Yeah, I've heard about and witnessed octopus intelligence before... they can actually watch and emulate successful octupi behavior in lab settings. Although I knew squid are closely related, I wasn't aware that they resembled one another in terms of brain structure.
> I know most Americans don't eat squid, cuttlefish or octopus very much,
but
> E. Asians do, including raw forms. It's also popular in Mediterranean
> cultures. One of my favorite dishes is stuffed squid cooked in tomato
sauce
> and red wine Greek style.
Fried calimari is also fairly tasy.
> If you aren't a vegetarian (good luck to you if you are), squid and
octopus
> are a good form of protein. There is some cholestoral, but not much fat
> (though I'd be the last to deny the importance of fat in diet--cook in
olive
> oil for example). And if you are troubled by the murder of such beautiful
> and intelligent creatures, you can be consoled by the fact that these
> creatures repopulate quickly. The Japan Sea off of Fukui doesn't yield
very
> much seafood anymore, but with one exception: the squid. And octopus is
> always cheap and widely available; the favorite way to eat it is
'takoyaki',
> which are octopus fritters. This is a very proletarian dish and shows that
> Japan had fastfood long before McD's got here.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I do think it's wrong to eat the most intelligent animals... including octupi, dolphins, whales, chimps, and people. A friend once told me that Noam Chomsky once made an argument against animal rights in private conversation by pointing out that, carried to its logical conclusion, we'd have to make allowances for the continued existence of mosquitoes. Not a very good reductio ad absurdum, but it seems par for NC's course.
-- Luke
> Charles Jannuzi