Researchers Studying Octopus Mind to Understand What Extraterrestrial Intelligence Might Look Like, Study Says

In 2018, some scientists published a study seeking answers to determine if the octopus and squid came from other planets that were blown away and landed on Earth. However, there is not enough evidence to support the claim.

A number of researchers are studying the octopus mind in hopes of understanding what extraterrestrial intelligence might look like, which is a lot different than human intelligence despite sharing some genes because of the common ancestors millions of years ago.

(Photo : Unsplash/Dustin Humes)
Researchers Studying Octopus Mind to Understand What Extraterrestrial Intelligence Might Look Like

Studying Minds of Octopuses

Talking to Emily Kwong and Aaron Scott, co-hosts for NPR's daily science podcast called Short Wave, octopus researcher Dominic Sivitilli shared some of his experiences and lesson he learned while studying the eight-armed cephalopod.

Scott said during the podcast episode that he met Dominic at Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island, where the latter was setting up his tanks in a room. There were pipes that pumped seawater through the tanks and each octopus had its own tank full of rocks, shells, and toys.

Dominic introduced to them the Pacific octopus named Lizbeth, which immediately rises out of the water and stretches to touch his hand. He explained that unlike humans with only 400 mechanical receptors in their hands, octopuses have thousands that allow them to taste and smell the world around them.

Their suckers have a local computation center where information is processed. It is like having mini-brains of their own that process stimuli from the environment. Dominic calls it distributed intelligence, which means that the suckers in the arms could be thinking for themselves.

He created a puzzle box where he put some shrimp in one of the crevices and set them on the wall of the tank. He observed Lizbeth as she explored each crevice and probed for snacks. He realized that the sucker employed a strategy to coordinate finding what they were looking for.

If one sucker finds something, it will communicate the information to the next sucker and that sucker will turn its attention to that prey. Neurologically, it looks like there is a sucker reaction happening in octopus arms.

Dominic also noted that the octopus he was studying in his lab seemed to be examining him as well. As creepy as it sounds, he said that the octopus would go to the edge of their tank and watch what he was doing and perhaps was making conclusions about him.

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Humans and Octopus Share Genes for Intelligence

Octopuses are observed to have exceptional intelligence, unlike any other animal. Their high-order cognitive behavior, like using a tool or figuring out how to unscrew a jar, has amazed researchers. Some believe it is a combination of smarts and sheer difference with human intelligence that makes them an ideal model to study the complex function of the brain.

A recent study published in the journal BMC Biology reveals that two species of octopus, namely Octopus vulgaris and Octopus bimaculoides, have genomes filled with "jumping genes" or transposons that make up 45% of the human genome, which are linked to the evolution of multiple species.

Transposons are dormant in humans and octopuses, but one kind of transposon in humans, dong Interspersed Nuclear Elements (LINE), may still be active. Live Science reported that they are regulated by the brain for important learning and memory functions in the hippocampus.

They also found jumping genes in octopuses from the LINE family that have significant activity in the brain linked to behavioral plasticity. But since humans and octopuses are pretty distant in the family tree, researchers noted that this is an example of convergent evolution, wherein intelligence evolved separately in two lineages.