Consciousness Has Nothing To Do With Being Human.

Scientific Concepts, Discoveries, and Nature Phenomena

Extremely Distributed Nervous Systems in Octopuses

• Claim: A species of animal (octopus) has nine brains.
• Claim: About two-thirds of its neurons are not in a central brain, but are distributed through its arms, allowing semi-independent processing across body parts.
• Examples of behavior:
  • Unscrewing jars from inside to escape
  • Carrying objects across the ocean floor and assembling shelters later
  • Planning ahead for events not yet occurring
• Claim: Octopuses can rewrite/adapt their own DNA (or genetic/biological instructions) to modify how their nervous system works in response to the environment—described as unusual compared with other known animals.

Animal Consciousness and Shared Biological Substrates

• 2012: The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (signed by leading brain scientists at Cambridge University).
• Claim: Animals (including mammals, birds, and octopuses) share brain wiring/chemistry associated with conscious experience in humans.
• Framing: Animals likely have inner experience, not only human-like cognition.

Problem-Solving, Tool Use, and Planning in Corvids (Crows/Ravens)

New Caledonian Crow

• Ability: Learns on its own to bend wire into a hook to retrieve food from a tube.
• Experiment description:
  • Food placed at the bottom of a tube too narrow to reach directly.
  • The crow observes the problem, then selects and bends available wire to access the food.
• Claim: This is argued to be more than instinct, because it involves inventing a tool form.

Ravens

• Experiment pattern:
  • Shown a tool–food association (tool retrieves food).
  • When the tool is removed later, they select the correct object from multiple options.
• Claim: They retain memory for ~24 hours and can plan ahead.

Face Recognition and Memory in Crows

• Claim: Crows can recognize individual human faces for years.
• Claim: Negative experiences may spread locally through crow “crews”/networks, leading to coordinated gatherings against a particular human over time.

Elephants: Grief, Memory, and Culture-Like Knowledge Transmission

Grief Behaviors

• Herd members stay with the dead, touching the body with trunks.
• They return for years to the site.

Long-Term Spatial Memory

• Older females remember water locations even where the herd hasn’t visited for decades.
• During droughts, older elephants lead the herd to water younger members don’t know about.

Matriarch Loss Effect

• When the matriarch dies, the herd makes worse drought decisions.
• Claim: Knowledge isn’t reliably passed forward because there’s no effective “writing” (or equivalent) mechanism.

2024 Study (Colorado State University)

• Published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
• Claim: African elephants “call” each other by individual names.
• Claim: Names are self-invented vocalizations used within herds, not labels assigned by humans.
• Playback results (described): Directed responses such as moving toward the sound.

Language vs. Non-Verbal Cognition (Imagery and Internal Mapping)

• Claim: “Thinking” does not require language.
• Proposed mechanism: Mental imagery / internal maps rather than words.
• Examples:
  • Rats “rehearse” maze routes during sleep via alternate-path mental simulation
  • Bees convey food direction and distance via dance—encoded movement rather than words
  • Dog example: the world experienced through smell rather than sight
  • Octopus example: sensory processing via skin light-sensitive cells, potentially functioning like “whole-body seeing”
• Main point: Complex representation can occur without verbal labels or inner monologue.

Emotions and Shared Mammalian Emotional Systems

• Researcher: Jaak Panksepp (career on animal emotions).
• Claim: Mammal brains share seven core emotional systems.
• Example mapping: Elephant grief (touching mother’s bones) is argued to involve emotional circuitry similar to human grief.

Reproduction of “Intelligence Without Inheritance” in Octopuses

• Claim: Octopus intelligence is not transmitted across generations like human civilization knowledge.
• Supporting arguments:
  • Octopus lifespan is about ~2 years
  • They don’t raise young
  • Each individual begins “from scratch”
• Contrast: Humans build civilization through cumulative knowledge transmission.

Independent Evolution and Deep-Time Origin of Cognition/Consciousness

• Claim: Human–octopus divergence traces to a simple creature ~750 million years ago with no brain-like structures.
• Argument: Similar complex capabilities appearing in separate lineages suggests cognition/consciousness may arise independently under similar conditions.
• Hypothesis: The universe may produce consciousness “wherever it gets a chance,” implying broader distribution than humans assume.

Deep Ocean as an Underexplored Biosphere

• Claim: Humans have explored <20% of Earth’s oceans.
• The deep ocean is described as the least mapped place.
• Speculation: Octopuses are “shallow-water” representatives; other branches may exist in the unmapped 80%.

Consciousness as a Property of Reality (Not Merely Brain-Generated)

Kristof Koch

• Context: Cambridge Declaration signatory; consciousness research.
• Claim: Consciousness may not depend strictly on a brain-size threshold.
• Evidence suggested: Consciousness appears in many physical systems.

David Chalmers

• Claim: Science struggles when it treats consciousness as something that emerges from non-conscious matter.
• Alternative proposed: Consciousness could be a basic feature of reality.
• Framing of difference: It’s about how consciousness is processed by the receiver, not whether it exists.

UAP/USO-Related Hypothesis (Speculative)

• Gary Nolan (Stanford): Takes seriously the idea that UAP-related intelligence might be not extraterrestrial, but from here.
• Jacques Vallée: Proposes similar ideas involving non-space/non-traditional origin.
• Speculation tied to oceans:
  • If intelligence evolved in the deep ocean for hundreds of millions of years, it might not resemble recognizable “artifacts.”
  • It might not leave written records and could communicate differently (e.g., light/frequencies not detectable to humans).
  • A connection is made between UAP reports over oceans and USOs (submerging/re-emerging).

“Universal Consciousness” Perspective

• Summary viewpoint:
  • Consciousness exists in some form in all living things.
  • Different “filters” (sensory modalities and cognitive architecture) shape unique experiences.
  • Pets (e.g., dogs understanding names/commands) are presented as evidence of awareness/intelligence beyond human verbal language.

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Listed Researchers / Sources Featured

• Stephen Hawking
• Kristof Koch
• David Chalmers
• Jaak Panksepp
• Gary Nolan (Stanford University)
• Jacques Vallée
• Colorado State University (2024 study; published in Nature Ecology & Evolution)
• Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012)
• Nature Ecology & Evolution (journal named for the 2024 elephant study)