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A look at at various octopuses and the scientist that are The octopus may be the closest we get to meeting an alien. They evolved from a common cousin more than 500 million years ago and have proven ...
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00:05this may be the closest we come to meeting an alien on earth the octopus they couldn't be
00:13more different from us but is a connection possible you look at them and you feel like
00:19they're looking back that's not an illusion they are looking back after years of studying octopuses
00:26in the wild one man was driven to find out i'm going to fill my living room with a large
00:32tank of salt
00:34water he'll bring an octopus into his home it's coming no it's coming all right there we go and
00:42introduce her to the family her arm is now up my sleeve meet heidi heidi you're being you're being
00:51naughty you know she comes over to the the wall of the tank and just kind of like all excited
00:58to see
00:58you every encounter turns what we know about these alien creatures on its head
01:26so
01:35so
01:36so
01:55We take our way of existence for granted, but there are other ways of being.
02:07The octopuses followed a different evolutionary path, making them different from all the other
02:14intelligent animals on this planet.
02:19But me, I'm less intrigued by the differences and more interested in our similarities
02:26and the nature of a relationship I might have with such a creature.
02:34This year, I got to experiment with an idea.
02:43What would I find out if I invited an octopus into my home?
02:52What kind of connection is possible with an animal that has three hearts and blue blood
02:59running through its veins?
03:09My name is David Scheel.
03:12I'm professor of marine biology at Alaska Pacific University here in Anchorage.
03:18I've studied all sorts of animals, but for the last 25 years, my focus has been on octopuses.
03:26I have two girls. Juniper is away at university right now, and Laurel is with me about half the time,
03:36lives here. Laurel's 16. She's in 10th grade. We should check with her, make sure dad hasn't screwed
03:41that up. Hey, Laurel. You're 16, right? In 10th grade? There we go.
03:55I'm going out on a limb a little, taking my octopus fascination one step further.
04:04I'm going to fill my living room with a large tank of salt water.
04:11My daughter's in and out of the house, but she was eager to have a pet. And so this is
04:18a compromise
04:19between a girl who really wanted a dog and a dad who's overly interested in octopuses.
04:28Actually, it's not a compromise. I got the octopus. Yeah, we have a lamp.
04:34So it's lit. Yeah, so it's lit. And, um, inviting an octopus into your home is no small undertaking.
04:53This new setup is going to allow me to spend more time with an octopus than I've been able to
04:57do otherwise.
05:07Here in Alaska, I work with the species that's native to these cold waters,
05:12the giant Pacific octopus. But I wanted something that was different,
05:17something that will be new to me, a warmer water species that's faster, more active.
05:27This is a species that's been kept in aquariums to be studied for its intelligence.
05:34It's an octopus cyanea known as the day octopus. They call it that because unlike some other octopus
05:43species, these guys are active during the day and so you get to see them more.
05:55There you go.
05:56Nope. Pulling hard. Well, just a minute. I'll put you in the tank. No, no, not yet. Not yet.
06:01Just a minute. There you go. There you go. There she goes.
06:17Oh, nice color change.
06:22Oh, look at this. Nice.
06:27I mean, I guess the big thing for me about keeping an animal in the home is it's just more
06:34relaxed.
06:35If I don't want to do anything, I don't have to do anything. You just see what the animal does.
06:40And I'm not trying to do science here. I'm just trying to think a little bit. So it's just a
06:47chance
06:47that she wants to be more available and more present for whatever the animal's living day to day.
06:57She's very careful to keep her eyeball in view of mine.
07:03And she's already checking me out.
07:08I always get the sense when he's scuba diving that they play this game with you.
07:22Octopuses adapt their environments around them to their own liking.
07:27They clean out a hole under a rock or in a crevice, blowing out sand and debris with their siphon.
07:37And at that point, it's not just shelter. It's home.
07:58Oh, there it is. She's definitely feeling for it.
08:15Oh, she's after the tube, not the crab.
08:20There we go. There we go. There we go.
08:24All right. Look at the color pattern. That is a satisfied octopus.
08:35I like the texture she's put on. She didn't have that before.
08:39The papillae coming up around the eye and the sort of bumps and things all over her head.
08:45Very nice.
08:48Now she at least will know that the tube and the environment have interesting possibilities.
09:19Laurel is also going to be helping me take care of the octopus.
09:28You know, the octopus was very happy to see Laurel every day.
09:36Hello.
09:37Laurel was just glad to have a pet that was glad to see her. Yeah. I think a lot of
09:43her pets are kind of indifferent to her. Her goldfish and her rabbit outside and so an octopus is kind
09:50of fun because it comes running.
09:53Looks like she's just coming back over.
09:56Laurel would send me little video clips of the octopus getting up and waiting on the glass and ready to
10:02play.
10:03And, you know, I'm sure Laurel looked forward to it every day.
10:08Come here, Heidi. Some of the things that she would do remind me of what, like, dogs would do.
10:14Oh, you're already up here. Come here.
10:15You know, she comes over to the wall of the tank and just kind of, like, all excited to see
10:21you.
10:21And so being an intelligent animal means that you need a lot of stimulus. So being played with or having
10:29just, like, interactions with people is entertaining for her.
10:35Laurel tells me she'd sit for 30 minutes with the octopus just holding on to her and wait for it
10:41to let go.
10:42And now she's excited.
10:44So she'd sit there with her hand in the aquarium for 30 minutes. So they're pretty affectionate.
10:51She's filming more of the sand right now.
10:58Well, now she's filming me.
11:03Hi, Heidi.
11:08The reason we call her Heidi was because when we first got her, she spent a very, very long time
11:13in her den and she was just hiding the whole time.
11:15She didn't seem to want to come out. And then basically, once we taught her that we meant food, she
11:23just grabbed on and was like, OK, I'm keeping you with me.
11:30The cephalopod community, we're all excited about octopuses, and we're a fairly close-knit group of researchers, share all kinds
11:38of different experiences and advice.
11:42Well, hi there.
11:43Hi, David. How are you doing?
11:44All right. How are you?
11:46Brett is an expert on the early stages of cephalopod life.
11:50That group of animals that includes octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid.
11:54Exactly, exactly.
11:55So how's everything going over there?
11:57Because I've never kept an octopus in my living room before.
12:00You want to take a look at the setup?
12:02Yeah, I'd love to.
12:03All right. Let's see if I can get the computer over there and show you.
12:06So she's actually out right now.
12:09Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's great.
12:11She's got a good marbled coloration going on there.
12:13My day octopus is already a few months old.
12:17But at Brett's lab, we could get a glimpse into the first few weeks of a cephalopod's life.
12:24We're, you know, watching the mother until she starts going through her egg-laying phase.
12:29And once she starts laying her eggs, she'll sit there and pulse jets of water over her eggs.
12:35What that does is basically keep them oxygenated.
12:38And the eggs continue to develop until they get to basically look almost like little octopuses
12:44inside of each individual egg.
12:46And then we know they can kind of hatch at any time.
12:54This is one of the few places you can see octopuses hatch from the egg.
13:09From this moment, octopuses are on their own.
13:18The first instinct of this hatchling is to construct a den out of whatever it can find.
13:33Baby bobtailed squid hide by sticking grains of sand to their bodies with a mucus extruded from their skin.
13:45These are all hardwired little predators.
13:50They don't hesitate to take down prey, even when it's two or three times their size.
14:02Their color-changing cells start flashing while they're still in the egg.
14:11Three types of cells with neural control make color change almost instantaneous.
14:21These young pajama squid use this to produce their signature striped pattern.
14:31But there is one cephalopod that is the master.
14:41A few centimeters long, these baby flamboyant cuddles can beguile anyone with a shapeshift that is out of this world.
15:10The day octopus can also perform an extraordinary display with their skin.
15:19And I already have some experience with these octopus in the wild.
15:24I've been in the water with them on the southwest coast of Madagascar,
15:28working with the local Vesu fishermen, designing a way to census the octopus population.
15:42Brees has an amazing ability to find the octopus in amongst the coral.
15:58It's amazing to me how fast they are here.
16:02The octopus in Alaska, they're kind of big, slow giants.
16:05And these guys are just quick and agile and limber.
16:08And they're really, everything they do, they seem to do it at ramped up speed.
16:14I've had them in my hands and then they're already gone.
16:19And then I look over and Brees has caught it again.
16:22It feels inside of the heart.
16:33The day octopus is a master of camouflage.
16:43Its skin can change color in milliseconds.
16:48And it can use muscles on the surface of its skin
16:53to change texture as well.
17:00And this species has recently been recorded
17:03demonstrating an incredible behavior with its color displays.
17:12It's a display called Passing Cloud.
17:19It's just so stunningly beautiful.
17:22It's like, wow, what's that?
17:34The thing about Passing Cloud is it's a very impressive physiological ability.
17:43And at the same time, it's a bit of a mystery.
17:51The most common theory you hear is that octopuses are using Passing Cloud to startle its prey
17:58and trap it in the web of its arms.
18:17My octopus is showing impressive color changes of her own.
18:28Observing what we're doing.
18:32We've seen how closely the octopus we have here at the house is watching our eyes.
18:39When you look at them and you feel like they're looking back.
18:44That's not an illusion.
18:46They are looking back.
18:49And so when you have an animal that's that attentive to another animal's eyes,
18:54that is very suggestive of high level of awareness of the world.
18:59And so when you look at the octopus's eyes, you're looking at the octopus's eyes.
19:16Well, scientists do find questions about octopus intelligence particularly intriguing.
19:22At the Seattle Aquarium, they did some experiments giving different objects to octopuses
19:28and recorded what happened.
19:46In one of the most telling experiments, the researchers put a pill bottle in the tank
19:51with just enough air in it to float.
19:54There was no food or anything to be gained here.
19:57But still, a few octopuses found reason to be interested.
20:03Nothing happened at first.
20:05But after the fourth time, the octopus would
20:10take the pill bottle and blow it out into a stream of water that was circulating around the tank.
20:18There it goes.
20:21And the water would bring the pill bottle back to the octopus again and it would start the whole thing
20:28over again and do it again and again, blowing the pill bottle into the water until it came back
20:34and then blowing it back into the water again.
20:37It felt like bouncing a ball.
20:41The conclusion from this experiment was simple.
20:45It fit all the criteria for play.
20:48Play, of course, is something that intelligent animals do.
20:53And Laurel spends many hours playing with Heidi.
20:59Now, now she's, now you say hello to me.
21:06Octopuses have up to 240 suckers on their arms.
21:11Each has sensitive chemical receptors.
21:14Heidi can touch and taste Laurel at the same time.
21:18Oh, she just, she just lightly check it out.
21:21She doesn't want me to leave.
21:24Octopus also have estrogen, like humans do.
21:27Is it possible that Heidi can be detecting the estrogen on Laurel's skin?
21:32Does Heidi maybe taste the difference between males and females?
21:38Heidi, her arm is now up my sleeve.
21:42That's fun.
21:44Heidi, you're, you're being, you're being naughty.
21:51She's lifting herself almost all the way out of the tank right now.
21:55Come here, come here, come here.
21:59Oh, now I'm wet.
22:03The idea of Laurel having any kind of relationship with a mollusk is extraordinary when you think about it.
22:12This is an animal that has 600 million years of distance from us.
22:19That's almost as deep as any divide can be between two animals.
22:26With three hearts, no bones, a beak with a venomous bite, and a gut that runs through its brain,
22:34the octopus is completely alien.
22:41As science fiction movies have long demonstrated, humans spend a lot of imagination dreaming up
22:48what it might be like to meet an alien.
22:58In the latest blockbuster, Arrival, the filmmakers imagine what it might be like to encounter a species
23:04that changes the way we think about the universe.
23:13And I think it's an important observation that they culminate this encounter
23:19with cephalopod-like figures from outer space.
23:32To really understand quite how alien octopuses are to us, and to every other intelligent form
23:37of life on Earth, we need to appreciate the unique evolutionary path of the octopus on the tree of life.
23:46It's Octopus Lecture 101 for my students.
23:52Okay, what does the tree of life look like?
23:54Here are a couple of artistic versions.
23:58Now, just to give you a quick overview, here's the plants, here's the animals.
24:04This is the branch that has the...
24:06To meet the common ancestor of humans and octopus, you would have to travel back in time
24:12more than half a billion years.
24:14And here are just...
24:16Millions of years before any animal crawled out of the ocean onto the land.
24:21So here's the octopus, and here's the human.
24:26And their last common ancestor is something that was fairly like a flatworm.
24:33And what would this common ancestor look like?
24:37Well, maybe a little bit like this.
24:41A small, flat worm.
24:48Barely any eyes to speak of, with a cluster of neurons forming just a pinprick of a brain.
25:00From this beginning, one path of evolution gave rise to every bird and every reptile, every mammal.
25:08All of them, us included.
25:10All adaptations from this common ancestor.
25:15Designs of eyes and brains and hearts becoming ever more sophisticated and more varied.
25:22That was the path for every intelligent animal.
25:27Except for one.
25:32That is why people talk about meeting an octopus being like meeting an alien.
25:38Because octopus branch of life evolved on its own separate track.
25:45Inventing its own version of an eye, its own version of a brain, its own version of a heart.
25:53The octopus is a unique expression of evolution.
25:58So any contact I have with these animals is possible because evolution built our eyes,
26:05our minds, our behavior twice over.
26:10There is no other intelligent animal on the planet that has evolved separately from all the other
26:17animals in this way.
26:23And this is why people are so fascinated to make contact and to understand every facet of this
26:30very particular sentience.
26:41In aquarium tanks all around the world, octopuses have been put through their paces.
26:53They have solved complex mazes, even learnt symbols, passed memory tests for their rewards.
27:02Learning from feedback, forward thinking, applying diverse behaviors to novel situations.
27:16And the unique evolutionary journey of the octopus makes this intelligence particularly intriguing.
27:27For a start, the intelligence of an octopus is not just gathered as one lump in its head,
27:33like it is with us.
27:40Parts of the octopus intelligence are distributed in its arms.
27:53And that means that to some extent the body can be its own controller,
27:57rather than having a body being driven entirely around by the brain.
28:02And that means that to some extent the body can be its own controller.
28:03Eight arms independently gathering data and reacting to the world around them.
28:17All kinds of intelligence require feedback.
28:21I think that's why humans are intelligent is because we just,
28:26you know, know you try and you learn from your errors.
28:30So trial and error is really the intelligent thing.
28:33And octopuses make trial and error do more than you might expect.
28:38The actual brain is Kardec
29:02Soagna is a very important thing and you see that.
29:02The human function is the most important thing.
29:02But the human being is the most important thing,
29:03the human being is the most important thing.
29:05So if we are in the body of this,
29:06the human being is the most important thing is the most important thing.
29:06in 2009, researchers reported a veined octopus doing something truly remarkable.
29:15It was a discovery that would put our understanding of the octopus onto a new level of sentience
29:22occupied by only a few species of animals.
29:27Living on the sand flats, they have very few places to hide, but this octopus has a unique
29:34solution to the problem.
29:43It carries half a coconut shell with it, but it needs to find something else to complete
29:54the set.
29:58Two coconut halves, a perfect shelter.
30:09What is remarkable about this discovery is how the octopus dismantles its home, carries
30:20it around, uses it to hide and to ambush prey.
30:40And now it's putting it back together again.
30:45This octopus is thinking ahead.
30:48This is real flexibility.
30:50The octopus has to anticipate to carry that awkward object around, and then correctly assemble
30:58the separate parts to create a single functioning tool.
31:04And less than 1% of all animals have ever been seen to use tools.
31:15And it's not just science that is starting to take notice of the extraordinary octopus.
31:23Laurel is showing me all the attention these animals are getting from people.
31:29I've seen Heidi do this before.
31:31Oh, yeah.
31:32So my real question on this one is, who's taking the video?
31:35Is it another octopus who's stolen a safe road?
31:40Maybe he's filming himself.
31:42Maybe he's filming himself.
31:42Yeah.
31:42He's doing a blog.
31:44Oh, yeah.
31:45Video blog.
31:46Yeah.
31:49And he's like, look at this strange thing that came and found me.
31:56We're no longer just eating octopuses.
31:59People are meeting them now, making contact in the ocean.
32:04I held the fish in front of his shell, and he grabbed it from my hand.
32:08He touched my finger with his arm, and I think that we were both a bit surprised.
32:13So we both pulled back.
32:14This time, he grabbed my finger, and he tried to pull my finger inside.
32:18This clip has 11 million hits.
32:20He was punching the fish away with his arms.
32:22It was the funniest thing I've ever seen.
32:25This octopus trying to punch away a little fish.
32:28It was definitely the coolest encounter I've had with an octopus.
32:33I tried to see how he responds to different objects, like a comb shell or a mirror, but
32:39he never really responds the way that I expect.
32:41I went on holiday, and I didn't see him for a few days before.
32:45I was worried he wouldn't be there anymore when I came back.
32:48But I found him, and he swam up to me, and he touched my foot.
32:55985 clams disliked this video.
33:02This one also went viral.
33:10It wasn't hard to get Heidi to demonstrate these impressive skills of contortion.
33:17She doesn't have a skeleton.
33:20Want to go through?
33:22Come on, Heidi.
33:24Come out and play.
33:26Come on.
33:27Octopus are able to squeeze through the smallest of gaps.
33:32That a girl.
33:33That's it.
33:34Come on, sweetie.
33:36Good girl.
33:37Come on.
33:38Come on.
33:40A little squeeze.
33:43There we go.
33:45That a girl.
33:46Keep coming.
33:47You can do it.
33:48Almost.
33:50You can squeeze.
34:02I need to be very careful.
34:04This ability makes Heidi a real escape risk.
34:08She is quite capable of leaving the tank if she gets a chance.
34:14In fact, octopus can move across land with surprising ease.
34:29In northern Australia, it's part of the hunting strategy of the abdipus octopus.
34:42Octopus have gills, so they can't survive out here for long.
34:47But they do absorb some oxygen through their skin, allowing them enough time to find a new
34:55rock pool with new opportunities.
35:07And leaving the water, it's not just being seen in the wild.
35:14There's stories everywhere.
35:16There's far more stories than there are data.
35:24One story tells of a trawler in the English Channel and an octopus caught in a net and left on
35:31deck.
35:32Somehow, it manages to slither from the deck, down the companionway, into the cabin, and hours
35:38later is found hiding in a teapot.
35:41Now we turn to a tale of escape, a daring act by an octopus, Inky the octopus.
35:48In a New Zealand aquarium, another octopus named Inky becomes famous on the news when it was reported
35:54for escaping its tank and crawling across the floor, disappearing down a drain, escaping to the sea.
36:02The manager of the aquarium says Inky will not be pursued.
36:07Some of my favorite stories are about pet octopus popping out of their tank to snack on their neighbors.
36:16My investigations into this suggest an octopus leaving its tank to grab a snack does happen.
36:23But finding its way back?
36:27That is probably urban legend.
36:42Back in our living room, Heidi has become a fully-fledged consummate predator.
36:52Sometimes, when Heidi hunts, before the attack, she might be camouflaged.
36:57But as she gets ready, she'll drop all her camouflage, and then there's this ghostly white form.
37:14And then pounce.
37:22While she's a master of her environment, she is also taking part in our lives outside the tank,
37:32adapting to our daily routine with remarkable ease.
37:38We'd come in, we'd turn on the TV, we'd sit down, and a couple minutes later,
37:42she'd move over to the front of the tank, closer to the TV.
37:47She started doing that pretty much every time we would come into the living room to watch TV.
37:53And so we'd have TV time with the octopus.
38:10I think this is how she would orient herself.
38:12She's actually watching it, because her eyes just moved so that they're more facing towards the TV.
38:20An oceanic wanderer stops by to be...
38:24There seems to be, like, very subtle changes, like, slight widening of eyes,
38:29and, like, a slightly faster breathing.
38:33...invigorated by daily sunshine.
38:35Marine life flourishes...
38:37But is Heidi really watching TV with Laurel?
38:41The idea isn't as far-fetched as it sounds.
38:45Researchers, for a long time, have used a video to show cuttlefish and octopuses,
38:56and see how they react to it.
38:58Are they signaling to one another?
38:59Is there sort of a language of behavior?
39:02So it's completely believable that Heidi is watching television.
39:07Long distances along the reef in order to get here.
39:10But to what extent is she watching us?
39:14This is their destiny.
39:15Increasingly, we can see just how well Heidi recognizes us.
39:20There is good evidence that she is aware of who we are.
39:26So sometimes, I take extra measures...
39:30...to be someone else.
39:50This isn't an octopus horror show.
39:54It's actually based on hard science.
39:59There is plenty of evidence that shows octopus recognize people.
40:05I'm going to weigh Heidi today.
40:07And to do that, I've got to capture her...
40:10...so that I can lift her up on the scale.
40:12And she might not like that.
40:14So I'm going to wear a mask.
40:19Well, you see, there's an interesting study that was done in 2008...
40:23...that showed that octopuses in aquariums...
40:26...remember and recognize individual human faces.
40:32The experiment dressed two people in identical uniforms.
40:38One would feed the octopus.
40:43The other would annoy the octopus with a bristly stick.
40:50Within just a week, the octopus would move towards the person that fed them...
40:54...and avoid or even squirt the annoying one.
41:04What do you think, Heidi?
41:07Here goes.
41:08And so, when I weigh Heidi, this just might make it a little easier...
41:13...for her to forgive me for capturing her and weighing her.
41:19It's harder to tell in a living room experience...
41:22...but Laurel's quite convinced that Heidi showed a difference...
41:25...between the way she reacted to either of us and visitors to the house.
41:33Recognizing people on the other side of the glass is an unlikely ability...
41:38...for a creature that comes from the ocean.
41:40Okay, you've been weighed.
41:43And there is a new dimension being added to this study of octopus intelligence.
41:50Personality.
41:53Scientists have used the relationship between octopus and humans...
41:57...in an aquarium setting like this.
41:59...whoop, that's the first time that she's ever taken it away from me.
42:02...to demonstrate how individual octopus have their own personality.
42:09And Laurel is certainly convinced about the particular character of our octopus.
42:15Heidi's definitely a troublemaker.
42:22When we feed her, she grabs onto you.
42:26Heidi!
42:27And then she jets at you.
42:29Heidi!
42:29Heidi!
42:30Heidi!
42:30It's very wet!
42:33It's just cold!
42:34She got it right up my sleeve!
42:37You know, you're trying to pull away with this octopus stuck to your arm...
42:40...and she's jetting water in your face.
42:42And it's...
42:43...you know, she's trying to get attention and she doesn't want us to leave the room.
42:51There have now been several studies that have looked for signs of personality in different cephalopods...
42:58...and typically find that there are individual personalities.
43:04bringing the octopus into an area of study normally reserved for animals like chimpanzees and dolphins is another milestone in
43:13the understanding of octopus intelligence.
43:17And certainly the first time for an invertebrate.
43:26The first time for an octopus, the octopus in our living room helps me understand a little bit more about
43:32how they experience the world.
43:33But it also highlights a paradox, one of the cephalopod mysteries.
43:41Scientists have a model that suggests that some of the things that go along with intelligence are longer lifespans and
43:51complex social lives.
43:53Neither of those things apply to octopuses.
43:57They live short lives and they spend them alone.
44:02The fact that octopuses are solitary seems at odds with how Heidi can have this kind of intelligent relationship with
44:11us, at all.
44:14Recently, I've been investigating a unique discovery in Australia.
44:19One that suggests octopuses may not always be solitary, after all.
44:28This extraordinary discovery happened in 2009, in a small bay, not that far from Sydney Harbour.
44:37A diver named Matt Lawrence plunged over the side of his boat and drifting along, just exploring in areas of
44:45the bay that everyone else found were pretty boring.
44:48And in the middle of a silty area, he came across something very unexpected.
44:57Piles of empty scallop shells.
44:59And in amongst the scallop shells, about a dozen octopuses had made their homes.
45:13We have nicknamed the site Octopolis, although it's hardly a city of octopuses, but an aggregation
45:21like this is unheard of anywhere else in the world.
45:33I'm helping to try and find out what's going on here and working with Matt, we are putting
45:38some remote cameras down to get a closer look at the behavior at this unusual site.
45:44We want to capture this sort of natural behavior and Matt started putting a GoPro down, you know,
45:51one or two GoPros on the site to sort of film the octopuses when divers weren't around.
45:57And so it's kind of exciting to come back and track what's going on with the octopuses from
46:03moment to moment.
46:10So that's the octopus that's taking over the camera now, all the mandalators, all the...
46:17Oh, he's got the camera.
46:19No wonder we can't keep the cameras alive.
46:21They take a beating.
46:22I love it when this happens and then another video records the octopus vandalizing our cameras.
46:29And when the cameras aren't getting pulled apart, they are recording social interactions
46:34that you simply can't see anywhere else.
46:38They appear to signal to one another and make themselves look really dark and conspicuous
46:45and large when they're approaching and rather flat and pale when they're retreating.
46:54You see octopuses reaching towards each other.
46:57I wouldn't want to speculate yet what that is, but they're interacting.
47:02OK, this is pretty new.
47:10So this is more of that signaling, but why does the approaching octopus evict this one and
47:17not that one?
47:18I wonder if it's possible that they're, like, recognizing one another.
47:22You know?
47:23Yeah.
47:24They prefer one animal over another, you know, like a smaller rival man.
47:27That's the high five.
47:28Oh, yeah.
47:29There it is.
47:30They just gather and touch each other and just, yeah.
47:37Octopolis is a sort of a wonderland.
47:39It's just kind of awe-inspiring.
47:43There's octopuses side by side in adjacent dens.
47:48And that's so surprising for an animal that we always thought was solitary.
47:54You see octopuses approaching one another and chasing one another.
48:00We see them wrestle with one another.
48:02It's always fairly spectacular because it's like watching two umbrellas have a fight.
48:14What makes octopolis unique is that this is a spot where the conditions occur that force social skills upon the
48:24octopus.
48:27It's a very exciting find.
48:29It does sort of shake up the cephalopod world a little bit to think that octopuses may have to deal
48:35with one another and in doing so sort of hone their social skills.
48:46The research has only just begun and we'll need to work out how these environmental conditions might create what we
48:53thought did not happen.
48:57Octopuses living side by side with one another.
49:04Each new discovery makes a little more sense of how Heidi can have a relationship like she does with Laurel
49:11and me.
49:32Having an octopus in our living room has enabled us an intimacy not possible in the lab.
49:41And last night, I witnessed something I've never seen recorded before.
49:54You know, if she is dreaming, this is a dramatic moment.
50:04You could almost just narrate the body changes and narrate the dream.
50:11So here she's asleep.
50:13She sees a crab and her color starts to change a little bit.
50:19Then she turns all dark.
50:22Octopuses will do that when they leave the bottom.
50:31This is a crab.
50:32This is a camouflage, like she's just subdued a crab and now she's going to sit there and eat it.
50:39And she doesn't want anyone to notice her.
50:44It's a very unusual behavior to see the color come and go on her mantle like that.
50:51I mean, just to be able to see all the different color patterns just flashing one after another.
50:58You don't usually see that when an animal is sleeping.
51:01It really is fascinating.
51:06But yeah, if she's dreaming, that's the dream.
51:14The solitary octopus does not fit our theories of how animal intelligence can evolve.
51:22And yet, it is.
51:28And there is another thing about the octopus, which also contradicts our theories on the development of intelligence.
51:36It is something Laurel and I will soon have to come to terms with.
51:41Because most octopus live for only a year or two at most.
51:49It is incredible that octopus can become so sophisticated in such a short time.
51:59There is a connection here.
52:01The cross is a divide, not just from air into water, but also across half a billion years of separation.
52:13And it's been a privilege to have a relationship with such a strange and wonderful creature.
52:45hoc�
52:46LECAD
52:49LECAD
52:57To learn more about what you've seen on this nature program, visit pbs.org.