Octupuses Prefer HDTV

Researchers recently discovered that octopuses can watch television and understand at least some of what they see. However, they only enjoy high-definition programs.

The discovery was made while resolving a long scientific debate about whether octupuses, despite their intelligence, have individual personalities (read more about the personality findings in the source article).

During the experiment, 32 common Sydney, or gloomy, octopuses from Chowder Bay, near Mosman, Australia, were showed a series of three-minute videos screened on a monitor in front of their tank.

One video featured a crab, an octopus delicacy. A second starred another octopus, while a third had a "novel object" they would not have seen: a plastic bottle swinging on a string.

When the crab movie was screened "they jetted straight over to the monitor and tried to attack it", the researcher said, adding that was strong evidence they knew they were watching food.

When the octopus movie was screened some became aggressive while others changed their skin camouflage or "would go and hide in a corner, moving as far away as possible".

On viewing the swinging bottle, some puffed themselves up, just in case the object was a threat, while others paid no attention.

The researcher suspected previous efforts to show movies to octopuses failed because their sophisticated eyes were too fast for the 24-frame per second format of standard-definition video. They would have seen it as a series of still pictures. The high-definition format operates at 50 frames per second.

Original article here.