Cephalopod Intelligence

Cephalopod intelligence, specifically the intelligence of octopi, is a very interesting debate that is on the forefront of biology. This is because octopi exhibit behavior that is atypical of their phylum, which includes clams and snails. In other words, they appear to be almost freakishly smart. The papers by Mather and Scigliano both addressed this topic, but had very different attitudes about just how conclusive the evidence is for the exhibition of higher intelligence, personality, and consciousness, and used different tones in their writing. Both papers addressed the research that supported the presence of higher intelligence in octopi as well implications of the research.

People have known about the intelligence of cephalopods since the time of the Greeks and Romans. Anyone who has spent time watching an octopus can tell you just how smart they are. Both of these papers addressed the contemporary studies that proved, at least in the opinion of the authors, that octopi exhibited evidence of intelligence that was on par or close to on par with vertebrate species, such as dolphins, dogs, and humans. The studies listed in both

The Mather paper is a scientific paper published in a scientific journal. The writing is fairly technical and contains a large number of citations from other research done in this field. It is a survey of scientific literature that backs up the presence of behaviors, personality, and consciousness that, up until now, had only been thought to exist in vertebrates. The Scigliano paper, on the other hand, was written for a scientific magazine. The language is less technical and uses far more paraphrasing and less direct citation. The different mediums of publication explain the differences in the tone. Both of these papers addressed the high intelligence and evidence for higher though processes, but did so in differing ways and with different