Stunning clip shows an octopus trying to communicate in a way experts have never seen before
Humans tout themselves as the most intelligent species on Earth but that is far from the truth. Nature and life itself are intelligent enough to have survived millions of years on the planet, way more than human existence. Hence, the need for research that advances our knowledge of other creatures and their co-existence with mankind, is supreme. Those with even a sliver of interest in marine life would know something about the intelligent vertebrates that are predominantly alien to humans– octopuses. Now, a marine biologist researching cephalopods cracked the code to communicate with the deep-sea dwellers in a rare interaction previously unknown to humans.
Dr. Alex Schnell explored the waters of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of northeastern Australia accompanied by the crew of National Geographic’s Secrets of the Octopus in April 2024. The three-part docuseries helmed by James Cameron strived to capture rare moments of interspecies interaction between octopuses and other marine creatures. Turns out, humans also fall in the category. “Cephalopods were always a point of interest from a very young age. They're just so alien—they have three hearts that pump blue blood, no bones, and skin that can change color in an eye-blink,” Dr. Schnell explained to Newsweek. Despite their odd biological characteristics, the researcher said, it was only recently that octopus intelligence was becoming apparent.
To start with, Schnell and the team observed collaborative hunting and communication between octopuses and coral trout. “This coral trout was doing a headstand to indicate where a crab was hiding," she said. The trout fish do a headstand because they do not have hands to point out the hidden prey to their “cooperative partner” that is, the octopus, in this case. The team particularly followed a day octopus named Scarlet and Dr. Schnell had the bright idea to swap places with the coral trout. She followed Scarlet hunting one day and pointed at crabs that the octopus missed to check if they would respond. And it did.
"She let me get super close and I could see that as she was putting her arms underneath the coral rubble crabs would swim out and escape her grasp. So I just randomly started to point to where these crabs would go and she immediately responded," the marine biologist revealed. She was awestruck by the “incredible” moment and identified the great potential in the communication to research octopus behaviors, an avenue Schenll would like to investigate soon. She called it a “crazy idea” to follow Scarlet that would only transform into a rare moment worth cherishing forever.
These glimmers of intelligence, the expert said, were previously noted in dolphins, chimpanzees, and elephants, but not octopuses. Schnell speculated that Scarlet probably preferred as a hunting partner because she had replaced the coral trout with the added benefit of not taking any of Scarlet’s catch. “Here we are separated by over 550 million years of evolution but we're having a conversation. It just felt like magic,” the researcher said in the documentary, per the source.
Octopuses have long been associated with higher IQs than most animals because of their complex brain and neurological structures. They are infamous escape artists figuring out ways to free themselves from tanks and captivity, untie knots, and solve mazes. According to a study published in BMC Biology, octopuses and humans share the same genes for intelligence, called transposons. Scientists discovered the presence of these genes that make up 45% of the human genome, also known as jumping genes, that aid in learning.