Something about seeing "gregarious nature" used to describe a non-human animal feels so... whimsical? I like it. Likewise with "intimate embrace" and other descriptions that follow.
One critical feature of these octopuses is that they don't just die after mating (most species of octopus do)... Which opens up possibilities, like teaching their young skills they have acquired.
Despite the efforts of many of centuries, we are still so ignorant of the vast variety of life that surrounds and supports us on this planet. We should have more humility about this, but we (collectively, as a species) do not.
Some will say that AI can solve this, as is the fashion. But so far the things people are interested in doing with the new potential for synthesizing and translating animal sounds does not inspire any confidence[0].
Not to be combative, coming from genuine interest, I'd like to ask you why we should care? I study biology, and can think of a plethora of topics that we can study about human physiology that we don't understand and if we did would more directly lead to treatment of human diseases. That is not to say we need invest all resources towards this frontier but in the optimal scenario we must weight resource allocation to the potential usefulness of the discovery.
I don't think we have to understand the natural world to care about it. But I will go further haha: I think we _already_ prioritize human health and advancement above preserving anything about the natural world (unless we have identified that the preservation is advantageous for our own purposes.) And I reject this anthropocentric view, which is I suppose where we might differ :)
Some will say that AI can solve this, as is the fashion. But so far the things people are interested in doing with the new potential for synthesizing and translating animal sounds does not inspire any confidence[0].
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-04/ai-s-next...
[0]: https://github.com/istota-project/istota