Monday, November 14, 2011

The Clever Octopus

An octopus has been observed cleaning the front of its den after securing food, then carefully placing rocks to cover the entrance before going to sleep. Other octopuses have learned to open childproof caps on pill bottles. A female octopus used water jets to send a pill bottle to the other end of the aquarium, where the water flow sent it back to her.

Octopuses have particular human friends and enemies. They can recognize their own names when called and crawl toward caretakers they like. If the octopus doesn’t like you, it will squirt water at you instead.

Octopuses don’t have large brains, slightly more than one thousandth of the human brain. Sixty percent of the octopus’s brain cells are in the animal’s arms, so that each tentacle can think for itself.

Scientists think the loss of a shell meant that octopuses had to learn to hide to survive predation. Only the smartest and best at hiding survived. That’s why they use tools all the time – to build good hiding places.

Summarized from: http://news.yahoo.com/octopus-human-intelligence-155700763.html

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