Hello everyone, welcome to Look What I Found.
This is a weekly podcast where we, this is we K.
And this is K.
We are going to discuss interesting things that we found in the news that we're excited
about this week.
And I think we are excited about it for many reasons and one of them mainly being it connects
to science.
Yes.
Thank you for that K.
Both of us are scientists.
I have a PhD in psychology.
And I have a PhD in physics.
We've both been teaching for many, many years.
I've been teaching for over 14 years now.
And if you count graduate school, I've been teaching for more than 25 years.
And we are also married.
We've been married for 21 years.
So a good portion of what I've been teaching.
Yes.
So the reason we started this podcast is because we read the news and we see interesting scientific
discoveries being reported and we get really excited.
We talk to each other about it.
And because I'm a psychologist and K is a physicist, we come at it from very different
perspectives.
And every time I talk to him about it, I feel like I walk away having learned something,
having understood something from a different perspective.
And the same goes in reverse for me a little bit because if you think about it really for
me, it is physics is our external reality and psychology is our internal reality.
And that's kind of sort of how we make sense of things by putting together the external
with the internal or the internal with the external.
And so when we discuss sort of findings that we've come across in the news or other sort
of scientific publications that we might read or things that we're teaching in class, there's
always sort of a counterpoint to it, if you will, something that you might miss because
you got a specialist view from a particular sort of an angle or a discipline in science
really is quite wide and multidisciplinary.
So one of the reasons that I was going to try to do this with VK was to really, you
know, sort of talk about the excitement and the expanse of science.
Yes.
See, this is what I mean by just describing the difference in our focus as external and
internal K has just shown us that there are different ways to view the same research finding
and people can walk away from reading or watching something and take very different things from
the same experience.
And one of the joys of our relationship, because we are such different people, is that sometimes
that's a complementary thing where we actually like add on and complement and sometimes that
causes conflict.
Well, exactly.
And sometimes it's orthogonal, which means you're still complementary, but you're orthogonal
to each other.
You want to run sort of perpendicular to each other in some ways.
And like VK was saying, you know, I think there are every time in life that we have
sort of these these cross complementary skills, they can either be oppositional or they can
be sort of extremely useful to expand and sort of your horizon about how you think about
things.
Absolutely.
And I think for me, the the current climate where folks have become siloed, they talk
to people only if they agree with each other is something that I haven't lived with.
I've lived with someone who I can sometimes have very strong disagreements with.
And we've built a relationship around trust and mutual respect and learning how to talk
to each other, how to communicate clearly.
So in addition to the science, which I think is very exciting and really gets me like passionate
and alert and awake.
I also wanted to communicate this the excitement of talking to someone who comes at the same
piece of information from a very different perspective and the joy that you can gain
from that.
And I personally love our relationship.
I love the focus on science and how excited both of us get about it, because I like learning.
I love it.
Like this is the thing I like doing the best.
And that's exactly right.
And, you know, sort of my angle to this is also quite similar, because my view of science
has always been expansive and multidisciplinary.
And I try to say this to you a lot when we talk, obviously, but I also say this a lot
to all of my students that I teach and my research students that I have mentored is
to you know, back in the day when sort of the scientific method was forming, physicians
and physicists were the same people.
They were not different from each other.
And you know, we kind of sort of forget how important that is in a worldview as especially
when we're trying to solve complex problems with science, because all the teams that I
worked on are multidisciplinary by nature and nobody can sort of do this in a silo.
And it's one of the sort of great things about sort of trying to do this podcast, which is
to talk about things that are outside our disciplines necessarily, but things that excite
us and sort of giving, you know, as a way to rethink about this multidisciplinary worldview
that we have with some particular subject matter in focus.
Absolutely.
And I think just adding on to that a little bit, the multidisciplinary nature of science
often means that people tune out when it's not about their field.
But findings can have implications as we'll see today in the episode for what you're thinking
about, what you're planning to do.
The most beautiful thing though that I find about science is that I use science in my
daily life to understand myself.
I use science to understand other people.
I use science to figure out how to solve problems.
And in the complicated and often difficult world that we live in today where people sometimes
find themselves at a loss for answers to complex issues, science can be very helpful.
Science is not just findings.
Science is also the process by which we get to the truth, the procedures that we use to
understand what is the actual truth, how far away we are from it.
So there's a lot to it.
And the last thing I'll say is this, that I find that most of the news today is really
focused on negative things, but there's a lot of wonderful stuff happening in science
all the time.
And I'm deliberately going to focus on the scientific nuggets that show up in media that
don't get talked about or get talked about very quickly, but people don't understand
how complex it is so that for all of us who are interested in learning and thinking about
things and growing, there are these glimmers of information that we can hold on to and
learn from.
Yeah, that's excellent.
And another piece that I'd like to add to that is what I would, for me, really what
I want to bring into this is just the childlike curiosity that all of us carried as this
from a young age all the way into our midlife or mid-professional career, whatever we want
to call this, without having let go of that curiosity and the excitement that comes from
findings that are reported or that you see can be so exhilarating in some ways because
it connects things that you had not thought of were connected or perhaps gives you a new
insight into something that was pretty obvious but was never considered a certain way or
a completely sort of revamped worldview about something that you might have thought you
understood.
So, that's exactly sort of the outlook and the plan for us doing this.
So I think we're going to try to stick to a schedule, maybe try to do this every weekend
for now.
So we'll sort of see how that works out.
And we're all off to episode one.
Exactly.
Thank you for that, K. We're going to do this once a week.
And like I said, we'll pick up on articles covered by popular media.
And then we'll also tell you why we picked that article.
Great.
So this week's article started with a news report that I think was featured on a lot
of high profile media organizations including CNN and BBC.
Yeah.
So I saw the video on CNN and as the title of this episode indicates, the video literally
showed an octopus punching a fish.
The video itself is fairly short.
It's about 40 seconds or so long and what you see is an octopus in the seabed scurrying
around with fish all around.
And then out comes this tentacle and punches the fish.
And I was fascinated for multiple reasons because the article said that the octopus
was punching the fish because the fish wasn't cooperating.
Yeah.
So it was absolutely fascinating.
So when we saw the news media article, obviously, I think both of us had independently clicked
on it and had seen the video, which you should totally check out.
So go to BBC or CNN and just search for octopus punches fish and you're sure you'll get the
article.
And it shows quite fascinating natural behavior of these species, which first of all brings
into sort of sharp contrast that they are all cooperating at some level.
It might not be something that we understood very clearly, but this is happening way more
than we thought it was.
Yeah.
I mean, so before we get into that a little bit, I'd like to say that the first thing
I did, which is what I usually do when I find something interesting on CNN or BBC or any
of the big media outlets is like, I find the original article and the original article
was published in Ecology, which is an open access journal.
And I read the article.
The article was actually published in 2021.
So it's kind of interesting that it was published in 2021 and CNN's covering it in 2024.
Yeah.
And I'm just going to jump in at this point and say that's exactly what happened in science.
And we know that all the time because, you know, stuff happens and we're producing interesting
information at a very rapid rate.
So kudos to the reporter who picked the story up and decided to publicize this so we could
do this podcast.
Absolutely.
So the paper itself was really well written and I found it an easy read, but I am also
acknowledging that I have a PhD, but I don't have a PhD in ecology.
So here's a few things that I found really interesting about the article.
Number one, the authors actually describe the fact that punching by octopus actually
serves a specific purpose in facilitating cooperation.
What that essentially means is that the act of punching is seen as an aggressive act.
However, that aggressive act is actually enabling the octopus to get what the octopus wants,
which is cooperation from in particular in the article, Group of Fish.
That's right.
I think the article and just to over this point, thank you for being a great scientist.
I did exactly what you did.
I went to the original article, which I was very happy to see was open access, which means
that anybody in the world can actually get access to that article and read it as the
scientists had written it.
It also has links in the article itself to the supplementary videos that CNN might have
used.
So you find a few more videos than just what you might find in the news article.
So it was fun to check out.
I think they had four or five videos of different kinds of punching behaviors reported by these
octopus.
So that was fascinating to see all that.
And then I think to VK's point, the article was phenomenally easy to read, even though
I'm not an ecologist.
I felt like it was not too difficult, um, relative to the news media article.
So I, I again strongly suggest, uh, folk that get interested after listening to some of
the stuff we're talking about to go check out the original article if possible.
Absolutely.
And I want to highlight over here.
If there are folks who want to become scientists, are scientists, it really helps to write clearly
so that everybody can understand what you're talking about, especially when you have complex
information.
The other thing that I loved about the article care was that unlike articles in psychology,
it had pictures like color pictures of the actual interactions with video supplements,
which I feel like automatically makes it an interesting read.
Absolutely.
And I think because it's a lot of fun to sort of see it, it's accessible at various levels
and to some of the points that, uh, you know, you made earlier about, um, the reasons for
punching, you know, when I first saw this, I, it almost felt like the octopus was enforcing
discipline.
You know, it asked people to stay in line and do their jobs because if everybody did
their jobs, everybody would get fed.
So that was such a cool idea that, that seemed to sort of just come out of this and that
species like an octopus could easily sort of, uh, well, easily or not, they are naturally,
uh, sort of implementing these strategies in, in the wild.
I think that's, that was the interesting bit.
So for me, and this is where I'm going to get a little bit technical now, so I'm going
to like dive into the article a little bit and talk to you all about what they were observing.
So the CNN article said that the octopus was doing it for cooperation, but the article
actually goes into some details about other reasons that the octopus might be doing this.
One of them is to essentially get the fish out of the way so that they can eat the food.
Uh, and the group of fish too seem to make these, the only way that I can understand
it, they called it referential, which means the referring to something else.
But essentially I think of it as like the group of fish start making like faces when
they get close to the food.
And what's interesting is that the octopus seemed to know what that facial expression
means, which is fascinating.
Yeah, absolutely fascinating.
So that's exactly right.
And you know what, my sort of research led me to sort of seeing summaries which said
that the octopus sometimes punches fish to maintain group cohesion and control the hunting
dynamics of the, of the situations, which I thought was, you know, you could, it could
have been a human being for all, all we, you know, if we could have replaced our octopus
with a human and we might not have, that sentence would have still been totally fine.
I know exactly right.
And I think that's the bit that fascinated me was this aggressive act.
And the writers of the paper make it a point to clearly indicate that they don't think
there's any spite involved, which means they're clearly saying this is not about feelings.
It's more about strategizing.
That's exactly right.
Right.
And it seems also that the expenditure was, was punitive, but was not sort of overly so.
It was just enough and just to keep the fish in line.
And you know, so you could almost sort of think of overstepping that line and chasing
away all the fish that might've been around, but it really didn't disrupt the hunting behavior
at all.
It just put the errant fish back in play.
Exactly.
And what I find fascinating about the use of this punching strategy is that there's
the same strategy, a quick little punch with the tentacle, which if you watch is hilarious.
Maybe not for the fish, but it's hilarious for us watching is that you punch, but your,
your intent could be a multitude of things.
You could be trying to tell the fish, Hey, behave yourself.
You could also be telling the fish that get out of the way.
I need to get to the food.
You could also be like punishing the fish for having left the hunt, which is very interesting.
Yeah.
And I think the authors of the paper did allude to that a couple of times where they thought
that the punching behavior was really to just put the group back into, you know, hunting
mode and for efficiency sake.
Yeah.
And speaking of efficiency, the writers did talk about the fact that it costs the octopus
who's on the hunt, right?
Like you're at the bottom of the ocean.
You're trying to find food.
It does cost you in terms of energy.
So they do expend energy for this, but it is self-serving expenditure of energy because
what you're trying to figure out is that if this fish doesn't work with me, I'm not going
to be able to get my food.
Right.
And that's where this gets really interesting.
Absolutely.
And obviously I strongly, strongly urge anybody listening to follow up and check out those
videos.
They're absolutely hilarious as we kept pointed out, but there's, it's just fascinating too
at the same time.
It seems like they don't distinguish between it's not, the punches are not reserved for
only one type of fish.
It's very clear or many different kinds of fish get put in place by the octopus over
this hunt.
And it was, it's just a great watch.
Absolutely.
And if folks want to learn more about, and Kay is going to correct me in a second.
Is it octopus or octopi?
I'm going to wait till the end of the show for that.
I have a whole thing about what the plural of an octopus is.
Okay.
So if you want to learn more about this, you can read the original article in the journal
ecology.
You know, also check out this interesting website called OctoNation that does cover
some of these behaviors.
But I just wanted to like talk a little bit about what does this mean?
And as a psychologist, I'm fascinated because aggression, right, self-serving aggression,
this notion of punching someone to get your way as a cooperative strategy that the writers
talk about as being part of game theory, right?
The framework that they use about game theory is that the octopus and the fish are involved
in a collaborative exercise where they are trying to get food.
Both of them need food and both of them need to work with each other to get the food.
And yet it's the octopus that's doing the punishing.
And I'm wondering if this is because is the octopus just more strategic?
Or is it just more like bigger and stronger?
One makes it think, right?
Like I don't know.
It's a great question, actually.
I didn't think of it from that angle.
But here are a couple of other things that this article made me find out.
Apparently, not all species of octopus hunt together with groups of fish.
This behavior of octopus teaming up with fish has only been observed in specific species
in particularly in tropical environments.
And so most octopus species otherwise are solitary hunters and they rely on ambush strategies
typically and their camouflaging capabilities to hunt prey.
So this sort of group herding behavior is obviously clearly highlights the cognitive
abilities and flexibilities of octopus.
But it's not widespread amongst all its own species.
And so and just on that note, there are more than 300 recognized species of octopus that
we know of.
That is so cool.
I mean, one of the things that I read when I went and did a quick Google search about
octopus is that octopus are really clever.
They have the ability to like get out of traps.
Amazing escape artists.
They're called Houdinis.
Apparently, they've escaped aquariums and gone back into the ocean.
I just I love that.
It's just like finding Nemo.
I just I absolutely love that.
And I think one of the things that, you know, with all the talk about aggression that's
in the media right now, I was fascinated by this this example of aggression within a cooperative
culture where both groups are just trying to get to food and, you know, working with
each other that can also give you a little bit of joy when you're like learning about
it because there was I I am reconsidering calamari.
I was going to say that at the end of the show.
Thank you, VK for all of you guys who like calamari.
Next time.
Remember, that is a very intelligent species that you might be eating.
Yeah, I know.
And I'm an omnivore and proud to be one.
But yeah, I got to think about that one.
And just on the intelligence front, I found a few more things.
Apparently, octopus is known to use tools.
It can use coconut shells and other objects.
It is typically seen carrying across the seafloor and assembling them as protective armor when
needed.
It's got amazing social behavior, as we just witnessed in this program.
It's it can it can form mimicry and camouflage.
And apparently, it's also known to learn by observation.
Well, there you go.
Well, how else are you going to make sense of the facial expressions of a different species
if you don't learn to observe?
And that would be exactly true with camouflage as well.
You would not be able to camouflage and mimic certain things if you were not a good observer,
I guess.
Exactly.
I just I just that little article in CNN, which again, like I want to thank the big
media for covering this beautiful article.
And the researchers for writing the article has given me so much joy this week has has
encouraged me to learn about this species that I knew a little bit about.
But now I feel like go octopus.
Cephalopods as they're called.
Is that what they call?
So what's the plural?
Well, so OK, so here comes the English part of this.
So any takers for what the plural of octopus could be?
OK, here are three choices.
Octopi and Octopods.
OK, I'm going to go with Octopi.
That's a good guess.
But octopus apparently doesn't emerge from Latin and Octopi would be plural if it did
emerge from Latin.
But octopus comes from Greek.
So Octopods is actually the plural of octopus.
There you go.
You learn something every day.
I love that.
Thank you, K.
We will see you all next week for another episode of Look What I Found.
All right.
See you this week, K.