The reason that Octapus, Squid and Cuttlefish display intellegence is because of a fluke in evolution.

These animals use coloration as a form of defense. They can rapidly change color in order to disguise themselves or frighten predators away. Some of the color effects they can produce are quite dazzling.

They produce these colors much the way an LCD television does - colored skin cells on the cephalapod are controlled by muscles that either stretch or contract the surface of the cell so that the color inside the cell is either exposed or concealed. The muscles are controlled by nerve cells which are connected to the brain of the animal.

Because there is a huge array of color skin cells on a given Cephalapod, it requires a large brain in order to just control which cell is displaying what color, but becuase it is a defense mechanism, it is also necessary for the brain to be capable of making sensible choices deploying the color schemes.

All of these evolutionary processes result in a creature that has taken a seperate path to a level of intellegence. But apparently, size does make a difference.

Thanks, Treb, that's interesting stuff.

I think humans' "fluke of evolution" was communication. Like millions of contracting/expanding muscles in octupi epiderma, our vocal chords have amassed a similar ability that allows for minute differentiation and evolutionary advantage.

So when Bill O'Reilly is shouting at you, it's surprisingly similar to him spewing inky fluid at your face to distract you.

:)

I'm quite sure he'd love to be able to do that.

I saw a documentary once on efforts to creat walking robots. One of the problems the engineers involved ran into is that any walking creature or machine with less than 6 legs is inherently unstable--a certain amount of computing power is necessary just to make the constant muscle adjustments to stay on the feet. And the fewer legs involved, the more computing power is required.

I've always heard that one of the great advantages of bipedalism was range of sight and a "contact-less" advantage of hunting. So many of the predators and prey that early humans wanted to kill/avoid suddenly (generationally speaking) were now visible from twice as far away when we stood erect. When we started perfecting bipedalism, we also suddenly had a command over a much wider and safer range of action - with arms that were searching for unlocking their potential. We developed tools and projectiles that made us a force in nature. When you add in language, all those relatively large and powerful circles of influence are interlocked and we are just now starting to slow down now.