“Octopuses can learn, they can process complex information in their heads and they can behave in equally complex ways. Consciousness means they can combine their perceptions with their memories to have a coherent feel for what's happening to them at any moment.”
The star of the FIFA World Cup was the octopus Paul. How sad that one day later, all the disgusting food shows on TV had octopuses on their menu!
You Tube is loaded with evidence of octopus intelligence. One does an impression of a flounder. Another mimics coral before the camera. A third slips its arms around a jar, screws it open, and dines on the crab inside. They do all the things that are normally tested for intelligence. They can find their way out of the most complicated mazes (My son says I couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag). In problem - solving experiments, they have proven their short and long - term memory. They have very keen eyesight (Their eyes are similar to ours with an iris, pupil, lens and retina and the ability to see colour) and an excellent sense of touch. The arms have suction cups on them and these have the ability to taste whatever they touch. Imagine being able to taste with your fingers!
In the 1950s, biologists demonstrated for the first time that octopuses have massive and complex lobed brains, on par with those of birds and mammals.
Tests done by Oxford biologists showed that once octopuses were shown a shape, they could select the same shape no matter what its dimensions. Not only do they distinguish shapes and patterns, they imitate them. The mimic octopus moves its arms to emulate the movements of more dangerous sea creatures such as lionfish, sea snakes, and eels.
Over the years, octopuses have shown all the standard signs of high intelligence. They have an excellent memory, are clever and unpredictable. They can learn through watching others — an ability that was said to belong to mammals alone. The journal Consciousness and Cognition says, “Octopuses can learn, they can process complex information in their heads, and they can behave in equally complex ways. Consciousness means they can combine their perceptions with their memories to have a coherent feel for what’s happening to them at any moment.”
Researchers at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Austria have found octopuses favour one eye over the other. This corresponds to our right - and left - handedness, specialisation in the brain's hemispheres considered an exclusively human attribute.
Like all intelligent beings, they play. They throw balls around in their tanks. They choose their favourite toys (usually floating bottles on strings, take them into their nests and tote them along while fetching food — acquisitive behavior that is a part of playing. They are irrepressibly curious. "Mischief and craft are plainly seen to be the characteristics of this creature," the Roman natural historian Claudius Aelianus wrote in the third century AD.
Instead of fleeing, octopuses examine divers, tugging at their masks and air regulators. Aquarium attendants tell tales of octopuses that have tormented and outwitted them. Some captive octopuses lie in ambush and spit in their keepers' faces. Others dismantle pumps and block drains, causing floods, or flex their arms in order to pop locked lids. Some have been caught sneaking from their tanks at night into other exhibits, gobbling up fish, then sneaking back to their tanks, damp trails along walls and floors giving them away.
Anatomy confirms what behaviour reveals: Octopuses’ brains generate similar electrical patterns to that of a dog, dolphin or human. The world - famous author of "Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence", Jacques - Yves Cousteau, compares a dog and an octopus' intelligence. "When one thinks of how long it takes to teach a dog something as simple as sitting up or shaking hands, one must admit that an octopus learns very quickly; and that above all, it teaches itself. We did not show it what to do. With a dog, it takes months of patient work before the animal will do what one wants it to do. The difference between a dog learning and octopus learning is the difference between training an animal and allowing an animal to exercise its intelligence in determining the means to be used to overcome an obstacle in certain circumstances.”
Octopuses escape from predators not just by hiding quickly but by deceit. One example is the moving - rock trick. An octopus morphs into the shape of a rock and then inches across an open space. Even though it's in plain view, predators don't attack it. They can't detect its motion because the octopus matches its speed to the motion of the light in the surrounding water.
Octopuses use tools. They refashion coconut shells to use as shelters. Before retiring for a siesta, the Atlantic octopus gathers stones, props these at his den entrance and, thus shielded, sleeps. The strategy combines foresight, planning and tool use. Giant Pacific octopuses switch strategies to open different shellfish — smashing thin mussels, prying open clams, drilling tougher-shelled clams. Octopuses use their water jets as tools: to clean their dens, push away rocks and other debris, and drive off pesky scavenger fish. The main colouring agent of the ink is melanin, the same chemical that gives humans their hair and skin colour. Or they change colour and form to take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock.
In one experiment, an octopus was put on a chess board which slowly assumed the pattern of the board in black and white! Which means it was intelligent enough to understand the square pattern and imitate it.
The octopus spends much of its solitary life in a den, hunting at night. It changes its dens every week. When it ventures out, the octopus prefers walking using the suckers on the underside of each arm to move itself forward along the sea floor. But it can also jet into much higher speeds (40 kilometers). It takes water in through its mantle and expels it forcefully through its funnel propelling it in the opposite direction. It changes direction by pointing its funnel a different way.
Octopuses, naked and vulnerable, took to dens, as early humans took to caves. Like humans, they became versatile foragers with a wide repertoire of hunting techniques. To avoid exposure, they learned geography to cover their hunting grounds methodically and efficiently. In short, octopuses came to resemble us. Their hunting done, they huddle safely in their dens, a bit like early humans around campfires.
In the ancient religions they were worshipped. Now we eat them. In Japan they are eaten raw. Some small species are eaten alive. A “good” chef specializes in cutting an octopus limb by limb and eating the arms while the head is still writhing with pain. Octopus is a common food in Mediterranean cuisine.
The octopus lives less than three years. The female dies shortly after the eggs hatch. She spends months blowing currents across them to keep them clean and protecting them from predators, without eating. The male dies a few months after mating. The babies are on their own and the survival rate is estimated at one percent.
Paul is not a stray case of an octopus with predictive powers. Most animals have them: some sense the weather, others earthquakes, some sickness in humans and others bad people. So many restaurants have taken octopus off their menus. Its time you took them off your plate.
Maneka Gandhi
Courtesy: Star of Mysore
