Talk:Cephalopod intelligence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (January 2007)

[edit] Dexterity

I've read that octopuses don't have very good control over the ends of their tentacles. This page, on the other hand, says that cephalopod dexterity equals that of humans. Could someone more knowledgeable determine what the truth about their dexterity is>? SteveSims 03:00, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

At risk of sounding facetious, it actually states that they're "as efficient at grasping objects" which doesn't necessarily imply they're as dextrous. I do know, however, that octopodes are capable of certain complex dextrous tasks, the stereotypical example being their ability to open jam jars. If the videos I've seen are anything to go by, they tend to use the parts of their tentacles closer to their bodies... --Xanthine 15:32, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What needs expanding.

Just how intelligent are they? What experiments/studies, conducted by whom, have shown it? What controversies exist in the academic community about this (they do, that much I get from the web links)? We need more details about the lifestyle - BTW, there are differences between the lifestyles of different cephalopods (squid are swift, active swimmers, while octopuses are mostly slow sea-bottom crawlers). Who says that octopus arms are as efficient as the human hand? Precisely how is the cephalopod nervous system unlike that of vertebrates, and how is it unlike that of other molluscs? We need more info, and from the first-hand academic sources, too - otherwise the whole article adds so little new information that it had better be merged into cephalopod.--194.145.161.227 12:18, 2 December 2006 (UTC)