With their bulbous mantles, squirming arms, and clouds of ink, it’s no wonder that octopuses—from the kraken to Ursula in The Little Mermaid—have inspired folklore for centuries. But in reality, these cephalopods are smart, curious, and full of personality. For these images, photographer David Liittschwager spent weeks at Roger Hanlon’s laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and at Anna Di Cosmo’s laboratory at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, where he documented octopuses changing the color and texture of their skin, choosing meals, and exploring their tanks. He learned their skin is sensitive to light, and they can taste and “smell” with their eight arms, which can have hundreds of suckers each. “Can you imagine what that might be like,” he asks, “to have skin that can see and 1,600 tongues and noses?” Researching the roughly 300 octopus species offers benefits from understanding the evolutionary origins of the human brain to imagining an alien form of intelligence.
(Take the quiz: Octopuses have a lot of secrets. Can you guess 8 of them?)
High-res vision
Cephalopods, like humans, have camera-like eyes that focus light with a lens. The two-spot octopus gets its name from the ocelli, or iridescent blue spots, which are false eyes to startle predators that approach closely; the real eyes are above them.
Strong arm tactics
Octopus arms bend, stretch, twist, and contract, helping them walk, swim, move objects, and subdue prey. The combination of muscles, nerves, and strong suckers offers a model for engineers building soft robotic arms.
Quick camouflage
The brain sends neural signals to special pigment-filled sacs and muscle bundles in the skin to instantly change the octopus’s color, pattern, and texture to blend into its surroundings, such as plants, rocks, or corals.
Oodles of offspring
Around 50 hatchling California two-spot octopuses swim in a beaker. Females typically produce 300 eggs and tend them for a month or so before dying. Most two-spot octopuses live for about a year.
(Rare octopus nursery found, teeming with surprises.)
Hiding in plain sight
Less than an hour after birth, a two-spot hatchling huddles against the wall of its tank. Found in coastal waters up to 50 feet deep, two-spot octopuses prefer rocky reefs and ledges with small caves to use as dens.
Preferred prey
Feeding on a variety of fish, mollusks, and crustaceans, octopuses aren’t picky eaters, but they do have favorite foods. This female common octopus, when offered a box containing a clam, an anchovy, and a mussel, went for the anchovy every time.
Supersmart
With hundreds of millions of neurons, octopuses display a range of complex behaviors. They solve puzzles, escape mazes, and might even dream. Yet how they became so smart remains an evolutionary mystery scientists are working to unravel.
(Do octopuses dream?)
This story appears in the May 2024 issue of National Geographic magazine.
An Explorer since 2018, David Liittschwager has made seven books of photography and dozens of museum exhibitions on natural history. This month’s article on octopuses is his 18th for the magazine.
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