![]() ![]() "It is probably as they have a short life span and live in a broad range of ocean (from reef to deep sea, from tropical to temperate waters)," all of which have different conditions in terms of predators to evade and other pressures on survival. Wen-Sung Chung, the lead contact on the paper and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute in Australia, told Salon by email.Ĭhung analogized octopus evolution to shark evolution, noting that sharks evolved differently based on the ocean depths at which they preferred to swim. "Our study uncovered new insights to confirm that octopus brain structure indeed evolved as those of many other animals," Dr. That implies that they had a convergent evolutionary path towards developing intelligence despite having diverged from vertebrates long ago. Using that information and their new research, they concluded that octopus intelligence evolved in ways similar to vertebrate animals - specifically, based on the need to accommodate their surroundings. The scientists also examined data about four other species of coastal octopuses based on material in previously published literature. Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist. Thanks to the scientists behind a new study in the scientific journal Current Biology, we now know more about the neural wiring of four very different types of octopuses (or, in one case, octopus-like animals): the vampire squid ( Vampyroteuthis infernalis), which dwells in the deep sea and is technically neither an octopus nor a squid the blue-lined octopus ( Hapalochlaena fasciata), a venomous creature that keeps to itself while roaming the ocean at night and "two diurnal reef dwellers," Abdopus capricornicus and Octopus cyanea (also known as the day octopus). Scientists know surprisingly little about this subject, as a great deal of the research on octopus neuroanatomy up to this point has focused on one species, the European common octopus ( Octopus vulgaris) - which has about as many neurons in its body as a dog. Octopuses are either asocial or partially social - and all of them are invertebrates. This raises an obvious question: How did octopuses become so smart? Their tentacles are packed with neurons that endow each one with a hyperaware sense of touch, as well as the ability to smell and taste. Marine biologists have remarked that each tentacle sometimes seems like it has a mind of its own. Every octopus is a tactile thinker, constantly manipulating its surroundings with a body so soft it almost seems liquid.Īll of these things are surprising, at least in theory, because scientists have learned to associate intelligence with vertebrates and a tendency to socialize. Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith has called the octopus the closest thing to an alien that we might encounter on Earth, and their bizarre anatomy speaks to this: An octopus' mind isn't concentrated in its head but spread throughout its body. Among the smartest animals on Earth, octopuses are unique for being utterly weird in their evolutionary path to developing those smarts. ![]()
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