Presented by Dr. Jennifer Mather
Over the last few decades, we scientists have been gathering information that suggests that octopuses and their relatives are actually quite smart. This seems to bother some people—a ‘dumb invertebrate’ is really intelligent? Besides, the current theory has been that intelligence evolved to solve social and not ecological problems, and octopuses are normally solitary. So…..maybe they are aliens. Oh, come on. The evidence for that is pretty weak. But why would we believe a theory like that anyway? The answer is in us, we’re really very anthropocentric. The social intelligence theory fits the way we feel about the ‘natural order of things’, evolution finding us to be the smartest and best. But hey! There’s another model of intelligence out there. Octopuses are not social, have a short lifespan, live in a complex and variable environment. They have similar eyes though no color vision, also excellent sensing of chemicals. Behavioural control is not as centralized as for us, 3/5 of neurons and much lower level processing is in those eight arms, although they still have a big brain. But they are different, not alien, and looking at them helps us to figure out what might be necessary for intelligence to evolve, on earth or anywhere else.
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