Evolution is a miraculous thing, and has created natural wonders far more impressive than anything we as humanity have managed to create ourselves. I recently wrote an article about how a tiny jellyfish has become immortal, but the natural world has evolved so many more extraordinary characteristics during the approximate 3.5 billion years that life has been on Earth.
Octopi are, in a single word, weird. Their tentacles are uniquely gross, they spray out ink when they get spooked and they can change their colour with more accuracy and control than a chameleon. They look weird, they act weird and, according to my octopus eating friend, they taste weird. The truly amazing thing about these creatures is how they think, because this brain takes weird to a whole new level.
Octopi are very intelligent creatures, one of the most intelligent of all animals and the smartest invertebrate (meaning animal without a spine) alive. They have been observed using tools, have complex social interactions and are incredibly good at escaping from aquariums. However, the really interesting and exciting thing about octopi isn’t how smart they are but how they became so smart in the first place.
Intelligent creatures all share a common ancestor that lived a very long time ago. For most of these animals including us, they all split off into their own evolutionary line when it was a small bony lizard type thing. Octopi split off from this evolutionary chain millions of years previously, back when our common ancestor was a type of flatworm.
This means that octopi, as well as squid and cuttlefish as part of the Cephalopod family, had to make their own way over the years. They evolved limbs, nervous systems and intelligence completely independently from other forms of intelligent life, and yet have become one of the most intelligent life forms on Earth.
All this means that an octopus brain may be the closest we ever get to being able to study an alien brain. While humans share similar brain structures with dogs, dolphins and parrots, the brain structure of an octopus is a completely different design. It is so different that the scientific journal ‘Progress of Biophysics and Molecular Biology’ published a paper that seriously put forward the argument that octopi might have extraterrestrial origins. Scientists are actually debating whether an ancestor of the octopus came from outer space, and if that doesn’t put into perspective how extraordinarily different these creatures are then I don’t know what will.
After researching these tentacled geniuses, I for one eagerly await the octopus uprising and wish them the best of luck in ruling this planet. While it may not be a threat right now, who knows what these biological marvels will evolve into in the future. Alternatively, if there is a very slim chance that octupi did originate from a distant planet, does that mean there are already a species of hyper intelligent space squid among the stars? Or are there other creatures, hiding on Earth somewhere undiscovered, that are equally as alien? The truth is we may never know, and maybe that’s for the best.
