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"amor meus in aeterno" I am totally fond of octopuses. Those creatures are cute, smart, interesting, beautiful, diverse. Here is my way to share this passion.

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This octopus vulgaris was spotted crawling a Topsail Beach (North Carolina). 

I just love seeing those arms work. Remember that there is no centralised brain here, but somehow those eight protuberances all find a way to work together to move the body to the sea. How awesome !

The little guy finally made it to the waters, stayed a while and disappeared with the high tide.

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Just an octopus hunting a crab ^^

A tiny bit of scientific details (you know me): to feed, the octopus envelopes the crab and bites it with its beak, cracking its shell into pieces. At the same time, the salivary glands release a neurotoxin to paralyse the prey. Then, the octopus has to wait a certain amount of time for enzymes to liquefy the crab’s insides, so it can finally lick it out with his radula... Crab milkshake time !

[video source] [feeding details source]

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The burrowing octopus

I am sure you saw this gif somewhere before:

What you may not know is that this is a unique skill of the sand octopus. Other octopuses are known to hide into the sand. However, to still be able to breath, they remain close to the sediment surface, with their funnel sticking out. This one is different.

First, the sand octopus uses its water jets to create quicksand and thus is able to disappear in a matter of seconds, using far less energy. Second, it has a clever way of creating little burrows, so it can really hide away.  

 → link to full resolution image

Burrowing is really unique to this species, and one suspect they developed this skill because, unlike many other octopus species, it lacks camouflage skills.

For sources and more information:

very nice article on newscientist.com

link to the original research paper

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A nice coconut octopus walking on two arms.

This is not the only specie showing this behavior, algae octopuses do this as well (and maybe others). But why ?

When octopuses jet away, the internal pressure inside their body sac is so high it stops their hearts briefly. Aside from avoiding cardiac arrest, “walking away” allows them to use two of their arms for locomotion and the other six for camouflage (e.g. make their shape unrecognisable). This is at least the explanation of Chrissy Huffard, a Senior Researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

If you are interested, have a look at this awesome video: 

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The artist Masayo Fukuda has been practicing the art of Kirie (切り絵 - literally ‘cut picture’, the Japanese art of paper-cutting - for 25 years. This amazing octopus is (from her own words) her greatest masterpiece of 2018. 

Although the intricate piece looks like several layers overlapped, Fukuda stayed true to the conventional form, using only a single sheet of paper to render her detailed depiction of an octopus [source]. 

This is truly beautiful. Look at the level of details !

More details and information: https://www.kirie-masayo.com/entry/2018/12/30/031054 

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An octopus escaping through a 1-inch hole :)

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Octopuses recognise individual humans

Many mammals and birds can recognise individual humans, as well as some insects (did you know honeybees and cockroaches can, presumably using olfaction?), but the generality of human recognition abilities in invertebrates is unclear.

In 2010, however, a group of scientists proved that octopuses can remember how individual people treated them, hence demonstrating they can discriminate between human individuals.

The pdf of the study report is available here.

The experiment

Obviously, responses that might indicate recognition of individual humans will not be the same as those used for vertebrate subjects. So how did they proceed ?

In short, two different individuals went daily to 8 pacific octopuses and either fed them or poked them with a stick to annoy them. Each time, various parameters were recorded, such as the respiration, the presence/absence of an eyebar, the skin color, the direction of the funnel...

After a week, the results were statistically relevant: octopuses behave differently in the presence of the annoyer or the feeder.

The conclusions

This proves once more how intelligent those creatures are and is a nice reminder that a two-way relationship may form between pairs as phylogenetically distant as humans and octopuses.

Side-note

Moreover, what I found incredible in this experiment is that octopuses seem need only visual clues to recognise us. Let me remind you that they don’t perceive colours... so how the heck do they do that ? Below is a picture of the two testers. Now imagine it in black and white. Not so easy, right ?

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While they are not psychology majors, octopuses can be very clever when it comes to hunting strategies.

I especially love this one, a scare tactic quite efficient, especially with shrimps. The octopus will creep up to its prey and tap it on its shoulder. Out of sheer reflex, the startled victim will leap away from whatever touched it, ending into the clutches of the waiting octopus. 

Simple and effective. But in order to do that, the octopus must be able to understand some basic psychology, or to project itself in the mind of the victim. Or maybe I go too far, but in any case I find it amazing ! 

(the video comes from the University of California, Berkeley)

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Stumbled upon this amazing video of an octopus burying itself in sand. 

The same, as a gif:

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Octopus face slap... by a seal !

Ok, so this happened: while kayaking off the coat of New Zealand, a man suddenly got slapped in the face by an octopus wielded by a seal. I just love the world we live in !

Here is this beautiful moment as a gif, just for your enjoyment:

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We should not be asking how intelligent are they, but how are they intelligent

Dominic Sivitilli, behavioral neuroscience graduate student at the University of Washington studying octopuses

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In the arms of an octopus | Islands' Sounder

A review of Sivitilli's talk “Octopus, an alternative model for intelligence, distributed cognition,”, were he discusses his research focusing on how the arms of an octopus communicate with each other.

Dominic Sivitilli is a behavioral neuroscience graduate fascinated with octopuses. His fascination is driven by many factors, one of which being the octopus’ camouflage.

Indeed, octopuses usually live in darkened environment and as such are pretty much color blind. Despite this, their skin is able to match their surroundings at a nearly pixel-perfect level... HOW DO THEY DO THAT ?   “If you can solve that, you might really be on to something“.

Another mystery Sivitilli if working hard to solve is how the octopus’s arms, which operate independently, are able to coordinate. (To me, the mere fact that they don’t end up completely entangled every now and then is already a performance). This is a case of distributed cognition that we still struggle to comprehend.

(I am still trying to find the original talk, let me know if you find it before me!)

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so beautiful and peaceful

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A neuroscientist and a marine biologist got together and decided to give octopuses MDMA. It sounds like a joke, but it really happened and the results are quite interesting.

I didn’t write for a while, but this article needed to be shared :)

sidenote: MDMA, the active principle in ecstasy, is a drug well known for boosting emotional empathy and prosocial behaviour in humans (and also to boost energy).

In short, an octopus researcher at the University of Chicago gave some MDMA to a bunch of octopuses and witnessed that the effects were similar to the ones in human. That is, the octopuses showed prosocial behaviours that go against their nature (indeed, octopuses are usually asocial/like to be alone, except when they are trying to mate). 

This is interesting not only because these octopuses don’t normally behave this way, but also because the last common ancestor we shared was probably some wormlike thing between 500 and 750 million years ago [...]

These findings might tell us a lot about how “ancient neurotransmitter systems are shared across vertebrate and invertebrate species.”

How fascinating !