How Smart is an Octopus?

Hi, Mr. Nature here–along with a very clever octopus.

The octopus is resting inside a jar at the bottom of the aquarium, and a human comes along and screws the top onto the jar. You’d think that’d be pretty much escape-proof. But almost instantly, the octopus figures out that what he has to do is twist off the lid in the opposite direction; and in less than a minute, he gets it done. Off goes the top.

He then elects to stay in the jar a little longer. Maybe octopi have more in common with cats than we thought.

This is God’s stuff, the wonderful works of His hands. We don’t know why He made the octopus so intelligent, but you can be sure He knows. And maybe the octopus knows, too!

World’s Smartest Octopus

How smart is an octopus? Well, here’s one who learned how to open a fairly complicated jar just by seeing another octopus do it–once.

I wonder if he can learn to play chess. Imagine being the first human to lose a chess game to an octopus.

Sanity Medicine: Johnny the Octopus

Hi, Mr. Nature here.

I don’t know how many of you have ever had a pet octopus. I never did, although I’ve heard they’re very popular in certain quarters.

Anyway, the interesting thing about an octopus is how smart it is. The one in this video was hauled out of the water by Alaskan shrimp fishermen. It had gotten into their shrimp trap through a three-inch hole and proceeded to eat the shrimp. Then it unscrewed the lid from the jar containing shrimp bait and ate that, too.

Really–how can an octopus figure out what a jar is and how to open it? It’s not like they get a lot of practice. If you had never before seen or heard of a screw-top jar, how long would it take you to discover how to open it?

The fishermen in this video allowed the octopus to escape back into the sea. They could have eaten him. They could also have named him Johnny and made a pet of him.

What would you have done?