Jana Lenoir Privette is thinking of octopus and how clever they are.
Curious Octopus Floods Aquarium
Christine Dell’Amore cc’d to janaprivette.com
National Geographic News
National Geographic News
February 27, 2009
For one dexterous octopus, an attempt at a great escape turned into a great flood Thursday at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium in California.
The female California two-spotted octopus swam to the top of her tank, disassembled a valve with her powerful arm, and released at least 200 gallons (757 liters) of seawater into nearby exhibits and offices.
The foot-long (0.3-meter) creature remained in her tank and survived her ordeal. But the aquarium’s brand-new floors weren’t so lucky.
Such high jinks are typical of the invertebrates‘ still unexplained smarts, experts say.
“Octopuses have a wonderful combination of intelligence, tremendous manipulative ability, curiosity, and strength,” said Jennifer Mather, a psychology professor at Canada’s University of Lethbridge who has studied cognition in octopuses.
“So the result is that everybody who has ever kept octopuses has a string of stories about how octopuses can go where they want in aquariums.”
Unbelievably Brainy?
Many octopuses show behavior that suggests curiosity, consciousness, and even a sense of humor, said Eugene Linden, author of the 2002 book The Octopus and the Orangutan: More True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity.
In one instance, an octopus given a slightly spoiled shrimp stuffed it down the drain while maintaining eye contact with its keeper, Linden said.
Wild octopuses have also been found to maintain “homes” and can remember where they’ve been in their neighborhood, pointing to a sort of self-awareness, Lethbridge’s Mather said.
But it’s hard to directly prove that octopuses are intelligent.
A smart animal that has the lowly clam for a cousin already “flies in the face of conventional wisdom of where you look for intelligence,” Linden said.
