Is it harder for an intelligent octopus to live on land, or a human to live in space?
I have a race of octopodes with the same intelligence distribution as humans. I want them to "colonise" land to a similar extent as we have "colonised" space; have regular transport between the ocean and land, and have a permanent settlement. Ideally there would also be some form of EVA suit, to enable them to perform repairs on the colony - as we do on the ISS. Likely those who go to land would be the best of the best - just as we chose the best people to be astronauts.
I have chosen octopodes because I am aware they can manipulate tools with reasonable fidelity, as humans can.
So, the summary; would it be more octopus hours and to set up a colony on land as it was human hours to set up an international space station?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/136671. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
One major advantage that octopodes have in colonising the land, is that they can already make short stints out of the water without any specialised equipment. This is very much not true of humans in a vacuum.
A question asked on Biology SE details the ability of an octopus to survive out of water, and another source details that coming out of the water to hunt terrestrial prey is common behaviour for certain kinds of octopus.
What this suggests to me, is that given human level intelligence (maybe paired with a longer lifespan?), octopodes would be well placed to begin colonising the shores. They probably wouldn't even need particularly advanced technology to do it.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads