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Haha. I will be that guy about octopodes, but mainly because I think it's interesting what causes a word to take on that ending. I also happen to be 'that guy' when platypuses (platypodes) come up in discussion...although I think both plurals are accepted.

I have always wondered why we humans assume animals are so dumb. It seems to be basically that "because they are different from us, they can't possibly be capable of higher order thinking." That never has seemed like an intelligent supposition to me. This article is nice for me because I think it affirms, for me, what I had suspected: that animals can be very intelligent, it's just in different ways, maybe in ways that humans don't initially value (like, animals don't value commerce/economy the way we do; that doesn't mean they're dumb, though). I'm interested to see what more research turns up.