Something interesting about the octopus is that it is independent and learning from the time it is tiny.

It continually learns from the real world, as more and more neurons accumulate.

This layered learning may be an advantage in terms of compact representations.

No doubt, the human fetus brain is learning much earlier than birth, or even from emergence of the first neurons. But it isn't learning from the environment directly, or making survival critical choices, from first neural emergence.

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Another octopus advantage maybe that it has relative independent "brains" behind each eye, and along each leg. The distribution of brain in a way that reflects its physical distribution, might offer optimizations too.

We know humans benefit from partially independent spinal cord activity. This is suggestive evidence that the distributed intelligence of an octopus may be an advantage.

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For exhibited intelligence per time, I don't think any other creature including humans comes anywhere near them. They even learn "theory of mind", i.e. the ability to model other creatures situational awareness, ability to perceive, and likely responses to different situations.

To learn all that, without any mentoring, in the order of a year, along with their body plan, would make the octopus a wild implausible science fiction invention, if we didn't actually happen to have them living successfully in astonishing numbers, and pervasively in essentially all ocean environments.

It may have been a very good thing for us that they live in an environment where a technological progression would be very challenging.

The prevailing research is “more neurons = intelligence”

And that doesn’t make any sense, unless there really is no configuration necessary

octopi bucking that trend is an example we need

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-025-02855-9

Birds have areas of the brain that we would consider language alike. Both for native bird communication and I would also speculate that for human to bird communication.

If you have ever owned a parrot this is blatantly obvious since they actively communicate and vocalize both observations and needs/desires

This reminds me of being told dogs don't feel emotions by someone who never owned one. Parrots most definitely can talk. Their language is extremely primitive but if you've ever been around a grey and it's owner for some time, they definitely talk to each other. The parrot will readily communicate observations and desires.

Many animals can communicate.

Parrots can't speak fluent English, which shouldn't be surprising. Last I checked, no human is fluent in Parrot or Dolphin.

Though, at least one parrot may have demonstrated an ability to understand language at more than a surface level.

So what you’re saying is that parrots are stochastic parrots.

Sure, but the speed of change is also related to lifespan. The longer lives you have (technically how long it takes to start reproducing and how many offspring you have), the less time you have to adapt.

This means that for a given unit of time, shorter reproduction cycles and more offspring results in faster adaptation which is what OP meant and what the unhelpful pedantry doesn’t describe.