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The ‘Mimic’ or ‘Mimetic’ Octopus? A Cognitive-Semiotic Study of Mimicry and Deception in Thaumoctopus Mimicus

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Abstract

This study discusses the mimic octopus’ (Thaumoctopus mimicus) acts of imitation of a banded sea-snake (Laticauda sp.) as an antagonistic response to enemies from a cognitive-semiotic perspective. This mimicry model, which involves very close physical resemblance and highly precise enactment, displays goal-orientedness because the octopus only takes it on when encountering damselfish, a territorial species, and not other sea animals that the octopus has been shown to imitate, such as lionfish and flounders (Norman et al. 2001). Based on theoretical principles and analytic tools from Mitchell’s (1986) typology of deceptive acts, Zlatev’s (2008) Mimesis Hierarchy and Zlatev’s (2018) types and levels of (self-)consciousness, this research raises the possibility that T. mimicus exhibits the following attributes: (i) bodily self-awareness; (ii) cognitive empathy, which builds upon deception and perspective-taking strategies to imagine or project itself into the place of the antagonist; and (iii) capability to reflectively reorganise the standard complete imitation pattern into a partial one in order to optimise its effect, based on conscious visual appraisal of the stimulus position. These capacities would place T. mimicus at the dyadic mimetic level on the Mimesis Hierarchy. For this reason, it is suggested that the name mimic octopus could be replaced by mimetic octopus.

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Notes

  1. The concept of mimesis sensu Zlatev should not be mistaken for the traditional concept of mimesis (e.g. Heikertinger 1925; Pasteur 1982). The latter specifies mimicry based on resemblance, such as cryptic and phaneric mimesis. In both subtypes of mimesis, the mimic resembles, with its body form and patterns, the physical or living element of the environment, such as stones, twigs, fungi, and plant leaves) (Maran 2017: 18). As this study will show, Zlatev’s types of mimesis and its different levels of complexity exclusively refer to performative programs, ranging, not exhaustively, from purely reflexive (proto-mimesis) to reflective acts (e.g. linguistic communication).

  2. This is a 2:59 min long videoclip extracted from the full-length TV documentary Wild Indonesia - 02.Underwater Wonderland, owned and broadcasted by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The videoclip was last accessed on 27 May 2019.

  3. See film clip at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/suppl/10.1098/rspb.2001.1708 for a longer footage of the sea-snake imitation (clip provided by Norman et al. 2001).

  4. It should be noted that although most mimicry cases are indeed based on predatory relations, mimicry also exists in other ecological relations and functions, such as symbiosis, parasitism and competition (Maran 2017: 8). This fact provides evidence of the multifaceted nature of mimicry, a phenomenon that changes in time and is dependent on the varied activities of the partakers (Maran 2017: 10).

  5. This paper is in line with Zlatev’s (2008, 2009) approach to the term sign, which necessarily entails understanding that a representation has the same meaning for the addressee as for the sender. This requires a sender-addressee agreement, which enables (successful) communication. A sign is intended to be understood by the addressee as standing for an object, event or action, not for ‘the real thing’. Every act is “meaningful” in the broad sense of semiosis (meaning making), but not in the sense of using signs.

  6. There are researchers, however, who argue for the propositional nature of biological signals in mimicry. For example, Queiroz et al. (2014) analyse the capacity of producing propositions (dicisigns in Peircean terms) as a general requisite for a mimicry-based semiotic system to arise, given that dicisigns also exist in communicative systems other than human language, such as pictures and gestures. They conclude that propositions can also be found in biology as simpler dicisigns, as is the case for fireflies’ deception strategies.

  7. Norman et al. (2001: 1755) produced over 6 h of video footage.

  8. Octopuses have been proven to be bilaterians, that is, they are bilaterally symmetrical animals with a front and back, and hence a left and right, as well as a top and bottom (Godfrey-Smith 2016: 22).

  9. This Semiotic Hierarchy, which consists of five levels, aims both to differentiate and to connect different kinds of meaning in a unified cognitive-semiotic framework in phenomenological terms (Zlatev 2018: 1).

  10. Though not communicatively since the act is not a form of intentional communication, which is a semiotic process privative of triadic mimesis and higher levels. Based on past experience, the octopus is aware that its imitation is effective, but it does not understand the act as a deceptive sign.

  11. At the end of the day, mechanic torsion and limb stretching unavoidably affect all animals’ elongated body parts that are articulated by muscles.

  12. BBC Animal People - Octopus Hunter (The “Mimic” Octopus) (Narrated by D. Attenborough) (1999).

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Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Jordan Zlatev for enlightening discussions and careful observations to my work during my research stay in the Division for Cognitive Semiotics at Lund University (Sweden) in 2018. I also thank him for valuable comments on a previous version of this article. This research was carried out as part of the projects "Translation-oriented Terminology Tools for Environmental Texts" (TOTEM) (FFI2017-89127-P) and "Maneras de actuar, pensar, hablar y sentir en inglés y español" (FFI2017-86359-P). Both projects have been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

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  1. Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, Department of English and German Philologies, University of Granada, Cartuja University Campus, 18071, Granada, Spain

    José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno

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Correspondence to José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno.

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Ureña Gómez-Moreno, J.M. The ‘Mimic’ or ‘Mimetic’ Octopus? A Cognitive-Semiotic Study of Mimicry and Deception in Thaumoctopus Mimicus. Biosemiotics 12, 441–467 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-019-09362-y

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