Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

The most famous octopus anecdotes are tales of escape and thievery, in which octopuses in aquariums raid neighboring tanks at night for food. Those stories, despite their charm, are not especially indicative of high intelligence. Neighboring tanks are not so different from tide pools, even though the entrance and exit take more effort. Here is a behavior I find more intriguing. Octopuses in at least two aquariums have learned to turn off the lights by squirting jets of water at the bulbs when no one is watching, and short-circuiting the power supply. At the University of Otago in New Zealand, this became so expensive that the octopus had to be released back to the wild. A lab in Germany had the same problem.