Yahoo! News - Octopuses Seen Walking From Predators

saw this on the news this morning. Amazing. You have to watch the video.

Link: Yahoo! News - Octopuses Seen Walking From Predators.

Comments

[Bryan William Jones]

True story from a Slashdot posting I made:

I am not surprised by this video actually, and I have read and observed mimicry of other types with the animals. Octopus are underrated. Seriously. I used to have an (Octopus bimaculoides) as a pet (her name was Cephus, short for Cephalopod) and I was always amazed at the intelligence and problem solving abilities she exhibited. One day I was returning from working all night at the sleep lab followed by a day of class. I had a new bag of goldfish to feed her and placed them in the "goldfish tank" across the table from her 100gal aquarium. She always got excited at that and would hang on the side of her tank and look at the goldfish. At any rate, I got a couple hours of sleep and then ran back to work for another all night shift. Upon stumbling back home the next day, I was stunned to find no goldfish in the goldfish tank! I did not know if I was just seriously sleep deprived or what, but closer inspection revealed goldfish scales floating around in Cephus's tank........and a trail of dried salt water on the table top from her tank to the goldfish tank. She had opened the top of her tank, navigated across the table to the goldfish tank, helped herself to every last goldfish in the goldfish tank and then crawled back home, closing the top of her tank! All I could do was stare in dumbfounded amazement.

She also exhibited curiosity with new objects placed into her tank, exploring them extensively, and I must admit, it is most interesting in that unlike other aquatic non mammalians.....when you looked into an octopus eye, they look back at you. There is something absolutely intelligent behind those eyes.

[jeff]

You should have named her Hank... as in Hank Williams Jr... as in Bo Cephus :)

they are amazing animals, as many are. My parents have an African Grey parrot that exhibits problem solving abilities, and because she can speak a large vocabulary, is also capable of having conversation (not intelligent, just pattern matching response stuff, but it's impressive anyways).