Hormones and neurotransmitters, the chemicals associated with human desire, fear, love, joy, and sadness, “are highly conserved across taxa,” Jennifer said. This means that whether you’re a person or a monkey, a bird or a turtle, an octopus or a clam, the physiological changes that accompany our deepest-felt emotions appear to be the same. Even a b

Julie Kalupa, a diver and medical student at the University of Wisconsin, writes that a giant Pacific octopus can regenerate up to one third of a lost arm in as little as six weeks. Unlike a lizard’s regenerated tail, which is invariably of poorer quality than the original, the regrown arm of an octopus is as good as new, complete with nerves, musc

It’s a shared sweetness, a gentle miracle, an uplink to universal consciousness—the notion, first advanced by pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaxagoras in 480 BC, of sharing an intelligence that animates and organizes all life. The idea of universal consciousness suffuses both Western and Eastern thought and philosophy, from the “collective unconsc

In 2009, researchers in Indonesia documented octopuses that were carrying around pairs of half coconut shells, which they used as portable Quonset huts. With obvious effort, the octopuses would lug the shell halves, nested one inside the other, beneath their bodies as they walked stiff-armed across the sandy bottom, then assemble the half shells in

wild octopuses who live in tidal areas often haul themselves out on land in order to visit different tide pools for better hunting. They may also do this to escape predators in the water, such as another octopus. I had read that in areas blessed by constant ocean spray, an octopus might be able to survive out of water for thirty minutes or more.

“Just about every animal,” Scott says—not just mammals and birds—“can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy.”

The slits of her pupils always remain horizontal, no matter what position she is in, cued by balance receptors called statocysts. These saclike structures are lined with sensory hairs and equipped with small, mineralized balls that shift inside the statocyst in response to motion and gravity. But the always-horizontal pupil can change dramatically

researchers found the skin of the octopus’s close relative, the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis, contains gene sequences usually expressed only in the retina of the eye.

Human eyes have three visual pigments, allowing us to see color. Octopuses have only one—which would make these masters of camouflage, commanding a glittering rainbow of colors, technically color-blind. How, then, does the octopus decide what colors to turn? New evidence suggests cephalopods might be able to see with their skin.