Octopus opening a container with a screw cap.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Now this will be a battle. A Spanish company wants to raise octopuses for food. Delicious and high protein. But research over the past few years has suggested that the animals are highly intelligent and have complex emotions. (Reminder: Pigs and cattle have emotions too, and pigs, anyway, are fairly intelligent. And would you eat your dog? Well, I suppose it depends….)
An inducement for raising the eight-legged and very flexible beasts is that these short-lived creatures grow very fast.
So there’s a campaign to block this aquaculture. So far, I’m on the octopuses’ side. Also, I wonder if there are other creatures in the ocean (besides marine mammals) that we’ll discover are smart.
