Lobster Jr. figured out the suspended moss balls so much quicker than our old lobster. He also spent most of his time hanging from the bottom munching on the moss.
Don’t look now, but this spineless sea creature may be able to count better than your toddler.
Cuttlefish need to be savvy if they want to eat. They’re always on the lookout for shrimp, fish or crabs. When a cuttlefish spots a potential victim, it shoots out two specialized, sucker-bearing tentacles and nabs it. Since these hunters have to make constant judgments about which prey are worth targeting, it would make sense for them to have advanced cognitive skills—say, the ability to count.
To find out whether this was true, Tsang-I Yang and Chuan-Chin Chiao, of Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University, brought some Sepia pharaonis cuttlefish into the lab for a math exam.
The researchers hatched cuttlefish eggs and waited until the animals were a month old. Then they started testing the young cephalopods. In each test, a cuttlefish waited on one end of a tank, and researchers lowered a two-chambered box with clear walls into the other end. A partition jutted out from the center of the box toward the cuttlefish. As it swam toward the apparatus, the cuttlefish would have to make a choice between one chamber and the other.
As soon as the cuttlefish made its decision and veered toward one side of the box, the researchers yanked the apparatus back out of the water. (This was likely annoying to the cuttlefish, but they got fed at the end of the testing session.)
To see how well the animals can count, the researchers put different numbers of shrimp into each of the box’s chambers, ranging from 1 to 5. If there were 5 shrimp in one side of the box and just 1 in the other, the choice ought to be easy. But could cuttlefish reliably choose 2 shrimp over 1, or 3 shrimp over 2? What about 5 over 4?
The scientists tested 54 cuttlefish. As expected, the animals had no problem picking a bunch of shrimp over a single shrimp. But they also passed every other test they were given. Cuttlefish were significantly more likely to pick the side of the box with more shrimp, even when choosing between 4 and 5.
Cuttlefish took longer to make these decisions as the ratios between the numbers got smaller (for example, 5 to 4 versus 4 to 3). Chiao says this is evidence that the cephalopods were actually counting the shrimp on each side, rather than judging the quantities at a glance.
Further experiments ruled out other possible explanations: Rather than counting, do cuttlefish just look for a denser batch of shrimp? No, because when researchers crowded small numbers of shrimp into tighter spaces to increase their density, the cuttlefish still picked the bigger number. Do cuttlefish simply seek out the wiggliest pile of prey? No again, as the researchers showed using boxes of dead shrimp.
Math isn’t the only factor influencing a cuttlefish’s decisions, though. Cuttlefish prefer live victims, and when researchers offered their subjects 1 live shrimp or 2 dead ones, they chose the former. When offered one big, fat shrimp or two smaller shrimp, hungry cuttlefish took the big one—but cuttlefish that had already eaten chose the two small shrimp. This might be because the big shrimp is a more tempting prize, but riskier for a young hunter to grapple with. For a cuttlefish who isn’t especially hungry, it might not be worth the risk.
Chiao says he wasn’t surprised by how well the cephalopods performed.
“We know that [the] cuttlefish has a complex brain and a sophisticated neural system,” he says. “Cuttlefish have to search for food constantly, so having number sense is important for their life.” Although the experiments stopped at 5 shrimp, Chiao suspects cuttlefish might even be able to count a little bit higher.
Similar research in year-old humans showed that they could judge the difference between 1, 2 or 3 items, but failed when quantities got any bigger. Rhesus macaques could judge between numbers going up to 4, but no higher. So this study, the authors write, “implies that cuttlefish are at least equivalent to infants and primates in terms of number sense.”
I had a biology teacher that told us this story about an octopus at an aquarium in Australia. The staff were concerned because their population of crustaceans kept disappearing. No bodies or anything. So they checked the video feed to find out what’s up.
Across from the the crustacean tank was a small octopus tank. This little fucker squeezed out of a tiny hole at the top of his tank, walk across the hall, and get into the crustacean tank. He would then hunt and eat. After he was done, he crawled back out and get back in his tank
Here’s the kicker: security guards patrolled the area. The staff realized that the octopus had memorized the security’s routine. It would escape and be back between the guards’ round.
My friend who worked at Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska had a similar story. Rare fish were disappearing, they suspected theft, and so set up a camera. An octopus was unlocking the top of its tank, walking across the suspended walkway, unlocking the other tank, eating his fill, re-locking the other tank, then re-locking its own tank.
I can’t remember what zoo this happened at, but there was another octopus somewhere who was unscrewing a water valve in the room where its tank was located and routinely flooding the place. The staffers had no idea what it was until they filmed the octopus caught in the act.
RELEASE THE KRAKEN!! But, sir, it has already released itself!
My dad worked in a lab and one of the rooms had a tank with an octopus in it. If they didn’t go play with the octopus he got bored and would climb out of his tank and steal the paperwork off the desks, and drag stuff into his tank to let the scientists know he was upset with them.
Stay with me on this video, trust me, this is insane shit right here.
So, I work at the local aquarium where we operate on a catch and release system for new animals every season. This year, our giant pacific octopod is this gorgeous lady, Doc.
We all know octopodes (or octopuses, as they’re more commonly known) are extremely smart; well I got a first had experience with that tonight.
In the video above, Doc is trying out a tactic on me that worked on my coworker earlier today before I got to work. She positions herself, as seen, at the upper corner of her tank and lifts the lid (which is weighed down with six bricks and additional lead weights, mind you) enough to blow a mass of water through her siphon and out the crack she’s made so it looks like the tank is overflowing. My coworker today rushed over and took the lid off to get in the tank, thinking he had to clear out a clogged pipe. When he did so, she took the opportunity to get a number of arms down the outside of the glass as she tried to climb out of her tank!!
I, knowing this, did not take the lid off, but watched her test the weight of the lid each time she blew water out, to see if I had taken any of the bricks off!! If you watch closely, a few seconds after she blows water, you can see the header with her info raise slightly as she pushes up against it. (We’ve since doubled the amount of bricks on top of there omg)
When an octopus decides it won’t be eaten by an eel, it becomes epic !
Harrison Stubbs, a photographer from NatureFootage, captured this wonderful scene. The octopus is literally riding the eel as in a rodeo, then exits in a blow of ink. Amazing !
When scientists first saw an octopus carrying a coconut shell and hiding inside it, they said they “almost drowned from laughing.” Another video recently making the rounds on the internet shows an octopus taking his coconut shell to the next level: transportation.
While Victor Huang was free-diving in the waters off the coast of New Zealand he encountered an octopus that took a liking to his shiny new waterproof camera. The cheeky cephalopod turned out to be a kleptopus as it immediately snatched the camera out of Huang’s hand and swam away. But that was just the beginning of their shared undersea adventure. Watch this video, shot by both human and octopus, to learn the entire story:
