Fwd: Re: GRGR(3) octopus 51.29

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy!
> 
> I've been saving this article for years now....
> NY Times Friday 24 April 1992
> "Octopuses Found to Learn From One Another"
> 
> WASHINGTON, April 23 (AP) - Scientists studying
> octopuses have found
> that the creatures learned to pick the "right" ball
> after watching
> other octuopuses that were trained to pick a certain
> color ball.
> 
> The scientists, Drs. Graziano Fiorito and pietro
> Scotto, were
> interested in the creatures because they tend to
> keep to themselves,
> and this anti-social behavior made the scientists
> curious about whether
> octopuses could learn from one another. Dr. Fiorito,
> of the Dohrn
> Zoological Society, and Dr. Scotto, who is with the
> University of
> Reggio Calabria in Catanzaro Italy, published their
> findings in
> Friday's issue of the journal Science. The
> scientists said they had
> pulled their specimins of Octopus vulgaris from the
> Bay of Naples and
> had taught them how to chooses the "right" ball.
> 
> Reward and Punishment
> 
> A red and a white ball were suspended in an aquarium
> on nylon sticks. 
> Both balls were of the same size and shape. For some
> octopuses, the
> "right" ball was red, for others it was white.
> 
> The researchers used a tried and true teaching
> method:  "When the
> animal attacked the correct ball it was rewarded,
> and each attack of
> the incorrect ball was punished" the scientists
> wrote.  The reward was
> a piece of fish that the octopus could find by
> wrapping at entacle
> around the back of the ball.  The punishment was an
> electrode hooked to
> a 12-volt power source.
> 
> Alan Peters, who manages invertabrate exhibits at
> the National Zoo in
> Washington was not surprised that an octopus could
> learn. "They are
> what you might describe as intelligent," he said.
> 
> Once the first group was trained to attack the
> correct ball, an
> untrained octopus was put in a nearby tank to watch.
> 
> The untrained octopus watched the "teaching" octopus
> go through the
> paces of picking the right ball four times. 
> Curiosity seemed to draw
> the untrained octopus out of his house in the
> aquarium so he could
> watch the other one attacking a ball, the scientists
> wrote.
> 
> Octopus Observe and Learn
> 
> "In particular, we noted that the observers followed
> the action
> patterns of the demonstrators with movements of the
> head and eyes,"
> wrote Drs. Fiorito and Scotto.
> 
> The 30 creatures that has watched a "teacher" attack
> the red ball were
> then put through 150 trials. Without fish or shock
> therapy, they picked
> the red ball 129 times, the researchers wrote.
> Separately, 14 octopuses
> who watched an octopus trained to go after the white
> ball picked that
> color 49 times out of 70.
> 
> The researchers also found that the animals learned
> faster from each
> other than when the scientist used food and
> electricity to train them.
> 
> But Drs. Fiorito and Scotto could not explain why
> the octopuses often
> picked the red ball, even when that was the wrong
> choice. One possible
> reason, they guessed, is that an octopus just
> prefers red.
> 
> ****
> Ta all... Mark
> 
> --- Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
> wrote:
> > Coincidence? In the 60s,  that bastion of
> > "mid-century modernism", the
> > design studio of Charles and Ray Eames, in Venice,
> > California (up the
> > Pacific coast a bit from Manhattan Beach where TRP
> > spent some time writing
> > GR), prominently featured a trained octopus in a
> > tank:
> sniplet

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