I came across this video the other day while looking up the lyrics to a song by Alkaloid called Rise of the Cephalopods - A 20 minute opus set in the future after a sixth mass extinction caused by man. After a few million years the Earth begins to rebuild itself. Cephalopods begin to fill all the evolutionary niches previously occupied by vertebrates. They take to land, they climb the trees, and they take to the skies. Inevitably one branch becomes the dominant intelligence where they thrive for billions of years until the inevitable death of the Sun where they take to space and and populate the galaxy as the true masters and heirs of Earth - I digress. I'm not sure if the song is inspired by the book this lecture comes from (the time scale is too close to be inspired by the lecture itself), but it's really interesting stuff regardless.

Because you asked.

There's something very unsettling about squid. All that intelligence equiped with tentacles.

and built in rocket propulsion

And that mouth...

I've purchased my mother Cephalopod fossils, polished, set in their stone as her Xmas prezzie. Little did I know that two days before I bought it you posted this vid, and now I can relay their tale when we exchange gifts later today - how very serendipitous!
Cheers!

What’s most interesting, to me, about cephalopods is the fact that until the rise of maniraptoran theropods they were the most intelligent group of animals on the planet.

Oh, and not all cephalopods are “short lived”.

https://futurism.com/scientists-discove ... -4-5-years

RS

Keep It Real wrote:I've purchased my mother Cephalopod fossils, polished, set in their stone as her Xmas prezzie. Little did I know that two days before I bought it you posted this vid, and now I can relay their tale when we exchange gifts later today - how very serendipitous!
Cheers!

My work here is done.