The Infinite Monkey Cage - Octopuses!

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

If Aliens really are amongst us, the most likely candidates may not be little green men, but living in plain sight, just below our ocean waves, in the form of the mysterious and awe-inspiringly clever Octopus. Scientists are only just discovering the amazing intelligence of these elegant and highly unusual creatures that seem to have evolved in a completely different way to nearly any other creature on the planet. Brian and Robin are joined by marine biologist Dr Tim Lamont, Neuroscientist Dr Amy Courtney and comedian Russell Kane to uncover just how clever these mysterious creatures are, how they've evolved intelligence in an entirely unique way and whether 8 brains, as well as 8 legs are really better than 1. The panel also discover the alarming truth about the unique sex lives of the octopus - lets just say it doesn't end well for at least one of the participants.New episodes released Wednesdays. If you're in the UK, listen to the newest episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3K3JzyFExecutive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. You're about to listen to The Infinite Monkey Cage. Episodes will be released on Wednesdays, wherever you get your podcasts.

But if you're in the UK, the full series is available right now, first on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. And I'm Robin Ince, and this is The Infinite Monkey Cage. Now, since we were last on air, there's been some fascinating hearings in Washington DC about sightings and possible communication with alien intelligence. I haven't read much about it myself. I've got a lot of other things to do such as growing my fingernails etc. I'll summarise it for you. It's dribble. So are you saying that I'm presuming what happened is someone saw a thing, it was a shiny thing, they weren't sure what the shiny

thing was and then they did that immediate leap to I can only presume it's alien intelligence. Unidentified phenomena. But this is the interesting thing to me because you are someone who has spoken with alien intelligence haven't you? No. Well you would say though that you had a very long conversation with a creature that is not a creature of the other world but indeed a creature of this world that is the closest that you imagine to what alien intelligence might be. I did, actually. There are aliens amongst us, but they're not amongst us, they're beneath us.

Everything, by the way, is beneath Brian Cox. They're in the ocean. Beneath the waves, we find an animal that may have an intelligence comparable to ours. And it's an incredible thing, because also, rather tragically, for some people it's also delicious too, which means that marine biologists are always caught between the desire to talk to it

or just open the soy sauce. Now, it was at that point when we were scribbling notes for that, where we went, is that the point too far? And I would like to thank the audience here for being our moral compass and saying that would not make the edit. It was an extremely nervous laugh. It was how you served it. It's because it was raw.

Were it cooked with olive oil, we'd have been into it. Today we're going to be discussing the octopus's otherness. Just how different is the octopus to us? How do they live their lives? How do they see the world? And just how intelligent are these remarkable creatures? Who here likes octopuses? and just how intelligent are these remarkable creatures?

Who here likes octopuses? That's a relief. To discuss our fascinating and evolutionarily far-distant aquatic cousins, we are joined by a marine biologist, a neuroscientist and the presenter of Geordie Shore, The Reunion. It was the nearest we could find, Russell, to anything involving the seaside. So we thought, at least there's a shore there. We've all got bills to pay, Robin, move on.

And they are. Hello, I'm Tim Lammons. I'm a coral reef ecologist at Lancaster University and if I could have a conversation with any animal it would be my mother-in-law's dog because it doesn't like me very much and I'd like to try and put that right. Hi, my name is Amy

Courtney. I'm a postdoctoral scientist in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. An animal that I'd like to have a conversation with is unsurprisingly an octopus, because I spend a lot of my time thinking about how the brains of octopuses work, what they must be thinking, what they must be experiencing. So in this fantasy, I imagine that we're in like a therapist's office and the octopus is sprawled out on the couch and I'm there taking notes, asking it about its deepest fears and life aspirations. My name is Russell Kane. I present reunion shows for reality TV. I'm also a stand-up comedian. If I could have a conversation with any creature, it would be with a mammal, probably my father,

as I never managed a full conversation with him. Having done some of the research, I realised that his primordial grunts and clicks possibly were language, and maybe he was trying to communicate with me, but I never did learn Essex. He could only communicate with the glint of a Rolex and anal gas. And this is our panel. Can I thank Tim, first of all, for taking us also onto the northern club circuit of the 1970s. I'm not saying my mother-in-law's

dog's hostile, but it does give me looks. It gives me looks. I wondered where that intro was going. The animal I'd most like to communicate with is my mother-in-law. It was a northern club marine biologist. He started out in the small clubs in the north. And now look at him. I'm a little bit blue, but that's because I'm a marine biologist.

Because water preferentially absorbs longer wavelengths of light. So there's certainly... It gets bluer and bluer. Anyway. So, Tim, I suppose we always start with definitions. And the octopus, as Brian was saying, can seem like such an alien creature. So give us some sense of what an octopus is. It's completely alien.

And when you spend time with a wild octopus in its habitat, it's completely mesmerising. You lose track of time. You lose track of your surroundings. You just want to watch this thing because you get this immediate sense that it's so far removed from what you are and what you understand of the world that it's quite captivating. So first it's got these eight arms, each of which are covered in suckers. And there's a skin across all of the arms that isn't just touching and feeling things like we do, but is tasting things through the skin and is sensing the colour of things through the skin.

And as you see this animal exploring its environment with all of this detail and all of this information coming in, it's not so much crawling around its environment as pouring itself through its environment is probably the best way to describe it. And that's because it has no skeleton. It's just this sort of amorphous liquid animal, almost, that can turn itself into any shape. And it can also turn itself into any colour, and often does. So it can match the background of anything it swims across and turn invisible at will.

Sounds like Keir Starmer, to be honest. Particularly the match any colour part. And on top of this, as if it didn't have enough gadgets already, it's got this funnel that protrudes from under its head, which it can use either as a water gun or as a jet pack. And then on top of that, it's got this tongue that is a drill rather than a tongue. So it's got this list of sort of characteristics and superpowers

that if a six-year-old handed it to you drawn on a piece of paper and said, that's an alien, you'd go, yep, that's an alien. On the top trumps cards of animals to have in your pack to be a winner. Well, it would make it a boring game because you just win every time with the octopus. What was your... So talking there, actually being in the wild, what was so different for you

in terms of everything that you'd researched beforehand? You said, you know, losing time, seeing it now in its natural environment. What was that sensation like? It's very difficult to describe. I think it's an appreciation of something that you immediately know you don't understand. And it's that sense of seeing something that you've no idea what it's going to do next. You've no idea what it's sensing or what it must feel like to sense that and you don't really have any idea what it makes of you other than you get this slightly eerie feeling that it

definitely makes something of you and amy that that matches what you said in the introduction actually that you'd like to communicate with one of these alien yeah life forms absolutely i think a lot as well about whether or not they have some form of consciousness. And one of the most interesting things I think about the octopus nervous system is that it's so different from ours. Most of our neurons are found in our brains and they also have a brain within their head, between their eyes, but they also have majority of their neurons within their arms. So there's been a lot of people that have proposed that they possibly have multiple locations of consciousness within their body.

So not only do I want to know what it feels like to be an octopus, I want to know what it feels like to be an octopus arm. There's that famous essay by Thomas Nagel on what it's like to be a bat. Is there something? So would you say, from your thoughts, in terms of all of the living things on Earth, that you would imagine that the octopus would be the first other species to go to after humans to go there is an inner life there is that richness of experience

i think so i think we're still missing a lot of the data but a lot of the metrics that we use to define intelligence there's a lot of evidence that octopus has a lot of that russell if the description of these animals already is something far deeper and stranger than I'd imagined. It's just the idea of each arm having its own consciousness. One could be a bit of a bellend. Terry, stop it! I'm not racist, but... No, Terry!

The others are really nice. Because they might not get on. I know. I've been thinking about this too. That has blown my mind, the idea that consciousness could be multiply located in one. How would that even work? Surely there's like a central hub in control of what's going on.

Because the little I know about octopus, they investigate you with their arm, but they're not just touching you, they're getting to know you with their hands. It sounded pervy, that. I didn't mean it. I'm not touching you i was just getting to know you you're very traditional on bbc entertainment exactly a few years ago

in fact just a few years ago there were multiple octopuses running the bbc i mean your interesting point there because that makes me think of human beings when human beings who had the corpus callosum seven means that the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere aren't communicating together and you hear about people who one hand is trying to do up the buttons of a shirt and the other is undoing them so even you know within ourselves if you change some of the connections then it turns out there is more than one self possibly in there bloody hell we got there early't we? I never felt more like Melvin Bragg. Could you describe, Tim, the evolutionary story of the octopus? So how far back in time do we have to go to find a common ancestor between ourselves and the octopus? Miles and miles back.

The common ancestor of us and an octopus looks like a worm that doesn't do a lot. It's before what we call the Cambrian era, which is a long way before the dinosaurs. It's about half a billion years ago. And that, I think, explains some of the strangeness, because almost everything that we have evolved, both us and the octopus as complex animals, has been evolved separately. And so there's some examples of things that we've evolved that are really quite remarkably similar. Our eyes work in almost exactly the same way. And then there's other things which are completely different and totally alien. Is it too much to speculate from that?

If there is life in the universe, then it probably has ended up with two eyes, arms that can touch, and consciousness. Because if it's evolved twice on our planet planet it obviously is something that inevitably happens if natural selection takes place it's a good question isn't it in terms of the fact that intelligence at a high level has evolved in parallel twice in the i mean maybe more maybe that's a question but certainly in this case the intelligence was not present in the common ancestor at all no and it's it's evolved in very different ways, which is quite curious. And it's evolved into different types of intelligence. So most animals that have evolved intelligence have evolved it in a social context

where they're doing a lot of interacting with other animals in their species. And they've evolved it in a context where they develop and grow up very slowly with a lot of learning and care from their parents. You know, you take humans, it takes like 18 years to leave home. And some people still can't look after themselves. Whereas the octopus never meets its parents. And it's famously antisocial as an animal. So it's not learning from any other octopus.

And it lives its whole life, most octopus species, within about two years. So it's learning astonishingly quickly with no role models. Are the skills inborn then? Because how can you learn all that stuff in such a short span? I think a lot of them aren't inborn. So certainly there's a lot of investigation, a lot of curiosity. Octopuses will often fail a task when they first are presented with it and try it and then learn it very, very quickly. They're explorers. They're real sort of... Problem solvers. Problem solvers. That's the way to put it.

Why such a short lifespan? Normally, the bigger brain you've got on our planet, the longer you live. If you're going to invest in a bit of kit, you want to get the value out of it, right? So evolution has given me this kit, so I want to stretch it for as long as possible, try and get 100 years out of it.

So the octopus develops this massive brain and then just sacks it off after two years. So you're right in a human context that if you've bothered to invest in this massive bit of kit, as you put it, that it's worth living for a long time to get lots out of it. But that's because your random everyday chance of dying is quite small.

Come and watch me live, it isn't. your random everyday chance of dying is quite small. Come and watch me live, it isn't. So if you're an octopus, you live in a fantastically dangerous world. Your chance of getting eaten by something on any given day is really very high. And that's because you live in very diverse, very busy environments, lots of predators around, and you've got no shell or anything to protect you. So despite the fact they're so good at disguise,

they've still got a high chance of dying. And that means that as an evolutionary strategy, you should pack everything into the start of your life. You should live really fast. You die early to beat the system. You can't kill me if I'm dead, can you? I win. Exactly. Do everything in two years before something else will kill you

and your life mission is complete. Amy, isn't the awful thing there, because we were talking about the fact that they don't have parents, but one of the things is that it's because they've eaten their mother. Well, they do have parents. No, because we were talking about education in that specific bit. So that kind of idea is, well, you survive the predators, you manage to have children, and then they eat you.

Yeah, so for anyone who doesn't know, when octopuses mate the female will bulk up and then she goes off to her den and she'll release all of her eggs within the den and during that time she basically starves to death and as her embryos grow up and as they hatch she dies. So the ultimate maternal sacrifice. Does she die as they're born or does she sort of linger on to see them as toddlers like it seems to happen around the same time really yeah so with an intelligence test for a human being we know how we do it and you can have iq tests and things like that so what are you actually doing when you're trying to measure the intelligence level

of an animal like an octopus yeah the difficult thing is how you define intelligence because we obviously look at it through a human lens. It's like trying to compare what's better a speedboat or a jeep. Well it depends where you're trying to go and it's the same thing an octopus is trying to survive in an environment that's very different than us. So the first thing I think that makes octopus really intelligent is something like camouflage like that's not something that we can do but they're able to change in the color of their skin to camouflage into environment and also communicate with other species other metrics that we use for intelligence would be theory of mind so this is the idea that we can understand that someone else has thoughts that are different

than ours and one way that they think that octopus might be doing this is that there's an octopus called a mimic octopus which can basically pretend to be or like change the color of their skin so they look like a lionfish or they look like a flounder so there's this idea that maybe they realize that another animal will perceive them as something different than they are which is less rewarding for them to try and eat another thing is to have a sense of self-awareness and when we try and test whether animals have self-awareness, one of the main tests that they do is called the mirror test, which is where they put a dot on the forehead of the animal

and show them a mirror, and whether or not the animal interacts with the dot gives us some indication that they know that that is themselves. They try to do this for octopus. And as we said, octopus are very antisocial. So when they saw themselves in the mirror, most of the time they attacked the mirror. So maybe that's not the right type of test to determine that.

And some other people have proposed that one way that we might think that octopus does have self-awareness is that apparently in some studies when an octopus arm has been severed and they present them with their own severed arm or the severed arm of another octopus, they don't eat their own arm, but they will eat the arm of another octopus. They don't eat their own arm, but they will eat the arm of another octopus. So they seem to have some way of knowing that.

Who came up with that one? That is the most... And do they only do that with octopuses or other animals as well, where they just see... I think this is a very old study. Oh, I want to make that quiz show. Channel 5, whose arm is it? Is it Nan's?

Correct. 500 pounds. So one of the problems with trying to test intelligence in the octopus is that it's quite a mischievous animal. In a lot of cases it'll do what it wants and it won't play along to the rules of your test. So you know way back when when they were first trying to test the intelligence of these animals in aquariums there's a famous experiment where they tried the same sort of test you might have heard done on rats or monkeys where there's there's a lever and the octopus has to work out to press the lever it gets some food and and the first two octopuses they tested this on they played nicely they they pressed the lever they got some food and then they tried a third octopus which pulled the lever out of the wall

of the tank and squirted the researcher in the face it's just not interested it you know it can play the game but it doesn't want to why would i mischief really does i mean like again in terms of ideas of consciousness the idea of again being able to know that it's doing something to you that it's it's playing a game with you absolutely yeah i've been in research stations where it's been my job to go around feeding all the animals in the tanks. And the octopus very quickly learned in that research station the chopping board that you would walk around holding, which had shrimp on, which meant it was about to get its dinner.

And if you walked past without feeding it, it would come lunging out of the tank. It would grab you with two of its arms. It would try and, you know, suck your arm. It would squirt water at you. It would get really, really angry. Whereas if you walk past without the chopping board, there's no reaction. So you'd imagine also there'd be mixed emotions when it would see the chopping board, because in one way it'd say, am I being fed or am I being dismembered? The way that I get treated in this world, you just don't know whether it's give or take.

Could you describe in more detail the structure of the nervous system? You mentioned that a lot of the neurons are in the legs, but isn't the brain donut-shaped? So in between their eyes, they have the main brain, and this is made up of about 150 million neurons. Just behind each eye, there are these kidney-shaped structures. These are for processing visual information. But then right in the middle there's a donut shaped brain where their throat goes right through their brain the throat their throat goes through their brain yeah

the way to an octopus's stomach i've always said that it is it really does to me show that i think when you tend to think of evolution you tend to think of intelligence evolving it's just natural isn't it being a human being to think of this central processing system in the head and it's a big sort of object and that's where everything happens but this idea that there are little distributed it's almost like different cpus in the computer isn't different things behind the eyes and then there's some things up there and then there's more in the computer, isn't it? Different things behind the eyes, and then there's some things up there, and then there's more in the legs in terms of neurons themselves. Yeah, 40 million neurons, I think, in each arm. So that's 350 in all the arms, so half a billion altogether. So majority of the neurons are in the arms. How does that compare to a human being? How many neurons? We have 86 billion. 86 billion? Yeah, so I think octopus brains are about similar size to like a squirrel

brain but they they punch above their weight in so many ways so a lot of the time we do tend to compare animals about how intelligent they might be by how many neurons they have but doesn't always directly equate and the interesting thing as well about the nervous system in their arms is that there's not as many connections between the main brain and the arm nervous system as people would expect and actually there's more connections going connections between the main brain and the arm nervous system as people would expect. And actually, there's more connections going up into the brain than there is going down. So like with our brain, we kind of think of it as a top-down command system, but they think of the octopus nervous system as a bottom-up or an arm-up.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. You were mentioning about the fact that for an animal that doesn't appear to be very social, this level of intelligence might be considered from what we know so far to be unusual. But is it right that they so though they might not be social with each other that some octopus will actually form

social relationships with other species absolutely it depends how you define social but but they certainly cooperate with other species in in very fascinating ways so when you watch an octopus hunt on a coral reef it will often team up with animals that are very different from it to both animals' advantage. So an octopus is what we call a crevice forager, and that means it chases fish and other animals down into holes in the reef. It's a great instinct. Do you know what I wanted? I wasn't even looking at Russell Kane, but I heard some tittering in the audience. Russell's made one of his crevice forager faces again, hasn't he?

It was my Tinder name when I was single. So the octopus hunts things by chasing them down into the reef, down into holes and into cracks, where they can't go anywhere else. They're stuck in a dead end, and then the octopus can just pour itself in after them because it's got no skeleton and it can chase them down into there. But it's not so good out in the open because the octopus isn't a fast animal. It can't chase anything across open water. So what it does is it goes and finds a fast predatory fish and they swim around the reef together. And then the fish have

got no chance because if the fish bolt upwards for the open water, then the fast predator is going to chase them and they're toast. And if the fish darts for cover and tries to hide in the reef, then the octopus get them. You almost feel sorry watching these little fish when this octopus and the predatory fish team up because there's just nowhere to hide. Is there ever a fight between the predatory fish and the octopus about...

I'm not being funny, but that was my kill. Because if I'd put all the graft in, I'd be pretty annoyed if the predatory fish got it. fish and the octopus about i'm not being funny but that was my kill i didn't know because i would if i'd put all the graft in i'd be pretty annoyed if the predatory fish got it well well it's a bit it's a bit of a lottery who gets it but but i guess what works for them is that somebody will but they don't fight about it i mean they do it turns sour at the end about this yeah they observed they were looking at this hunting behavior between the fish and the octopuses and they noticed that every now and again the octopus would punch the fish. I thought so.

This is what I was looking for. Carry on. But it doesn't attack it. It just gives it a fist. It punches it, and they were trying to understand why, and they were looking at it in different contexts, and they saw that sometimes they'd punch the fish and then they would get the prey,

which makes sense, like, get out of my way, I want that prey. But sometimes they'd punch the fish and there was no prey around and the researchers were like trying to understand you know maybe it's like a delayed thing or you know the fish then will change its behavior and the other proposition was they're just doing it out of spite spite and mischief again two things in terms of consciousness why do we think it is that this intelligent animal is entirely antisocial because as you said it's interesting because most animals develop intelligence as part of a social structure so could you just talk us through the life cycle of a an octopus so that these short lives one or two years how do they

live that short life the octopuses are in these little egg cases they grow up for a few months and then they hatch out. It's different in different species, but the one I'm most familiar with is octopus vulgaris. It's known as the common octopus. It's found in waters almost all over the world, usually at coastal locations. They hatch out and they're known as a para larvae.

So at this point, they look more like a squid. And then they become benthic, which is a few months later, this is when they mostly spend their time crawling around on the seafloor. And then they live to be about one and a half, two years old, and around that point they start mating. So the males will seek out the females, and I don't know if we want to go into that part, what they do. Yeah, we've got what you've been there.

We're past eight o'clock. Don't stop us enjoying that. What happens next? So the males will seek out the females. As we said, they're very antisocial. So this is one of the few times that they come in contact with another octopus. And the males have to be very tentative in this scenario

because sometimes if the female's hungry, they might decide to eat him. I bet you get a few kinky ones hanging around. Oh, don't nibble me. Oh, no, I half and bitten again. What a disaster. Yeah, the main way that we see the difference between males and female octopuses is that male octopuses, one of their arms is a modified arm, which we call like a sex arm, which basically is the way that they... Can we just get some science? Just a minute.

One minute, Russell. Uninterrupted. I bought one of those off Amazon. They're not worth the money. Right. I'm going to time this. Two minutes of octopus sex without interruption.

Scientific term is a hectocotylus. So the male octopus comes up to the female octopus and inserts the sex arm into her siphon, which is found just near her head. And this is where it's able to deliver these sperm packets. The way that this happens more efficiently is if they stay together for longer. So usually this can last up to an hour. And then the male octopus goes off they try and do this with multiple females doesn't always work out the female also can try and do this with multiple males and then she can decide later which sperm she wants to use what happens to the male i mean like because we've we've seen the you know that for the for the female that's basically the end but

do the males just keep going no they also go through this senescence that's called where they all start to die at that point okay yeah so that's the end of their lives yeah essentially live fast die young so she finishes this orgy with a selection of sperm i'd download the video sperm pack is there some sort of evaluation of what her progeny would be like or is it dave sex arm was massive on how would you choose i don't think it's understood but that'd be really interesting to look into over the last few years actually on monkey cage we've discussed the sex lives of many sort of very surprising sex lives are often perilous and i think i read that there are occasions when the male has to disconnect his sex arm yeah and leave it and run away i missed that important detail yeah so why would that happen what would trigger that kind of behavior i'm leaving

i'm leaving it behind it's never happened before i've been under a lot of pressure lately well sex arms disconnected i told you g, you're working too hard. I mean, it's just... I guess the goal for evolution is just to survive and pass on your genetic material. So losing an arm, probably not really that bad, as long as it's getting into her mantle and could potentially be used to fertilise her eggs. But yeah, also octopuses have amazing capabilities

to regenerate their arms as well. I mean, that's a remarkable thing in itself. When we think of living things on the planet, the fact that you've got this very complex organism that can regrow actually in many ways part of its brain. Exactly. So what do we know about the processes by which that happens is clearly it's of research interest. Yeah it's been known for quite a while but the field is kind of still in its infancy, I guess. Yeah, what's amazing is obviously, as I said, they have lots of neurons in their arms and they have what's called an axial nerve cord that runs down their arm,

which is akin to our spinal cord. And the human brain and spinal cord are really bad at regenerating. Neurons are just very difficult to regenerate because neurons obviously make connections with other neurons and having to turn that over and make the connections again it's just too much work and so yeah people who study spinal cord injury in humans yeah we could really like to understand how that works in octopus but it's still very early intelligence question so if if there's some of their intelligence is located in their arms and they lose two arms are they 25 percent thicker while

it regrows no because they're less each arm has its own consciousness and purpose. Then you've lost 12.5% of your being if you lose an arm. Well, there's been studies where they look at how much autonomy is in an arm. Can one arm memorise one task? So they had a study where they had a Y-shaped maze, and it was opaque, so the octopus couldn't see into it, and it was allowed to put one arm in and figure out which side the food reward was on. And so over time it learned it was on the right, for example.

And then they let it do it again with a different arm and the other arm was able to do it too. So there is evidence that the arms are able to... They make connections with each other and with the brain. And at the same time, there's also evidence that they sometimes use different arms preferentially for different tasks. A bit i guess we're right-handed and left-handed and we preferentially use our right arm for complex stuff so the octopus will choose different arms for different things and one example of this was that when the octopus wants to run along the bottom it'll almost always

use the back two arms as its legs if you like so the researchers were then suggesting that we shouldn't refer to octopuses as having eight arms, but as having six arms and two legs. So it gets quite complicated. They're not just, you know, eight of the same thing. They're eight very specialised organs. I wanted to ask, but I didn't want to seem like I was being pedantic. Are they arms or legs?

Because I know nothing about science, but I'm not bad on language. Leg, doesn't it mean leg? It means eight legs. So it's not a bad question. In the Greek, it does mean eight legs. You're right. And as far as I can see, the definition of arm and leg

is just sort of what you use it for. And that's what these researchers were saying, that actually, if they're running on the back two arms, then they should be legs, because you run on legs. What they're not is tentacles. So people will call them tentacles, but a tentacle has a fixed definition,

and that's a protrusion with suckers just at the end. But because they have suckers all the way down, right into the base of the arm, then their arm's not tentacles. Doesn't that go very much, though, down, just talking about the arm and leg debate there, about the fact that we are perhaps sometimes forcing too much of our own way of thinking about ourselves, putting on that particular blueprint, and then enforcing it on other creatures? Well, exactly. We probably need a new word altogether don't we because what they do with them is so far removed from what we do with our arms that you

know that they're just completely different complex organs i have to ask you as well about the octopus's garden uh not the song but it is based on the story that it appears that the octopus will collect pebbles and create something which again some people will view as not dissimilar to creating a garden. So is that true or was Ringo lying to me? So they do make dens, almost all octopuses make dens and they do it to protect themselves because they're so inherently vulnerable that they've gone through this very unusual evolutionary process as a mollusk to do away with the shell and so they have to have somewhere to hide. And sometimes they make fixed dens by hiding away and pulling in rocks on top of them and burrowing deep into the sand. But sometimes some species can make dens that they carry with them.

So there's an octopus called the coconut octopus, which lives in a place where there's lots of coconuts knocking around and lots of half coconuts left by people who eat them, half coconut shells. coconuts knocking around and lots of half coconuts left by people who eat them, half coconut shells. And so this octopus will pick up two of those. And if it's going across an open, exposed area where it feels threatened, it'll carry these shells with it so that it can just sort of hide inside its coconuts if something dangerous comes. I bet the hermit crabs are well annoyed. That's my idea. I was just thinking the hermit crab was going, oh my God, horses are coming. I was just thinking the hermit crab was going, oh, my God, horses are coming.

Oh! Neil. But again, that's interesting, isn't it? Because it's different to a hermit crab. You can imagine that there's a shell there. It uses the shell. But this almost seems like it's almost like tool use, in a sense. It's building something out of two other parts. It is, yeah. If we're being strict about the definition of tool use in a sense it's building something out of two other parts it is yeah the if we're being

strict about the definition of of tool use in biology it means you need to use an inanimate object to interact with another animal so so the the coconut carrying is not quite tool use because that's just self-protection but sometimes they pick up stuff and throw them at other animals as like projectile missiles and and that's tool use. Really? Yeah. So when something comes and annoys them in their den, they can scoop up rocks or gravel, make a little ball of it,

and then they'll fling it at this intruder, and at the same time they can jet water out of their siphon and create this sort of water pistol slingshot type system to chuck stuff at other animals. This is a question to you both, because you slingshot type system to chuck stuff at other animals to get rid of them. This is a question to you both, because you both study octopuses. Do you perceive them as having characters?

Do you get to know them? Do they behave like individuals? Absolutely, without a doubt. Yeah, the octopuses are very different from each other. They'll behave very differently, different individual octopuses. And you really see that most when they're in tanks or in aquariums because you interact with them so often. But you see it in the wild as well,

that because they'll tend to, for short periods of time anyway, stay in the same place and around the same den, you can sort of get to know one octopus on a reef because you'll know that in that area, that octopus will be there. And some of them are very bold. Some of them are quite shy and elusive. Some of them, you know, of them are quite shy and elusive some of them you know learn to hunt or behave in some ways preferentially over others that they're very different from each other as individuals we've talked about this on the show before about the time where you were diving and then and then you basically did have a kind of what for you was almost a conversation with an octopus you know so there was certainly what i would consider you

would describe it as a conscious connection is that fair to say yes as Tim said I we were filming in a Florida actually shallow water and I was diving and there was an octopus there that was clearly interested which is the first thing I wasn't expecting the fact that this animal would would come and have a look and when I sort of settled down then it seemed to me at least as I was moving and if I lifted a hand it would lift a arm leg not tentacle and and I did feel very strongly that there was a an intelligence there which is I suppose easy it's easy to be fooled isn't it because we anthropomorphize all sorts of things but uh from what you've said it wasn't just me wishful thinking because i did feel

that i was interacting with an intelligent animal yeah you're right that it is very easy to anthropomorphize stuff but yeah i think you're also right that you have shared a common experience there with many many people around the world who've interacted with these animals people are consistently amazed by them and moved by them very strongly, these interactions with these animals. And I think it's because there's such a diversity of experience. Most animals you watch will do something, and maybe they'll have a range of behaviours, but it'll be fairly consistent,

especially once you've spent time with that animal. You sort of get to know it quite quickly. Whereas with an octopus, it can be surprising you and exhibitingiting new behaviors and teaching you new things for a long time you know it's a very deep relationship you can have with an octopus and i just wanted to go back to that point we've spoken about earlier but the fact that we share a common ancestor with cats and other mammals and dolphins and all the things that we tend to think of as intelligent but the common ancestor of this thing is so far back that its mind is completely alien mind that's i guess the right word it is it is and what fascinates me is is then there's so many

experiences that feel common despite that so octop play. We think that octopuses dream. All of these things that we think of as being so human are shared by an animal that has a common ancestor that's about as far back as it's possible to go. Can I ask just about that briefly? We think they dream. Why do we think they dream? So when you watch an octopus sleep,

then it will be changing colours very vividly and twitching its limbs, much like when you watch an octopus sleep, then it will be changing colours very vividly and twitching its limbs, much like when you watch a dog sleep. People describe watching their dogs run around their baskets and yapping, and you'll say it's chasing things in its sleep. And we think the same thing is going on with octopus in their sleep. Does the female octopus wake up and tell the male octopus its dream? Quite long form. I think that's why the male wants to be so far apart in the mating things.

Suddenly brought in the patriarchal structure of the octopus existence. Russell, I don't know why I'm going to ask you this, but we'll find out when I hear your answer. What's the capital of Lichtenstein? You've heard a lot about the different, kind of what you might call the specialisations and indeed the skills of the octopus. Of all of the things that you've heard, what's the one that you think,

well, I'll take that then. That's the one I want to take on board now as a human being. You know, you can have any of the things that an octopus, but just one, which one? No, don't say that one. And not that one either. I just want that one either if anyone was not thinking sex harm not one person that's the most fascinating thing i've heard all night that they're sort of ambiently changing colors while they're sleeping and i think i would have that i would love to

change color while i'm dreaming is that would scare the crap out of my wife. She came in changing colours. Is that a sort of chromatic language? But am I right in thinking that we don't think our octopuses see colour, certainly in the way that we do? I think it's a bit more complex than that. So they have one type of colour receptor in their eye where we have three. And that's how we see colour because different colours will excite our three different types of color receptor differently the octopus just has one and if you jump to conclusions too quickly then you say then it can't sense color but there's two possible mechanisms by which it might be able to and the first is through its skin so it also has opsins that can sense light and sense color in its skin. And the second is through a process by which it refracts light as it comes into its eyeball.

So by changing the shape of its pupil, it's able to sort of split white light, people think, into its different colours. And then the same type of colour receptor is able to sense a different wavelength of light based on what's coming through the pupil. So it doesn't see colour in the same way that we do, but i think it's too overly simplistic to say it doesn't see color well this goes back to what you said at the start i mean doesn't it the idea that this

animal is sensing its environment in ways that we can't really imagine or comprehend and it is fascinating as you said to imagine what its internal internal world its picture of the world its internal life is like because it's so radically different yeah absolutely that would be one of my first questions is like what do you see like what does it look like does it react different to different colors in the laboratory such like if you hold up a bright red does it consistently have a reaction across different octopuses or yellow or green one big function is to disguise itself right like it can match almost any color and it right like it can match almost

any color and it can it can match almost any texture as well so as well as changing its color to to what's behind it it changes its texture and that's this amazing thing to see where it's got these sort of folds in its skin that are called papillae and and they sort of you know can go really smooth if it's on a smooth background and then they'll go all sort of you know warty and novelty and and and it can blend in with all sorts of different textures as well as colours so yeah responds very differently we asked the audience a question which is which animal do you think knows more than we imagine and why what have you got right the drummer with the muppets because he also plays a mean concert piano and harpsichord

i've got a chicken because they know if they came first or the eggs. I've got Larry the Downing Street Cat because he'll have seen off five prime ministers. Perfect. I think it's actually six now, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. This is a paranoid one here. Squirrels because they're plotting with the ducks.

Species cooperation. Mrs Tiggywinkle. She's been through everyone's dirty laundry. I've got a remix. Octopuses. In fact, I think they're so clever that humans will eventually start dating them. After all, flings can only get wetter. Right, so thank you very much to everyone for their answers.

Given what you've heard, though, would you date an octopus? It sounds extremely dangerous. I'd watch Octopus Love Island. Not only would I think you'd watch Octopus Love Island, I think you'd also present the reunion of Octopus Love Island. Look at the muscles on that. Can I ask one last question that occurs to me? Because you said that they're completely solitary.

How long do little babies stay together? How many are born? So there can be around 100,000 of these babies, yes. One study saw 600,000. That was the most they've ever seen. But yeah, in around 100,000. And how many survive. 100,000? One study saw 600,000. That was the most they've ever seen. But yeah, in around 100,000. And how many survive of that? What are the odds?

So this is an approach in biology where when there's a low survival rate, you just make a lot of babies and hope for the best. 600,000? Yeah. Yeah, it's a problem, isn't it? Because if more... They're not all surviving.

If three or four survive, then suddenly we've got an octopus problem. It doesn't always work that mass, though. How many do survive? How many emerge from the net? It depends year to year. And what that means is that the populations of octopuses can be quite difficult to track. Because if they have a good year, you know,

and a tiny fraction more than usual survive, a tiny fraction more than usual out of, you know, hundreds of thousands is a lot. And so last year in Cornwall, we had an octopus boom, they called it. You know, octopuses are usually quite rare in Cornwall. They're not seen that often. But loads of people were seeing them all over the place. Fishermen were complaining that they were stealing fish and stuff out of their traps.

And it was very unusual. So there was some environmental condition that year that meant that more of these babies than normal survived. And the population skyrocketed briefly. Thank you very much to our panel, Amy Courtney, Tim Lamont, and of course from Geordie Shore, The Reunion, Russell Kane. I'm so sorry. Well, next week though, our show is about the mathematics of coincidences and luck, and why there's no such thing in a deterministic universe. So it'll be the same, same as every week then.

Welcome to the Infinite Monkey Cage, the wonderful and mysterious Crushed by Physics. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. Turned out nice again. Infinite monkey gauge. Turned out nice again. Hi, I'm Kiri Pritchard-McLean.

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