Octopus can fish for prey while deciding what color and pattern to turn, what shape to make their bodies, be on alert for predators and aware how far away their dens are.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If you go to the octopus, and if you're not too squeamish, dissect it. You'll find that it has a camera eye which is remarkable similar to our own. And yet we know that the octopus belongs to an invertebrate group called cephalopod mulluses, evolutionarily very distant indeed from the chordates to which we belong.
Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food.
Experiments at Seattle aquarium prove that octopuses can tell individual humans apart - even when the people are dressed identically - just by looking up at them through the water.
I have always loved octopuses. No sci-fi alien is so startlingly strange.
To get to know someone so different from myself as an octopus, and to know that the individual recognised me and even enjoyed my company, was an enormous privilege. The octopuses I came to know were strong but gentle, and the suction of their suckers tasting my skin pulled me like an alien's kiss.
I heard one story about an octopus in a home tank who would get out, cruise around the house, take knick-knacks, and drag them back to its tank. Like a dog! They're so smart that there are octopus enrichment handbooks so you don't bore your octopus. I've seen them play with Legos, Mr. Potato Head, you name it!
The fact that three-fifths of an octopus' neurons are not in their brain, but in their arms, suggests that each arm has a mind of its own.
When it comes to the battle of the molluscs, cephalopods win tentacles down.
If you're feeling adventurous, grill up some marinated octopus. It's so healthy.
When I would visit my octopus friend, Octavia, at New England aquarium, usually she would look me in the face, flow right over to see me, and flush red with emotion when she took my arms in hers. Often when I'd stroke her she'd turn white beneath my touch, the colour of a relaxed octopus.