...I'm rather fond of calamari. Also octopus. Yes, including the tentacles.
Unfortunately, well. I've had to give it up.
The squid-based aliens in Arrival (likely from a gas giant, although it's never stated) and their completely alien intelligence and language...
...may not be so different from cephalopods on Earth.
Captive octopi have been known to turn off lights from a distance with a well-aimed water jet, raid nearby tanks for food and deliberately cause their tanks to overflow. One individual (I honestly can't remember species), after feeding time, escaped from its tank, slithered to the researcher's office and threw a bad shrimp at him. Like dogs and horses, they've been demonstrated as capable of telling humans apart.
The guess researchers make is that they're about as smart as dogs, but there's more to it than that. They are literally alien. They have multiple brains, in their arms. They can rewrite their own genetics in real time.
Maybe they are only about as intelligent as a pig, and I am not giving up bacon, but there's something about the fact that we don't understand their intelligence that is giving me pause. And their behavior seems more like that of ravens...or of chimpanzees. And I'm not eating a chimpanzee either. (I suppose we all have to draw our own lines, right?).
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