14 DAY TRIAL // A series of recent scientific experiments has demonstrated that octopuses are not big fans of standard television. The research group behind the investigation, which was trying to determine how the sophisticated animals react to moving images, determined that the cephalopods were, however, likely to respond to high-definition television (HDTV) images. According to the team, it may be that the simpler images are not convincing enough for these smart creatures, the BBC News reports.
In a paper accompanying the findings, which appears in the latest issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology, the research team underlines that HDTV is a potentially new tool for conducting personality studies on these animals. Other elements of behavior can also be assessed using this approach, as the octopuses were found to respond with excitement to viewing moving HD images. One of the main mechanisms through which the creatures respond to changes in their environment is by brilliantly modifying the colors on their own bodies.
Researchers hypothesized a long time ago that octopuses shown images of predators, other octopuses, or prey, should react to them through this mechanism. But thus far researchers have had no success in these attempts, as all of them were carried out with standard-quality television. HDTV equipment contains up to five times more pixels than conventional ones, and octopuses, cuttlefish and squids (cephalopods) appear to be responding strongly to moving images created in this manner. In the new experiments, octopuses were exposed to screens showing a crab (prey), other octopuses, or a jar. Their reactions were recorded with video cameras, and then analyzed.
The work was conducted on gloomy octopuses (Octopus tetricus). The researchers immediately determined that the animals had episodic personalities, which means that they do not always react the same way to the same stimuli. In some days, a video of a running prey is highly exciting, while in others the octopuses show very little interest in their potential prey. “We developed a method of showing video to an octopus, which was the first time this has been successful with any cephalopod,” explains Macquarie University expert Renata Pronk, the leader of the new study.