Octopuses are incredibly intelligent animals.
They have the ability to learn quickly and they also have incredible camouflage skills. All in all, they’re one of the most fascinating creatures in the deep blue sea.
Forget about robots, the next revolution is going to come from octopus!
There is still a ton of research being done on these many-legged cephalopods, but all it’s doing is revealing to us just how smart they really are. Each year we are discovering things that we had no idea octopus could do.
Nature on PBS released a video that shows us the beauty and intelligence of the alien-like animals.
Laurel is a teenager that has a pet unlike most pets. While lots of kids want a puppy or pony as their pet, Laurel got an octopus! Through the video, we learn something remarkable.
Despite the massive evolutionary differences between a human, Laural and Heidi (the octopus) have a unique relationship.
While recording Heidi one day, she captured something amazing.
Heidi was sitting near the top of the tank, right near the water-air barrier.
Clinging motionless apart from the swaying of her body in the water, Heidi was sleeping. While octopuses have been filmed sleeping before, what happened next seemed to be something brand new.
As Heidi slept, she began to shift colors.
The narrator began explaining what was happening. Heidi was dreaming!
Even more, you could almost tell what she was doing in her dream from the colors that she was morphing into. This didn’t look like some passive color-shifting – it looked like an actual, conscious, dream.
Starting off as a marbled brown and white, she suddenly shifts to an almost pure white.
Looking like a kaleidoscope of color, the ripples of change spread across her skin. Eventually, they settled on a pure white. The narrator explains:
“She probably is sleeping and then sees a crab, her color starts to change. Then she goes all dark. Octopuses will do this when they leave the bottom. This is a camouflage. They do this when they catch a meal. She is probably sitting there and eating it.”
Watching the scene is mesmerizing.
You can’t help but feel a bit of awe at the flashes of color and patterns across her skin.
We only see things like this in CGI, but this scene is nothing but real. With the water-blue backdrop and the gentle music, you find yourself lulled into amazement watching the little octopus named Heidi.
An octopus has 500 million neurons, roughly the same range that mammals have.
Your average dog has something like that number of neurons in its brain. An octopus is different, however. A third of those neurons are located in its brain, and the rest is in its skin and arms. The result is a different intelligence than we are used to.
It’s tough to make apples-to-apples comparisons between octopuses and mammals. We are just all good at different things. It just makes for a more beautiful world.
It’s incredible to watch Heidi changing colors, and we can’t help but wonder what she’s dreaming about. We hope she’s having good dreams!
Check out the video for yourself below!
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