The Cuteness of Cuttlefish

I know, it’s been a million years. Life, you know?

Anyway. My kids are going along, doing cute kid stuff. My car died, and I got a new one, and the roof is leaking and we’re going to have to renegotiate the mortgage, and I still haven’t managed to place any paid writing, or even unpaid for that matter, and my blog is sorely neglected, but the greenhouse had some nice surprises including cantaloupe, ginger, and an avocado tree, and something will happen. Etc.

This is about the cuttlefish. Sort of.

We were watching a Nova program called “Origins”, and the episode was titled, “Where are the aliens?” They wanted us to realize that we would have a challenge recognizing intelligent life if we encountered it, and also considering the question of how frequently technology arises in intelligent life forms. (Because of the Drake equation, used to estimate, or at least get at the likelihood of there being other technological civilizations out there for us to encounter.)

So, the scientist being interviewed studies the amount of “computation power” necessary for cephalopods to display their amazing feats of camouflage. (He wanted to point out that there are many ways of being “intelligent”, and only some of them would create technological traces.) He put his hand into the tank, and the cuttlefish came along and grasped his hand, and my lovely son (the small one) said, “Oh! *That’s* why they’re called cuddle fish!”

Cue his father and I not-laughing, and also not-correcting, because the world needs more cuddle fish.