Imagine an octo-pus playing all 8 oct-taves on an 88 key piano.
9 months ago
| 133
I have a friend who led a research team trying to teach squid how to play ukulele. I'd ask him for insight but they all died.
9 months ago | 298
i would recommend someone who has been actively caring for an octopus since they would know its specific personality and quirks. you could try contacting aquariums to see if they would be interested. i'm a marine scientist but don't know anyone personally who cares for octopi. i can try getting in touch with the caretaker at my local aquarium though if bringing the piano to the us is feasible
9 months ago (edited)
| 95
I think you will probably need to do something like piano tiles. A screen above the keyboard that indicates what button to press. Then when it presses the button where the color lights up, you give it a treat. If it has learned to do that, you can make it so it needs to press two notes correctly before it gets a treat and so on...
9 months ago
| 68
Look into OctoLab TV. They are a YouTube channel that does videos where they give octopuses tasks and puzzles. They have a good eye for content but also seem to care about treating the octopuses properly and actually understanding how they think and behave. I think they are around 100k subscribers, so they are large enough that you can be sure they are responsible but small enough that they will take this correspondence seriously. I think they could be a great resource for doing this successfully and in an entertaining way, but also doing it ethically, which is important when working with animals, as mistakes aren’t just setbacks — they can cause harm. Good luck! This seems really cool!
9 months ago (edited) | 19
Mattias you are one crazy bastard! If anyone can do it YOU can! I can’t wait to watch this adventure in ingenuity!
9 months ago | 5
As fun and cool as the idea is, that's a multi-year millions of dollars type task. You could do it as more of an exploration of the concept with some minimal viable keyboard with waterproof speakers to see if playing them music with the keyboard would get them interested and playing, but that's the furthest you could probably go with it.
8 months ago | 2
I sense that this is going to summon a bunch of Splatoon fans (like me)
8 months ago | 0
All I know about octopuses is that some days in training they seem to be the smartest creature ever, and the next it's like they never heard of the thing you're trying to teach them, their brain(s) work weirdly it seems. Additionally they are escape artists.
9 months ago | 1
I have experience with octopi, and with training sea animals. See a video of my crab, Spike, here: youtube.com/c/kaycecover/press (scroll down for video, I think the crab is third).
11 hours ago | 0
I hate how I was so confused seeing this post until I saw who posted it and was like "no, that makes sense"
9 months ago | 0
You'd think after buying like 20 pianos you would know how many black keys go in a row lol.
9 months ago | 0
Mattias Krantz
I'm really into the idea of teaching an octopus to play the piano. But I wonder—does anyone here have real-life experience with octopuses? Right now all I know they are really smart and has 8 hella nice legs.
I’d like to find someone I can work with to figure out how to teach it, how to design the piano, and a lot more before committing too deeply. Maybe you have contacts with researchers who could be of help.
You can DM me on Discord or talk in engineers-only chat to discuss the idea with other craazy people. discord.gg/6fDvQBaV
9 months ago | [YT] | 1,297