Steve's Herpetological Blog

An insight into the life of Steve, his research and the many books he reads

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#SciFri: Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life

On Monday 11th June I was lucky to join a couple of friends at Conway Hall, London for a talk by Peter Godfrey-Smith regarding his research which has culminated in his brilliant book ‘Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life’. In the presentation Peter spoke about what life has been like studying octopusses for the past couple of decades (and yes the collective noun is octopusses). A huge proportion of the talk was made up of videos of octopus behaviour which has been described in both Peter’s book and in scientific publications. It was funny to see octopusses attack the GoPros that Peter and his team had placed in certain locations and how their behaviour changed when no one was around. If you’ve read the book then the talk really helped to highlight what characters octopusses can be! I would thoroughly recommend it, apologies this post is a bit short but unfortunately the talk contained a lot of content that can’t be shared.

Peter Godfrey-Smith opening his talk

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