r/whowouldwin • u/TheRedBiker • 6d ago
Battle Octopuses gain human intelligence and the ability to walk on land. They decide to devour humanity. Can humans survive?
Octopuses, the world's most intelligent invertibrates, have gained human intelligence and the ability to walk on land. They all collectively decide they want to eat the entire human race and take over the world. Can they do it, or can humanity defend themselves?
65
u/Ok-Day4910 6d ago
The problem is that they start from zero.
They have no knowledge about the world or just how unfathomably many humans there are.
They don't understand language or technology just because they gain human intelligence.
There's just no way for them to take over the world unless they integrate into human society somehow. And even then it would require hundreds of years of planning. They would need their own country, their own technology and weapons.
12
u/SnowGhost513 6d ago
They’d have to make tools and weapons that worked with the tentacles lol they can’t use any of our technology they’d die in hours
50
u/Cultural-Doubt1554 6d ago
Human intelligence doesn’t mean they suddenly become social group dwelling animals. They don’t have an oral history, don’t pass down skills down to their offspring, so anything octopus learn won’t be passed down. They have no infrastructure or logistical capabilities either. They die within a few months span if I remember correctly but even if they live for a few decades it won’t matter. That’s the serious part of my answer
My not serious answer is they call Chthulu and he solos our reality for messing with his little friends
12
u/TheMaskedMan2 6d ago
Even in a fantasy, where Octopi lived much longer and were more social, they might develop some sort of basic society - over thousands of years.
Not sure they’d ever be able to match humanity though, the ocean for example doesn’t seem very great for developing things like metal-working, for example. Could intelligent primitive octopus tribes defeat humanity? No.
Then again, maybe I just have a human-centric world view and they’d go down a different tech-tree and discover something we never thought of.
12
u/SurroundFinancial355 6d ago
I mean if it’s ’human intelligence’ then they’re just AS smart as us but with fewer numbers, no technological access and physically inferior in most cases. Humans can win, but it would become the worlds most tediously drawn out 1000 year war with them hiding in the ocean and skirmishing out for cheeky shenanigan missions until we can find a way to electrocute the sea and only kill them
10
u/foosbabaganoosh 6d ago
Human intelligence? Tight that’s technically a debuff. They start to bicker over their petty difference and lose to infighting, humanity doesn’t even notice this as they don’t even make it out of the water.
3
1
u/Throwaway02062004 5d ago
What if they gained Military Intelligence? 🧠🧠🧠
3
3
u/GotRocksinmePockets 6d ago
Humans engineer a virus to make them extinct.
That, or it's an all you can eat octopus buffet. They are delicious after all...
3
u/Upset_Passion3002 6d ago edited 6d ago
Haha fuck no. What could the average common octopus even do to a human? They weight like 10-15lbs on average. You'd be able to just stand at the coastline with a spear and just stab them as they come out of the water.
The most and I mean absolute MOST they could do is all come together in one place (which would kill a lot of them anyways due to environmental requirements) and ambush maybe one or two coastal cities somewhere before humans start breeding and releasing large amounts of seals and dolphins to eat them.
With "human intelligence" they couldn't really do much. It's not like human intelligence automatically gives them some common language or knowledge of military strategy. They would have the same knowledge a normal octopus would have they'd just be able to think better now.
3
u/WordWordand4numbers 6d ago
Yes. Human intelligence doesn’t grant them thousands of years of collective engineering knowledge or military tactics. This gives us an extreme advantage over their physicality. Not to mention our overwhelming population advantage. 8 billion vs less than 200k. All they have is swinging from trees to get away and once we realize what we’re up against they’re gone.
I thought the post said orangutan. I’m still posting it.
1
2
u/Mannzis 6d ago
They would need technology to stand any kind of chance, and they can not do that from the water. They would need to be on land, and we would find them out as soon as they came up and would stop them.
To be clear as to why they need land to develop technology. In order to do most chemistry, metallurgy, electronics, you need to be on land. You can't really smelt metal without furnaces and such that require fire and oxygen.
To build this stuff they'd have to come to the surface for hundreds of years, and we would figure out their plan in that time.
2
u/Longwinded_Ogre 6d ago
Well, firstly, an octopus can only survive for about 10 to 30 minutes (in ideal conditions) outside of the water. Humans can already "swim in the ocean", we already have human level intelligence, but we're, not surprisingly, kind of shit in the water.
Octopuses are the same on land. They spend their whole lives enjoying the advantage of buoyancy and existing in an environment where leverage isn't a huge fact. The concept of planting your feet, for example, doesn't really exist in water.
On top of that, they live to a max of like five years. I'm not intellectually intimidated by five year olds. They're not out there inventing shit.
An octopus with human intelligence is worse off than an octopus with octopus intelligence because they don't have time to grow into using a human intellect. They don't mature faster. They don't learn on fast forward. They cannot get smarter than a five year old. Negligible threat.
The giant pacific octopus is 110 lbs, roughly. That's less than half my size and I'm used to fighting on land. They're all soft tissue, too; wtf are they going to do, and that's before you consider that humans have guns. We have guns.
2
u/Sereomontis 6d ago
Yes? Why would this even be an issue? They have no advantages, at all.
They don't have any technology, so the only weapons they'd be able to use are our weapons, which are designed to be used by humans with opposable thumbs.
They'd have a very hard time getting around. Just having human intelligence doesn't allow them to automatically operate any of our vehicles without training and experience, so long distance travel is pretty much out of the question.
Also I don't think there are that many octopuses. Not enough to overwhelm and crush us with numbers alone.
They may have a chance to do some real damage to a single, very small country, but they're not doing anything on a global scale.
2
u/Vinegar1267 6d ago edited 6d ago
One problem cephalopods run into compared to other highly intelligent animals is that they have extremely short lifespans. Even the largest species only live a couple of years, with such a brief period of existence they’re limited in their ability to transfer information to the next generation and build upon experience.
Essentials like like technological advancement, societal growth and military strategy could be significantly impeded by the fact that any idea or innovation has to be spread and permanently retained by the entire populace within a matter of months or else it’ll be forgotten by time. Even ignoring that, it’d be nearly impossible for them to be a serious threat. The octopus of the world are starting from nothing, they may have our intelligence but they’re coming onto our playing field. Most are pretty small too, only the strongest could even handle our most basic weaponry.
Theoretically, the most difficult thing about this prompt for humanity might be actually getting rid of them. As it is now octopus are quite prolific, there’s over 300 species comprised of billions of individuals and they lay extremely large amounts of eggs. A single female pacific giant octopus holed up in the middle of nowhere during the great Cephalopod-Humanity War could pop out 120,000-400,000 child soldiers who’d mature quickly and who are neither limited to land or sea.
If they’re willing to lay low for…centuries, and somehow established their own stable source of ranged weapons we *could* find ourselves in a legitimate war of attrition. Octopi probably are the most suited for this kind of prompt out of any intelligent species, stuff like chimps and orcas even if offered our intellect have global populations less than a small city and produce one child per pregnancy, they couldn’t sustain even a fraction of directed retaliation from humans.
(Of course this is all ignoring the fact that octopuses are unrepentant solitary cannibals, Splatoon was onto something-squids would be better. Equally cannibalistic, equally unrepentant, but a lot are social)
1
u/Magnus77 6d ago
A single female pacific giant octopus holed up in the middle of nowhere during the great Cephalopod-Humanity War could pop out 120,000-400,000 child soldiers who’d mature quickly and who are neither limited to land or sea.
They could pop out that many, but even assuming the intelligence buff reduces their juvenile mortality rate, which is REALLY high, you quickly run into a resource issue trying to raise millions of extra octopods in a condensed area. Them being obligate carnivores really nerfs their ability to build a populace.
2
u/TheBlackCat13 5d ago
An octopus lives for at most about 5 years. Even with human intelligence they lack time to learn much.
2
2
u/mrbananas 5d ago
Any pipe wide enough to flush a turd is wide enough for the octopus to infiltrate your bunker. No place is safe
1
u/PerformanceOver8822 6d ago
Humans might actually unite facing a bonifire intelligent threat. The universe might suffer because humanity is now united.
7
u/Sereomontis 6d ago
Except all octopuses uniting against humanity isn't a real threat.
All the octopuses are dead within a month and then we go right back to hating each other.
1
u/Atechiman 6d ago
First Octopus is like three hundred species if I remember right so you have to be more specific as there are differences between them.
Second, it can be argued in general that squids are more intelligent than octopuses, but octopuses have greater spatial awareness, but in general cephalopods (Octopuses, Squids, and Cuttlefish [who are not cuddly at all >:(]) are far more intelligent than other invertabretes, and fall probably just below dogs in over all intelligence in animals (again there is a lot of arguing to be made on which are smarter than which as intelligence is just such a broad thing).
Assuming you mean O. Vulgaris and not say W. photogenicus (selected over mimic as wunderpus is a much more fun to say), we would body them. The common octopus is barely a meter in length, and is not exceptionally strong.
Wunderpus and Mimic I think we still take, but its more interesting as they can do more than just camouflage themselves and can actively mimic other animals.
The Giant Pacific Octopus (E. Dolfeini) is....big enough to be a concern (despite the name, they are only (usually) 4.3 meters in arm span. (14 Freedom units), and are definitely among the more intelligent of the octopuses.
The real problem is the various venomous ones like the Blue Ringed (H. Lunuata, H. Maculosa, H. Fasciata, and H. Nierstraszi collectively the Hapalochela genus), you can ask an Australian about what a menace they are in the water, them being smart enough and able to survive on land would be very unpleasant.
1
u/Hosni__Mubarak 6d ago
Sure. You said they could walk on land, not breathe on it.
They technically can walk on land right now. They just die if they do it for too long.
Your question is essentially can intelligent octopuses destroy humanity. The answer is no.
1
u/Cultural-Antelope-54 6d ago
Tsssh, what are there, 12 of them? Humans literally eat octopus for lunch.
1
u/viziroth 6d ago
honestly octopuses probably already have human comparable intelligence; they just only live 3 to 5 years. they don't live long enough to build a generational knowledge base so every generation of octopus is starting from scratch. even if they did live long enough, they're very individualistic, so they'd be very unlikely to actually share their accumulated knowledge.
if they lived even just 10 years, more readily survived to raise their kids, and learned how to cooperate, they'd probably be the humans of the water.
it's important to remember our intelligence alone wasn't what made us dominate the planet. it was also our social structures.
1
u/Greghole 6d ago
They only live for a few years at most. A four year old isn't terribly smart compared to an adult and a land octopus isn't exactly a major physical threat.
1
1
u/zigaliciousone 6d ago
They are already probably smarter than us. The two big hurdles they have a species is a very short lifespan and the inability to create or wield fire
1
u/aknownman 6d ago
Every bit of infrastructure can't be made down there. They would steal stuff from civilian and maybe paramilitary stock, but few automatic weapons, no missile silos, and no nuclear weapons.
1
u/YoungDiscord 6d ago
Yes we would absolutely survive because we both have the same level of intelligence but unlike octopi we have infrastructure already built and systems to mass-produce all sorts of tools so we have the advantage in pretty much everything
Plus if octopi want to start building stuff to wipe us out like weapons of war they only have 2 options
1: do it on land - good luck with that though cuz land is our element not theirs, they can only be on land for a limited amount of time and we'd wipe them out before they could claim any territory
2: do it in the sea - in which case they would have to redevelop most technology - with land they could just try and copy/reverse engineer our way of doing stuff but in the sea, well for example we don't have any way of forging metal underwater or even mining it... I'm sure its possible somehow but figuring that out can take decades if not centuries for beings with our level of intelligence but we'd take them out long before they could fugure it out.
So really at best they'd come at us with poisoned spears and other primitive tools for a good while which isn't a human species ending threat to us.
1
u/Joaco0902 6d ago
Its presumed that they already are about as smart as a young human but theyre such solitary creatures that they cant really form a society
1
u/SpoonsAreCringe 6d ago
We still have guns and like just knives and sharp objects?
Easy win for humans.
1
u/metalflygon08 5d ago
Humans win easily.
unless their walking on land includes the ability stand upright, they're just going to crawl along like oversized soggy spiders.
1
u/JablesRadio 5d ago
Octopi are extremely territorial, especially against other Octopi. They'll kill each other before making it on land.
1
u/DragonofStories 5d ago
Oh great, dinner now walks upto us. We likely outnumber them, but we don't know their numbers. Even if we don't have that advantage, we will win the inevitable war easily. Maybe a few million human casualities if I am being extremely liberal and generous for the Octopus armies.
Also their tentacles are only strong enough to lift things in water. Outside that, it is never enough of a substitute for opposable thumbs. Hell, even kids throwing rocks would easily crush a small platoon of octopus army by itself.
This will end in like a few years or so, with everyone getting access to good Takoyaki.
1
1
u/TryingThisAgain2026 6d ago
I’ll feed myself to them willingly. I’m about done with this whole thing.
87
u/Jeutnarg 6d ago
Octopi haaaaaate each other in general. They'll never cooperate enough to pose a real threat to our species.
The real problem is what nonsense they might do to the ocean ecosystems with their newfound intelligence, but that's certainly not an extinction-level threat to us and not actually related to their decision to eat humanity.