AuthorSharon Eden-Smith (@sharonedensmith) is the entrepreneur who established Eden-Smith Music. She will be posting blog articles about the business of...
On the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, there is a research & teaching facility called Bamfield Marine Station. There, they affectionately tell a story about an octopus who was a resident of the station. It lived in a tank on a table in one of the teaching labs. This octopus' home was located next to the saltwater fish tank.
The Bamfield staff began to notice that the number of saltwater fish was declining at the rate of 1 fish per day. This declining number was not the result of the fish dying due to disease; or there would have been 1 dead fish floating upside-down per day, but there was not. The decrease in the fish population also could not have been the result of one fish feeding off of the others; or there would have been part of a fish or "fish bits" suspended in the water. That did not occur either. At the same time, the octopus in the adjacent watery home was not hungry for its morning feeding. The staff began to suspect that this octopus was getting out of its enclosure in the middle of the night and enjoying a midnight entree of fish. To test their hypothesis, they set up a video camera to capture the night time activities within the lab. The camera revealed that this octopus would attach the suckers of a couple of its arms to the lid of its tank, gently push up on the lid & slide it carefully onto the table. With the remaining arms, this octopod would crawl out of its saltwater receptacle, sidle across the tabletop & glide up the glass of the fish tank. While staying attached to the glass, it removed the cover and crawled in. The octopus sat patiently, watching its menu items swim by, picked one & chowed down. When meal time was over, the whole process was reversed. The staff would find the octopus where it was supposed to be in the morning, with both tank lids firmly in place. The only evidence of the midnight shenanigans was the salt stains on the table next to the two dwellings. Researchers decided to study the learning ability of this octopus. They varied the types of lids on the octopus tank to see if it would learn how to remove them. The most memorable learning involved a screw-top, mesh cover. A number of nights passed as the octopus worked to figure out the best way to attach a couple of sucker arms to the screw-top cap. The video camera also revealed that this organism had incredible patience. It took the time to practice its techniques over & over again. With each succeeding night, the octopus got faster and faster at screwing the lid off & on. Only when this night time prowler had mastered the covering did it venture out to hit the all night buffet. In many ways, my students are like this clever octopus. They are capable of learning a plethora of new techniques. Those techniques, however, require patience & practice for mastery. And just as the octopus was able to enjoy a midnight meal after mastering the screw-top lid, my students, when they reach a given level of music mastery, are able to enjoy a beautiful musical buffet of sound.
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AuthorSharon Eden-Smith (@sharonedensmith) is the entrepreneur who established Eden-Smith Music. She will be posting blog articles about the business of... @edensmithmusic
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November 2019
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