Why are these octopuses hurling shells at each other?
“Whether or not octopuses are intentionally hurling objects at each other — and whether or not we can really call it “throwing” — the study shows that octopuses can use their siphon in clever ways: to move debris, arrange a den, and perhaps even send a signal to other animals, including us.
Does that mean they’re even more intelligent than we thought?
The question itself is fraught, as it suggests that there’s some universal idea of what it means to be intelligent. In our assessment of animals, intelligence is often measured using a human yardstick, as the primatologist Frans de Waal writes in his book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? “Every species deals flexibly with the environment and develops solutions to the problems it poses,” he writes. “Each one does it differently.”
Octopuses, for one, are nothing like us. In fact, “when our two branches of the animal family tree diverged, backbones hadn’t been invented,” as Elizabeth Preston wrote in the New York Times. “It makes sense to be cautious when we guess what’s going on in these animals’ minds.”
There is a benefit to our obsession with octopus intelligence: We show them more respect and compassion, which has implications for wildlife conservation, experts say. “You probably won’t conserve what you don’t respect,” Mather says.
Then again, what makes octopuses so marvelous is just how different from us they are. Case in point: Each of their eight tentacles has roughly 300 suckers, and each of those can have as many as 10,000 or so sensory neurons, allowing them to perceive touch and taste. “It’s alien,” Grasso said. “It isn’t human.””