Came across this great article on octopi today:
No sci-fi alien is so startlingly strange. Here is someone who, even if she grows to one hundred pounds and stretches more than eight feet long, could still squeeze her boneless body through an opening the size of an orange; an animal whose eight arms are covered with thousands of suckers that taste as well as feel; a mollusk with a beak like a parrot and venom like a snake and a tongue covered with teeth; a creature who can shape-shift, change color, and squirt ink. But most intriguing of all, recent research indicates that octopuses are remarkably intelligent.
“Octopuses,” writes philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith, “are a separate experiment in the evolution of the mind.”
Just check out this mimic octopus in action:
Also, the article notes that research conducted on the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis, a color-changing cousin of octopuses, show that its skin contains gene sequences usually expressed only in the light-sensing retina of the eye. In other words, cephalopods—octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid may be able to see with their skin.
Did I mention that evolution is awesome?
