Nine brains, blue blood, instantaneous camouflage: It’s no shock that octopuses seize our curiosity and our imaginations. Science-fiction creators, specifically, have been impressed by these tentacled creatures.
An octopus’s exceptional intelligence makes it a novel topic for marine biologists and neuroscientists as nicely. Research has revealed the mind energy of the octopus permits it to unscrew a jar or navigate a maze. But, like many youngsters, the octopus additionally develops an impish tendency to push the boundaries of habits. Several aquariums have discovered octopuses memorizing guard schedules to sneak into close by tanks to steal fish; in the meantime, marine biologists have found that wild octopuses will punch fish… for no obvious cause.
According to Dr. Jennifer Maher, a professor on the University of Lethbridge in Canada, there are a “number of [different] types of learning [for octopuses]: cognitive tasks like tool use, memory of complex operations for future use, and observational learning.”
How does the distinct construction of the octopus’s mind allow all this advanced habits? No one had efficiently studied wild or freely shifting octopuses’ mind waves till a brand new examine by researchers on the University of Naples Federico II in Italy and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan, amongst others. In their Current Biology paper, the researchers tracked and monitored three captive however freely shifting octopuses, analyzing their mind waves for the primary time. Using recording electrodes, the researchers discovered a sort of mind wave by no means earlier than seen, together with mind waves which may be just like some seen in human brains, presumably offering hints concerning the evolution of intelligence.
Cunning cephalopods
Our present understanding of octopus intelligence could appear unbelievable. In 2011, researchers found that every arm of the cephalopod has its personal “brain.” Using a clear maze with meals in it, held exterior of the tank, the researchers pressured the octopus to navigate the maze utilizing solely its arm, though it might see the place the meals was. The octopus couldn’t depend on chemical cues processed by its mind to seek out the meals, because it usually does within the ocean, forcing the arm’s particular person “brain,” or neuron bundle, to seek out the meals by itself by processing the alerts domestically. Each octopus arm is believed to have round 10,000 neurons devoted to sensing its environment.
Other analysis exhibits that octopuses are the one invertebrates, apart from a number of bugs, to make use of instruments. They will compress shells round their our bodies as a sort of proto-armor and camouflage towards predators.
Octopuses may also mimic human motion by strolling bipedally, lifting six of their legs like a skirt, and scooting alongside the ocean flooring. However, that appears to be one of many few similarities between these cephalopods and people, as evolution has separated us by many hundreds of thousands of years.
“The enormous difference between octopuses and us stems from over 550 million years of independent evolution,” defined Dr. Michael Kuba, the OIST undertaking chief for the 2023 octopus brainwave examine who now works at Naples University. “Our closest common ancestor probably resembled a flatworm.” Yet Kuba and his staff are trying on the few similarities to study extra concerning the evolution of psychological skills.
Wiring an octopus’s mind
It’s no simple activity to learn an octopus’s mind. For one factor, the animals are almost unattainable to trace within the wild. “Octopuses are hard to see, and besides, they are often out of water in tide pools,” Maher added. “Only some of them habituate to people, and many species are nocturnal.”
To keep away from these problems, many researchers flip to captive octopuses to check their brains. But even this may show difficult. “Since the octopuses have eight ultra-flexible arms that can reach any part of their body and have a soft body with no skull to anchor the recording equipment, the challenge of this project was to realize a new equipment that was out of reach,” mentioned Dr. Anna Di Cosmo, a professor on the University of Naples and a researcher concerned within the 2023 examine.
Reach issues as a result of the animal usually removes or performs with the recording tools. Kuba, Di Cosmo, and others determined to take a brand new method by implanting their recording units inside the octopus’s mind, far out of attain.
An octopus lobotomy
“We developed a new engineering solution, able to record signals underwater, using small and lightweight data loggers, originally utilized to track the brain activity of birds during flight,” Di Cosmo added. These repurposed loggers have been fastidiously positioned into the higher head of three captive tropical octopuses, simply between their eyes. “The electrodes were implanted into an area of the octopus’s brain called the vertical lobe and median superior frontal lobe,” Di Cosmo said, “which is the most accessible area and considered important to control learning and memory processes.”
The octopuses have been anesthetized throughout their surgical procedures. They spent the subsequent 12 hours recovering, monitored of their tanks, being the primary octopuses to be studied in actual time. “We also filmed them with a sensitive camera as they swam, slept, and explored their surroundings,” Kuba added. While the researchers didn’t have the octopuses full any mind teasing actions through the subsequent 12 hours of examine, they did discover some fascinating mind exercise of their check topics.
When the staff checked out an octopus’s mind waves for the primary time, the outcomes have been surprising. As Di Cosmo defined, these signatures have been “long-lasting, slow oscillations that have not been described before.” As far as we all know, these signatures look like distinctive to the octopuses.
Because the researchers didn’t check the octopuses whereas recording them, they couldn’t hyperlink these distinctive mind waves to any particular exercise, leaving that query to be answered by a future experiment.