“This is one of the reasons why the communications of cephalopods are so difficult to crack: They don’t have a grammar or vocabulary. Everything is either local—learned on the fly over a short life span—or instinctive. Plus, they mix communications between colors, patterns, texture, and gesture. That would be a bit like communicating using speech, Morse code, and sign language at the same time, and having to understand all of them simultaneously in order to make sense of any of them.
