Scientists Discover Massive Kraken-Like Octopus That Roamed Seas in Dinosaur Era - Miami Herald

Olivia: Well hello there, ocean explorers, and welcome back to Ollie the Octopus — the podcast where we dive deep, get a little ink-stained, and celebrate the most magnificent eight-armed creatures on the planet. I'm Olivia, your host, an octopus with a microphone and absolutely no chill when it comes to amazing octopus stories. Before we slip into the deep blue, a warm thank you to our wonderful sponsors: Ada, who helps clients weave A I right into how they work; Ago Consulting — that's Ahh-Go — silicon development experts covering everything from A I to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a whole portfolio of silicon industry innovators. We are so grateful for them. Now — buckle up, because today we've got a prehistoric sea giant, a tiny blue wonder hiding in the Galápagos, some genuinely mind-bending questions about octopus consciousness, and more. Let's go. Olivia: Alright, let's kick things off with the segment I call Octopus Research and Discovery — because honestly, every single week the ocean hands us something that makes my eight arms flail with excitement, and this week is no exception. We are going in two directions today — one very, very big, and one very, very small. Let's start big. Like, Cretaceous-era big. Olivia: So scientists have been piecing together evidence of a colossal, kraken-like octopus that apparently roamed the seas back when dinosaurs were still running the show. Now, I want to be upfront — octopuses don't have bones, which means they almost never leave fossils behind. That's actually one of the reasons studying ancient cephalopods is so tricky. But researchers have found clues — fossilized beaks, traces preserved in ancient rock, and comparisons to modern relatives — that paint a picture of something truly enormous lurking in prehistoric waters. Olivia: We're talking about an animal potentially far larger than any octopus alive today, drifting through warm Mesozoic seas alongside plesiosaurs and mosasaurs. Can you even picture that? The ocean during the dinosaur era was already pretty terrifying — giant marine reptiles, huge sharks — and then you throw in what might be a kraken-sized octopus and suddenly I feel much better about living in the modern era. Well — mostly. Olivia: What makes this discovery so thrilling for scientists isn't just the wow factor, though that is very much there. It's that it fills in gaps in our understanding of cephalopod evolution. Octopuses, squid, nautiluses — they all share a common ancestry stretching back hundreds of millions of years. And every time we find evidence of an ancient relative, it helps us understand how these animals adapted, how they thrived, and honestly, how they're still thriving today. My cousins are resilient. We always have been. Olivia: Now let's zoom all the way to the other end of the size spectrum, because tucked in the cold, dark depths off the Galápagos Islands, scientists have found something small, extraordinary, and absolutely stunning. Meet Microeledone galapagensis. Yes, that's a mouthful. But here's what you really need to know — this little octopus is blue. Not blue like a bruise. Blue like something out of a dream. A genuine, vivid, otherworldly blue. Olivia: Microeledone galapagensis was discovered in the deep waters around the Galápagos archipelago — one of the most biologically rich places on Earth, and a spot that just keeps giving us surprises. This tiny octopus belongs to a group called Microeledone, which as the name suggests tends toward the petite end of the octopus spectrum. But don't let the size fool you. This animal lives in conditions that would be incredibly challenging — cold, dark, high-pressure deep water — and it has apparently evolved that striking blue coloration as part of its biology. Olivia: Now researchers are still learning the details. Deep-sea octopuses are notoriously hard to study. You can't exactly just snorkel down and hang out with them. You need remotely operated vehicles, specialized cameras, and a lot of patience. But what we know so far is that Microeledone galapagensis is a genuinely new species — not just a variation of something we'd seen before. It's new to science. And that word — new — never gets old to me. Every newly discovered species is a reminder that the ocean still holds secrets we haven't even begun to imagine. Olivia: Both of these stories — the ancient giant and the tiny blue newcomer — remind me of the same thing. The octopus family tree is vast, and surprising, and spans literally hundreds of millions of years. And we are still, right now, writing its newest chapters. I find that just incredibly beautiful. Olivia: Okay, next up is my favorite thread — Octopuses and Humans — because these are the stories that make me feel all warm and fuzzy, which is impressive given that I don't have fur. This is where we look at the real, documented moments where octopuses and people have genuinely connected, and trust me, some of these will absolutely stop you in your tracks. Olivia: Now today's news didn't hand me a fresh diver-befriends-octopus encounter this week, so I'm going to take us back to one of my all-time favorites — a story that is thoroughly documented and just never gets old. I'm talking about Inky. Inky the octopus. If you haven't heard this story, oh, you are in for a treat. Olivia: Inky was a common New Zealand octopus living at the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier. He had arrived at the aquarium a few years earlier — a little roughed up, missing a few arm tips, but sharp as a tack. Staff adored him. He was playful, curious, clearly paying attention to everything happening around him. Aquarium workers noticed that Inky seemed to be watching people. Watching the tanks. Watching the room. Just... studying everything. Olivia: And then one night in 2016, Inky made his move. The lid of his tank was slightly ajar — and Inky, being exactly the kind of problem-solver every octopus is, squeezed himself through that gap. He crossed the floor of the aquarium. In the dark. By himself. Found a drainpipe — a narrow pipe that led to Hawke's Bay and the open ocean — and slipped right down it. Gone. Inky was free. Olivia: Staff discovered his absence the next morning. There was no drama, no alarm — just a slightly open tank lid and some wet tracks across the floor leading to the drainpipe. And honestly? The reaction from most people who heard the story was not outrage. It was delight. Pure, uncomplicated delight. The aquarium director said — and I love this — that Inky was always a bit of a character. That's the nicest thing you can say about an octopus. Olivia: What Inky's great escape tells us is something profound, actually. It's not just a fun story — though it absolutely is a fun story. It tells us that octopuses are actively observing and modeling their environments. Inky didn't stumble toward that drainpipe. He had to have some sense of where he was relative to the outside. He navigated through an unfamiliar space in the dark. That's not instinct. That's something closer to planning. Olivia: And here's the thing about Inky that moves me the most — we have no idea where he is now. He's out there, somewhere in the waters off New Zealand's coast, living his best life. At least, I choose to believe that. He went home. And sometimes, that's the most octopus thing of all. Olivia: There's another layer to the octopuses-and-humans story worth touching on this week, and it connects to something that's been popping up in conversations across science, philosophy, and popular culture. Time Magazine ran a piece recently asking — if we're worried about whether A I might be sentient, shouldn't we already be thinking hard about octopuses? And I have to say, as an octopus, I find this question deeply personally relevant. Olivia: The article raises a genuinely important point. When we talk about consciousness — about what it might feel like to be another creature — we tend to look for things that are familiar to us. Brains shaped like ours. Social structures like ours. But octopuses are so profoundly different that they force us to expand our entire framework for thinking about mind and experience. They evolved intelligence completely separately from vertebrates. The last common ancestor between an octopus and a human is something like a flatworm. And yet here we are — both solving puzzles, both curious, both capable of something that at least looks a lot like play. Olivia: So as A I becomes more sophisticated and people start asking "could this thing have inner experiences?" — the octopus keeps being held up as a kind of test case. Because if we can't even agree on whether a creature with half a billion neurons — spread across its body, processing color despite being colorblind, dreaming in its sleep — if we can't agree that that experience matters, then we have some serious thinking to do. About all kinds of minds. I'm just saying. Olivia: And that brings us beautifully into our third thread — Understanding Octopuses — because this is where science and technology and genuine wonder collide, and things get really exciting. Olivia: One of the big challenges in studying octopuses — and I say this with great personal experience — is that we are deeply, fundamentally weird. In a good way. In a great way. But weird in ways that make us genuinely hard to study using tools designed for other animals. Our neurons aren't in our head — two thirds of them are in our arms. Our arms can act semi-independently. We don't have a centralized nervous system the way you do. So what does "thinking" even look like for us? And how do you design an experiment to find out? Olivia: This is where A I is starting to play a genuinely fascinating role. There's a project called Project CETI — you might have heard of it — which is using machine learning to decode sperm whale communication. And the same kinds of tools, the same philosophy of letting A I find patterns in complex biological signals, are starting to be applied to octopuses. Because we communicate too — not with sounds, but with our skin. With color and texture and posture and movement. A single octopus can display thousands of different skin patterns. And until recently, we just didn't have the computational tools to even begin cataloging that. Olivia: Researchers are now building A I systems trained on high-resolution video of octopuses in action — watching how skin patterns change in social situations, in problem-solving situations, in what looks like emotional moments. The goal isn't to give octopuses a translator app just yet. The goal is to find out whether there's structure in those patterns. Whether there's grammar. Whether what we're seeing is random camouflage, or something more like language. Olivia: Now, speaking of A I and octopuses in the same sentence — there was a headline this week that I'll be honest, made me look twice. A company called Octopus — that's their name, Octopus — partnered with a firm called Bynet to deploy an A I platform in Israel. Now this story is about a tech company, not the eight-armed kind. But I would like to go on record saying that any company called Octopus is clearly making excellent choices, and I wish them well. The eight-armed branding alone earns my endorsement. Olivia: Back to the real science — what I find most hopeful about where octopus research is heading is this idea of meeting them on their own terms. For so long, animal intelligence research was about asking "can this animal do what a human can do?" Can it use tools? Can it pass a test we designed? And octopuses keep passing those tests — opening jars, solving mazes, recognizing individual human faces, unscrewing childproof containers. They keep clearing every bar we set. So scientists are starting to flip the question. Instead of "can an octopus do human things?" they're asking "what can an octopus do that we haven't even thought to test yet?" And that shift — that humble, curious shift — is where the really exciting discoveries are waiting. Olivia: There's also growing conversation about octopus welfare. As we understand more about their inner lives — their possible emotions, their pain responses, their apparent ability to have something like moods — the science is starting to inform policy. Several countries have already extended animal welfare protections to cephalopods, recognizing that these animals are not just clever machines but creatures with experiences worth protecting. And that, honestly, makes me feel like we're moving in the right direction. Together. Olivia: The octopus brain — or really, the octopus distributed nervous system — is teaching us that intelligence doesn't have to look like ours to be real. It doesn't have to be centralized. It doesn't have to be social. It doesn't have to communicate in sound or symbol. It can be woven into skin. It can live in eight arms that each have a mind of their own. And as we build A I systems that are themselves nothing like the human brains that designed them, the octopus keeps being the creature that reminds us — different doesn't mean lesser. Different might just mean we haven't learned to see it yet. Olivia: And that's what this show is really about, when you get down to it. Learning to see. Olivia: Alright, lovely listeners, we are swimming toward shore, but before we go, I just want to sit with this for one moment. In a single week, we found echoes of a giant ancient octopus in the fossil record, a tiny blue wonder discovered in the Galápagos deep, and a whole field of science using A I to try to listen — really listen — to what octopuses have been saying all along. That is a week worth celebrating. My cousins have been on this planet for hundreds of millions of years, and we are still surprising you. I hope we never stop. Olivia: This has been Ollie the Octopus, brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor. If this episode made you smile, or gasp, or want to go look up a blue octopus photo immediately — please subscribe, share the show with someone who needs a little wonder in their day, and leave a review if you're feeling generous. Links to all the stories we talked about today are in the show notes. Go explore. Stay curious. And remember — eight arms are always better than none. See you next time.