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00:00This is my pet octopus named sashimi and this is a vault filled with all her favorite food
00:05The only problem is in order to get to this vault
00:08She'll have to rely on her incredible intelligence and dexterity to make it all the way through this nine-part
00:14Underwater obstacle course and just like when I made my backyard obstacle course for squirrels out of the gate
00:20I will admit in hindsight
00:21I completely underestimated the capabilities of this remarkable creature but to understand how we even ended up at this spot
00:28We need to go back in time six months when I decided to get a pet octopus to see for myself
00:32If they were really as smart as people say they are and after bringing her home to crunch labs and putting her into a saltwater
00:39optimized and
00:41Appropriately decorated tank she made herself right at home and the first thing that stood out is just how curious they are
00:47For example when you put anything into the tank including your arm
00:50They immediately swim towards it and just want to interact I will cover this in a minute
00:55But beyond just being able to really securely latch on to things like my hand
00:58She's so strong!
01:00Oh my god!
01:02Her suckers are also gathering information about me like my smell, taste, and color
01:07And so after just a few weeks given how playful she is it's hard not to form a quick bond
01:12For example she loved to go up and wave for tentacles in the jet stream
01:15Which I assume is the octopus equivalent of a dog sticking its head out a car window
01:19She could play catch with us she had a propensity for selfies anytime she saw a camera and whenever we'd put a toy submersible in her tank
01:27She would go full 20 000 leagues under the sea
01:30And as I did more research I learned that for the hundred million octopi every year us humans put on a dinner plate or in a pet store
01:37Basically all are born and originally raised in the ocean meaning they aren't bred in captivity
01:43Which is when I was hit with the startling realization that essentially made me the bad guy in finding nemo
01:48And since no one wants to be the bad guy in finding nemo as much as we'd already come to love sashimi here at crunch labs
01:54I did some investigating and found out from the pet store
01:56We got her from the exact spot they pulled her out of the ocean
01:59The only problem with my plan of returning her was she'd been hand-fed now for quite some time
02:03So the idea was that if she could figure out and remember how to solve an obstacle course maze
02:07Then I would be assured that she could figure out and remember her early days hunting in the ocean
02:11And we could send her back home with confidence
02:13Phase one of the plan was to give her some challenges and then observe her behavior to understand what capabilities she actually had
02:19And as it turns out
02:21It's a lot
02:23For starters their ability to color and shape-shift is unmatched in the animal kingdom
02:28For example, can you spot the octopus hiding in plain sight right here?
02:33And the only thing more impressive than that is when you slow it down and play it in reverse
02:38To see just how quickly and convincingly these changes occur
02:42And it's not just camouflage as a form of protection
02:45They can also mimic the shape of larger more predatory animals like eels
02:49And as sashimi shows here and you can see here
02:51They've even come up with some pretty creative ways to scoot themselves around
02:55And on top of that there's stories from octopus researchers
02:58Where they will recognize and shoot water at only one specific person anytime they walk by the tank
03:03And they'll still recognize that person even if they switch clothes with other people
03:07Or there's other stories where the octopus will repeatedly shoot water jets at the light switch
03:11To turn off the lights in the room
03:13It's also not uncommon for them to escape their tanks at night to better map out the room they're being stored in
03:18Or to even raid the other tanks for food only to return to their tank in the morning like nothing ever happened
03:23And after a month or two of observation once we had really come to understand each other
03:27We had all the data we needed to enter phase two
03:30So after a lot of brainstorming, CAD, 3D printing, and laser cutting
03:34We eventually landed here
03:35Starting at the conclusion of the nine-part obstacle course with the golden vault
03:39If she can figure out how to unscrew the vault door
03:42Well then she's earned the three pounds of her favorite food shrimp contained therein
03:46And the reason we know it's her favorite food is because over the course of a week
03:49We've prepared an underwater seafood buffet with four different food options
03:52And all four times we repeated the experiment
03:54The aroma from the shrimp was consistently the most irresistible
03:57But in order to earn that succulent reward
04:00She's got her work cut out for her
04:01Starting back at the beginning with challenge number one the over under
04:05If she finds a way to get under this barrier through these rocks
04:08Well then she's got to find a way to get over this barrier through these floating balls
04:12And if she manages that then it's through the green circular portal
04:15Where she'll find herself face to face with this four panel revolving door
04:19And if she works out how revolving doors work and makes it through the next green portal
04:22Well then sashimi will basically be met by a wall
04:25And at this point it's game over unless she correctly deduces that by pushing this block out
04:30She could pass through the corridor and continue her journey upwards to the ball drop
04:34And this is where things level up a notch because dexterity becomes much more critical
04:38In this case she has to grab this lever and rotate it in this slot
04:41Which will allow it to fall down with the balls trailing behind
04:45Clearing up the pathway upwards through the tube
04:47But then once she swims up the tube she'll be trapped
04:50Because the porthole out is blocked by this red gate
04:53That is unless she figures out how to hit the emergency exit button
04:56Which will push this glass counterweight ball down off the edge
04:59Thereby pulling the gate up and allowing entry into perhaps my favorite obstacle
05:03The fish out of water
05:04Because here the only way for sashimi to continue her progress
05:08Would be to flex her ability to comfortably live on land for up to an hour
05:11By crawling out of the water up over and back down on the other side
05:16Where after passing through the portal she gets a bit of a power up
05:19Because on the back side of the snorkeling fat gus is a shrimp
05:22Now this is a bit of a throwback to the tourist trap on the squirrel maze
05:26Where a strategically placed snack led to a timely photo op
05:29But in this case I call it the bedusa
05:31Because the hope is that as she eats the shrimp with her beak
05:33On the underside of where her legs all come together
05:35It will look like fat gus has eight braids of beautiful flowing hair
05:39And now that she's feeling refreshed
05:41sashimi can hopefully finish strong with the penultimate challenge
05:44Which is sort of a double obstacle
05:46Because there are six holes in the top ranging from small to really small
05:49And if she takes the easy route by squeezing through the least small hole
05:53Well then she has a lot more maze to deal with
05:55As opposed to the smallest hole that puts her right at the finish
05:57Either way at this point she's made it here
05:59And if she solves the final puzzle by unscrewing the vault door
06:02She's not only earned the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet
06:05But she's proven she's quick enough on her tentacles
06:08To handle being returned back to her ocean home to the very tide pools she was raised in
06:13So with everything in place all that was left to do was open this ball valve
06:16And as the smell of fresh shrimp made its way to her tank she made her way down the tube
06:21Like an eight-legged gladiator to her saltwater coliseum
06:24So while we wait for her to make that 40 second trek
06:26This is the perfect time to mention that if you want a christmas morning reaction like this
06:31Or this
06:32Or this
06:33Yes! Look!
06:34Then a Crunch Labs BuildBox subscription is the answer
06:37Because with the BuildBox not only do you get a super fun toy that you get to put together every month
06:41But you do it alongside me while I teach you all the incredible physics behind how it works
06:46We're right there in the trenches building learning and succeeding together so the principles really sink in
06:51It works!
06:52So if you're a kid and you're looking for something to put at the top of your christmas list
06:55Or you're just looking to be the household hero by giving it to someone else
06:59Use the link in the video description or head to crunchlabs.com
07:01Where we're giving away two free boxes as our holiday special
07:05Now back to sashimi
07:06After making it into the main tank then sort of exploring the borders of the maze for a bit
07:10She made her way inside fairly quickly but then sort of just chilled
07:14Like she really didn't understand what she was supposed to do next
07:17But since you can only ignore the ambrosial smell of raw fresh shrimp for so long
07:22She eventually got curious and started exploring
07:24And one of the first things we observed is that anytime she's in a new environment
07:27She kind of maps things out by walking around gathering data with her arms
07:31As opposed to just swimming around freely through the middle
07:34And soon enough she had things figured out
07:36Now admittedly this first challenge was a bit of a softball
07:38Because having observed sashimi in her home tank
07:41I knew she was good at digging and burrowing herself in the sand
07:44Using the water propulsion from her siphon tube to clear the rocks away
07:47The floating balls were even less of a challenge for her
07:50And after making it through you really get a sense of how much
07:52She sends out her arms as scouts to gather critical information
07:56Especially in the wild they could reach their arms around and inside crevices
08:00Not only to smell and taste but as we'll cover in a minute even see and independently think
08:05So obstacle one was pretty straightforward but figuring out how to operate a revolving door
08:09Would be a much harder test
08:13Wow
08:15Okay, I see how this is gonna be
08:17This was my first real indicator that we were headed for a real battle of wits
08:22It was a similar feeling to when the squirrels eventually outsmarted my rope bridge of instability
08:27By just jumping over it all together
08:29And I really should have seen this coming
08:31Because as you can see in this video of an octopus escaping from a ship
08:34As long as an opening is bigger than their beak
08:36Which is the only actual hard part of their body
08:39Then they can eventually squeeze through it
08:41In fact if we roll that back
08:42You can see sashimi's beak or mouth right here
08:45And while this part looks like a big nose
08:47That's actually their main body where all their vital organs reside
08:51Like their brain, stomach, gills, kidneys, ink sac, siphon, and their three hearts
08:57Two other cool facts about octopi is their blood is blue
09:00Because it's copper based since that's more efficient in cold low oxygen environments
09:04And if they lose an arm they can regrow it completely
09:06And it will look indistinguishable from the original
09:09Next up was the block push
09:11Once again she got to this point and was sort of stumped without an obvious path forward
09:15But this is where their natural curiosity pays off
09:17Because she's not just feeling surfaces with her arms
09:20But also constantly pulling and pushing to see what she can interact with
09:24And so sort of by default she figured out this red part of the wall doesn't push back as hard
09:29Which cleared the way up to the ball drop
09:31And I knew this one would be tough for her
09:32Because number one there's not enough room for her to just squeeze by
09:35And number two pushing and pulling on walls wasn't gonna solve it either
09:39And after struggling in vain to find out what she was supposed to do for quite some time
09:43Eventually she got frustrated and just stopped and sat there
09:46Almost like she was processing all the data she just gathered
09:50And this was the moment I knew for sure I was in over my head
09:53Because while basically maintaining eye contact with me as a flex
09:57She reaches up with one arm and then twists the bar
10:01Which dislodges the ball allowing her to clear them out and move on
10:05And this feels like the perfect moment to tell you that my absolute favorite fact about the octopus
10:09Is that they are truly the closest thing we have to intelligent alien life on this planet
10:15And here's what I mean by that
10:16This is a very simplified version of a tree of life
10:19These kind of diagrams show you how all life is related and what evolved from what
10:23How do we know this?
10:24Well by being true scientific detectives and looking for clues
10:27For example a few hundred years ago scientists noticed that us humans have seven vertebrae in our necks
10:32But so do giraffes
10:34But wait a sec
10:35So do whales, mice, elephants, lions, horses, and bats
10:39So that's a clue they all share a common ancestor and belong to this group called mammals
10:44And it's not just neck bones
10:45Watch what happens if you compare the arm bone configurations of a human to a bat to a chicken to a turtle to a dolphin
10:53It's wild what tiny beneficial mutations and millions of generations can produce
10:58And of course with genome sequencing developing over the last 40 years
11:01It's allowed us to compare the DNA of different species and sort of check our answers in the back of the book
11:06Anyways using these techniques if you want to see where our lineage broke off from that of octopi in the tree of life
11:11You have to go back over half a billion years ago to a simple flat worm
11:16But if you look closely all of what we think of as the smart animals are over here on this side of the tree of life
11:22Including dolphins, dogs, pigs, horses, humans, but even birds, dinosaurs, and fish
11:28And their intelligence and way of thinking are all related to each other sort of like those arm bones I showed
11:33But octopi developed their intelligence completely independently from everything over here
11:38Like an alien from another planet
11:41And that's why they're built just so differently from us
11:43For example they have twice as many neurons as a cat
11:45But unlike all the animals over here where all the neurons are focused in the brain
11:49In octopi only one-third of their neurons are in the brain
11:52And the rest are in their arms
11:54Which means they not only smell and taste but they can even think and act independently with their arms
11:59That means that even if their arm is cut off the arm can still camouflage itself to the surroundings by sensing light
12:05It would be like closing your eyes walking into a room touching a wall and having your hand match the color
12:11Having eight independent mini brains along with a larger central brain is as incomprehensible as alien intelligence to us
12:19Now back at the maze sashimi had made it to the emergency button putting her at the halfway mark
12:24And as usual she starts by having her arms do all the recon work
12:27And it's almost like once she feels the red door she figures out my trick
12:31And then immediately pushes the button to drop the ball
12:34And open the gate to move on to my favorite obstacle the fish out of water
12:39And I was relieved to see that I had thrown her another curve ball
12:42Because after quite a bit of exploratory arm expeditions
12:46She realizes the only way forward is up and out
12:49And so after psyching herself up
12:54She just goes for it sliding up
12:58Over
13:00And eventually down and this demonstrates another octopus superpower because they could survive out of water for up to an hour and as you can see here
13:07Oh shoddy there's an octopus eating a crab
13:11It's one of the reasons they're such successful hunters in and around tide pools and now that we're coming down the final stretch
13:17I figured she deserved a bit of a snack break with the medusa
13:20And just like I'd hoped once she saw the shrimp attached to the back
13:23She starts chomping down with her beak
13:25And since that's right at the center of all her legs
13:27We get a couple different hair options for fat gus
13:30Starting first with a more free-flowing sandy blonde option
13:33Which eventually morphed into more of a dark-haired updo
13:35Now the reason she's able to change her appearance so drastically is because all octopi have four tricks up their sleeve
13:41First their skin is covered in tiny little sacks called chromatophores
13:44Filled with either black red or yellow pigment
13:46And then they use their muscles to stretch those sacks like a balloon to achieve any combination of those three colors
13:51Then they've got a layer below that called iridophores that bounce back specific wavelengths of light
13:56Giving those iridescent blues like peacocks or beetles
13:59Then there's even one more layer that reflects back ambient light called lucifores
14:04On top of all that they can also use a muscular structure called papillae to change the texture of their skin creating ridges and bumps
14:10And because they could change any of those in as little as 200 milliseconds which is literally less than the blink of an eye
14:15It makes them the true masters of disguise in the animal kingdom
14:18Now she was on to the maze and you can see she opted for the largest hole
14:22Which of course means she had the maximum amount of maze ahead of her
14:25And I love this because it's sort of classic sashimi at this point
14:28But you can see she's willing to play along for quite a while and make just about every possible wrong turn along the way
14:34But then eventually she's over it and just cuts right to the end and while that's technically an automatic dq
14:39I took the high road and let it slide
14:41Which brought her to the golden vault after a month or so of training on all the obstacles
14:45She had finally done it and with the tide on her side
14:48She went straight for the door ripped it off the foundation and then immediately
14:52Basted in the sweet delicious taste of a hard-earned victory in the largest stockpile of shrimp
14:58She'd ever seen and after letting her gorge for a bit
15:01It was time for me to uphold my end of the deal and give her the finding nemo happy ending
15:05She deserved by driving her eight hours down the coast back to the exact beach where she was raised
15:11Having figured out and remembered the solutions to all my dumb puzzles
15:14I was convinced she could certainly figure out and remember what it was like to hunt for her own food in the open ocean
15:20And this was a bittersweet moment because there's one octopus fact
15:23I haven't mentioned and that's that their entire lifespan is only about one and a half years and as a final act after laying her eggs
15:30A female will continually watch over and protect them to the point that she stops eating and dies
15:37Which meant in the exact same coves and tide pools that her mother did for her soon sashimi would be extending that ever-changing tree of life
15:44By one more generation only perhaps this time creating a new branch of super intelligent puzzle solving offspring
15:52With everything you know about sashimi at this point it should come as no surprise
15:55She also has incredible taste in toys, but what should also hopefully not surprise you after watching the videos
16:00I've been making on youtube for 12 years is that learning science and engineering doesn't have to be sucky and boring
16:06Which is exactly why I started a toy company called crunch labs with the express goal of helping kids think like an engineer through monthly toys
16:13That get delivered to your door where you put it together with me and having already shipped millions of these boxes
16:19The data is in 87% of kids rated an 8 out of 10 on a fun scale out of 10
16:24But here's the dirty secret more than 3 out of 4 parents said their child gained a new passion around stem and engineering from the boxes
16:31Our secret sauce here just like on my videos is hiding the vegetable so everyone leaves feeling stoked about the outcome
16:38On top of that each month your box has a chance to contain the platinum ticket and if you get it
16:42Well then you're coming out here to crunch labs to build with me and my team for a day
16:48So if you want to embark on this monthly journey with me and get a christmas morning reaction like this
16:56Just go to crunchlabs.com or use the link in the video description where we're giving away those two boxes free as a holiday special
17:03Thanks for watching
17:12Thanks
17:42Thanks
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