[Animals] How octopuses could have helped avert the Cuban missile crisis

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As Cold War tensions rose, Gregory Bateson was busy observing solitary octopuses learning to live together in a single tank — and it gave him an idea about managing geopolitical relations.

In October 1962, the rules of engagement during the Cold War assumed particular urgency. Soviet nuclear warheads were in Cuba — and ships carrying missiles, launchers, and more warheads were on their way. The U.S. needed to establish new rules to communicate with and relate to the Soviet Union. Gregory Bateson, an interdisciplinary scholar, looked to his own studies with octopuses for insight into this problem.

Bateson understood that for birds and mammals, communication was rooted in parent-offspring bonds. In courtship feeding among many bird species, for example, the courted female begs like a young bird and allows the male to feed her. Bateson recognized that the feeding in this context is a signal, because feeding is not its only function. The behavior's additional function is courtship; that is, relationship building. Courtship feeding is a behavioral metaphor, an implicit comparison between one relationship (parental care) enacted as another (courtship).

In the context of the communications between nations, as related by Phillip Guddemi in his 2020 book Gregory Bateson on Relational Communication: From Octopuses to Nations, Bateson looked to another metaphor: that of closeness, physical proximity, which he observed in octopuses. Octopuses were interesting because females tend their eggs, but otherwise lack maternal care of offspring. Octopuses are also notoriously solitary. These facts drew Bateson's attention to their willingness to tolerate the proximity of neighbors as a metaphor for tolerant relationships among nations.

https://www.livescience.com/animals/octopuses/how-octopuses-could-have-helped-avert-the-cuban-missile-crisis