.)
It is not hard to tame them and train them, but I have not heard of anyone training them to do something that is functionally useful aside from the narrow area of octopus-keeping. They have been trained to get into a bucket for easy transportation, to climb out of the water and interact with their keepers ‘politely’, and, famously, to take photos of aquarium goers. Bus as far as underwater rescue, exploration, or hunting for artifacts, AFAIK this has not been done yet. But if for some reason we needed them to run an underwater maze—easy!
Octopuses are solitary animals, whereas most working animals are social. Which leads to another interesting question—is it possible to breed octopuses to become social animals?
Dunno—it worked with house cats, which are far more social than their wild ancestors, although not as social as lions. (Wild cats will not share territory with others, even when food is plentiful. Feral cats will live in feral cat colonies around food sources.)
Octopodes use hemocyanin… use CRISPR to take that out, lenti vector to replace with hemoglobin, and you’ve got a super-octopus.
Now just apply MIRI’s magic formula for making friendly superintelligence, and you’ve got your tame octopus. Great basis for a TV show in the genre of “Lassie”, “Flipper”, or “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo”.
“Good on ya’, Cthulipper!”
Octopuses have poisonous bites, of course.… some would see that as a bad quality in a pet.
Is it possible to tame an octopus? Could humanity over several generations tame octopuses and breed them into work animals?
Most of them are pretty darn short-lived, despite their intelliigence...
Bonus Stupid Question
I remember reading about how some biologists took some wild foxes, and allowed ones which were friendlier to humans to breed. In the next generation of fox offspring, they let the friendliest ones of those litters reproduce. They repeated this several times. After some number of generations, they found these friendliest of foxes had droopy ears like domesticated dogs. This demonstrates how a simple process of artificial selection, like just selecting for friendlier animal companions, may have been sufficient to lead to the domestication of dogs.
Now, my question is, could we humans do the same thing with octopi? Could we just take a population of octopi, and identify the ones which can meaningfully interact with humans in a friendly and docile way, and let them breed, and iterate this process until we have some kind of domesticated octopi?
If they’re not long-lived, they wouldn’t make good work animals, but I want to know if octopi could at all be domesticated regardless. The fact they’re short-lived might mean humans could breed domesticated octopi even faster.
I imagine a lot of the selection was indirect selection for neoteny. I think it would be much, much harder to select for domestication in octopi, as they do not raise their young.
Wikipedia on the fox-breeding experiment.
I’d speculate that if you did an identical breeding experiment with octopuses (as in, the breeding criteria of non-aggressively interaction with human hand) you’d breed for curious, bold, or playful octopuses which tend to approach novel stimuli … but not friendly in the sense of affectionate.
It’s not that they’re asocial, I think they sometimes lay eggs cooperatively and obviously seek each other out for mating… but primarily octopuses see others of their species as predators or prey. (I mean, cats do eat each other but only in bounded contexts, like infanticide, not hunting.)
Octopuses / octopodes. It’s greek, not latin.
Or could we breed them for intelligence...? With such short periods between generations, we could reach superintelligence, maybe faster than other methods!
What could go wrong with breeding a species that hunts their own as prey as a superintelligence?
I would imagine that using foxes give you a lot more to work with though. Foxes in nature live in pairs or small groups. The children stay around the parent for a long time. So they already have mechanisms in place for social behaviours. (And even if they are not expressed, there probably are some latent possibilities shared among mammals? E.g. this article about the evolution of housecats notes that they independently evolved a lot of the same behaviours that lion prides use to socialise, even though wildcats are solitary.)
It is not hard to tame them and train them, but I have not heard of anyone training them to do something that is functionally useful aside from the narrow area of octopus-keeping. They have been trained to get into a bucket for easy transportation, to climb out of the water and interact with their keepers ‘politely’, and, famously, to take photos of aquarium goers. Bus as far as underwater rescue, exploration, or hunting for artifacts, AFAIK this has not been done yet. But if for some reason we needed them to run an underwater maze—easy!
Octopuses are solitary animals, whereas most working animals are social. Which leads to another interesting question—is it possible to breed octopuses to become social animals?
Dunno—it worked with house cats, which are far more social than their wild ancestors, although not as social as lions. (Wild cats will not share territory with others, even when food is plentiful. Feral cats will live in feral cat colonies around food sources.)
I have always wondered why humans never turned bears into house pets.
They eat too much.
We wouldn’t have kept cats either if they didn’t naturally hang around our granaries helping us with our rodent problems.
Octopodes use hemocyanin… use CRISPR to take that out, lenti vector to replace with hemoglobin, and you’ve got a super-octopus.
Now just apply MIRI’s magic formula for making friendly superintelligence, and you’ve got your tame octopus. Great basis for a TV show in the genre of “Lassie”, “Flipper”, or “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo”.
“Good on ya’, Cthulipper!”
Octopuses have poisonous bites, of course.… some would see that as a bad quality in a pet.