Punching fish == Surprisingly rich social life

This is old news, and just like every article since, it carries over the bad idea that you can ascribe motive to a behavior. (OP, I'm not complaining about you posting it, it's a cool fucking thing)

Even the guy that originally recorded the behavior said (to me, in an online discussion), "well, what else could it be?"

He said at the time that it was "spite".

It's just bad achieve science to ascribe human motivations and interpretations to animal behaviors. You can say seemingly similar to a human motivation and be fine. You can even state that the behavior would have the same effect as a given motivation/behavior in humans.

But when you start to say l the octopus is punching fish because of a motivation, you're losing objectivity.

The octopodes engage in behavior towards the fish that has the effect of changing the fishes' behavior. That's a fact. It's recorded and replicable. We have no way of knowing if the behavior is done with any motivation at all, it could purely be something akin to how birds can fly as a group and maneuver without hitting each other, totally instinctual.

It's probably a behavior generated with a lot more conscious involvement. It's probably a sign of some damn interesting internal processes on the part of octopusses, which may indeed involve something like spite or anger. But we can't know that and state it as fact without other information that we simply don't have, and don't have a way to get currently.

If the original guy hadn't ascribed the behavior to "spite", then you wouldn't run into these articles being as far off as they are.

And yes, I'm salty as fuck lol.

Goddamn fish-punchers.

(This is fascinating article, thank you for sharing it)

Fish; octopi’s best friend!

Edit: here’s a great what-if novel about octopi evolution: The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler. They don’t punch fish. They do other things!