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February 21, 2006
What is this cephalopod thinking ?
Recently the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Marshall Plan, the huge recovery programme which the US created to help rebuild Europe after the Second World War. Among the odder recipients of funds were octopus researchers at the famed Naples zoological Station. The US Air Force thought that studying octopus might help their engineers design better computers. But the octopus proved far too complex for them.
Fifty years later the cephalopod's brain remains a mystery. Cephalopods are not much like us in their body plans or their lives. Many are underwater predators and are powered by high-speed jet- propulsion systems. Those that live socially communicate with each other using patterns of body colour which change so rapidly that they make our own facial expressions look sluggish.
Garry Hamilton, http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/cephpod.html
Posted by sjc at February 21, 2006 9:00 AM
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