Top Highlights

• I knew little about octopuses—not even that the scientifically correct plural is not octopi, as I had always believed (it turns out you can’t put a Latin ending—i—on a word derived from Greek, such as octopus). But what I did know intrigued me. Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen. It ca...
• an octopus is put together completely differently, with three hearts, a brain that wraps around its throat, and a covering of slime instead of hair. Even their blood is a different color from ours; it’s blue, because copper, not iron, carries its oxygen.
• How can a brainless animal “want” anything—much less communicate its desires to another species? Perhaps Athena knows. To her, the sea star may be a distinct individual, a neighbor whose habits and quirks she recognizes and anticipates. At the Hatfield Marine Science Center’s Visitor Center, when the octopus was done playing with Mr. Potato Head, t...
• No researcher today suggests that all of this is purely instinctive. An octopus must choose the display it needs to produce for the occasion, then change accordingly, then monitor the results—and, if necessary, change again. Octavia’s camouflage abilities were superior to those of her predecessors because, living longer in the ocean among wild pred...
• Brain size, of course, isn’t everything. After all, anything can be miniaturized, as computer technology plainly shows. Another measure scientists use to assess brain power is to count neurons, the mainstay of the brain’s processing capabilities. By this measure, the octopus is again impressive. An octopus has 300 million neurons.