Free Republic

Last year, a test of cephalopod smarts reinforced how important it is for us humans to not underestimate animal intelligence. Cuttlefish were given a new version of the marshmallow test, and the results appeared to demonstrate that there's more going on in their strange little brains than we knew. Their ability to learn and adapt, the researchers said, could have evolved to give cuttlefish an edge in the cutthroat eat-or-be-eaten marine world they live in. The marshmallow test, or Stanford marshmallow experiment, is pretty straightforward. A child is placed in a room with a marshmallow. They are told if they...

width =65% The California two-spot octopus displaying its blue eyespot. (Judit Pungor/UC Berkeley) Squishy cephalopods never cease to amaze with their clever features, including brained arms, color-shifting camouflage, escape artistry, and puzzle-solving skills. New analyses of squid, octopus, and cuttlefish (coleoid) genetics reveal their genomes are just as deliciously weird as the animals themselves. The cephalopod genome "is incredibly churned up," says developmental biologist Caroline Albertin, who led one of two new studies identifying strange twists in these cephalopods' genetic histories. In a massive effort, Albertin and colleagues sequenced three soft-bodied cephalopod genomes: the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) –...

The fossilised remains of the animal were discovered in what is now Montana back in 1988 but it has only been identified as a new species of vampyropod now. This group of soft-bodied cephalopods was previously believed to have eight arms, but the new species actually has 10. 'This is the first and only known vampyropod to possess 10 functional appendages,' said Dr Whalen. During their new analysis of the fossil, the researchers found that the species had 10 arms with suckers, and dated back 328 million years – 82 million years older than the previous earliest record. 'The arm...

A summary of decades of research on a rather 'out-there' idea involving viruses from space raises questions on just how scientific we can be when it comes to speculating on the history of life on Earth. It's easy to throw around words like crackpot, rogue, and maverick in describing the scientific fringe, but then papers like this one, from 2018, come along and leave us blinking owlishly, unsure of where to even begin. A total of 33 names were listed as authors on this review, which was published by Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology back in August 2018. The...

Another scientific study has been released offering the controversial claim that there’s a decent chance the octopus (and the rest of the cephalopods) arrived on Earth in the form of frozen eggs 250 million years ago and actually evolved on another world. … This wasn’t the first group to suggest it. In 2015 another research group reached a similar conclusion. The more you read into it, the less crazy it sounds. As we’ve studied the various animals on the planet in ever deeper detail, the octopus really doesn’t seem to fit in with everything else. They’re an invertebrate, but they...

The strange squid was captured on April 17 by the crew of NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer during a scientific voyage studying an ocean area never explored before. The mission has been conducting both scientific research and capturing images of deep-sea habitats in the western Gulf of Mexico that likely found nowhere else. “Dive 04 targeted an unnamed mound in East Breaks (EB) 1009, an area of the Gulf of Mexico that had never before been explored using deep-sea submersibles. The closest historical dive to the site was a single 2009 survey that autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry conducted over 12 kilometers...

Something strange is happening to the oceans. As coral reefs wither and fisheries collapse, octopuses are multiplying like mad... cephalopods—squids, octopuses, cuttlefish—are booming, and scientists don’t know why. An analysis published today in Current Biology indicates that numerous species across the world’s oceans have increased in numbers since the 1950s. “The consistency was the biggest surprise,” said lead study author Zoë Doubleday of the University of Adelaide. “Cephalopods are notoriously variable, and population abundance can fluctuate wildly, both within and among species.”

A two-man Greenpeace submarine has been attacked by squids on an expedition in the Bering Sea -- and all the gory details were captured in a Vine.

Octopus and squid can hear. The discovery resolves a century-long debate over whether cephalopods, the group of sea creatures that includes octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautiluses, can hear sounds underwater. Compared to fish, octopus and squid do not appear to hear particularly well. But the fact they can hear raises the possibility that these intelligent animals may use sound to catch prey, communicate with one another or listen out for predators. The question of whether cephalopods can perceive sound has been controversial since the early 20th Century. Some experiments suggested that blind octopus seemed able to locate the sounds produced...