Tiny blue octopus discovered deep in Galápagos waters. See underwater video. - USA Today

Olivia: Well hello there, ocean explorers, and welcome to Ollie the Octopus — the podcast where we dive deep into the wild, wonderful, and genuinely mind-bending world of my eight-armed cousins. I'm Olivia, your host, a curious little octopus with a lot of arms and even more questions, and I am so glad you're here. Olivia: Before we splash in, a warm thank you to the brilliant folks who make this show possible. Ada, who helps clients weave A I right into their everyday workflows. Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — silicon development experts guiding everything from A I all the way to SoC design. And Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a whole portfolio of companies spanning the silicon industry. These three are doing genuinely cool things, and we're grateful for every one of them. Olivia: Now — are you ready? Because today we have not one but TWO brand new octopus species to celebrate, a land-walking octopus that will make you question everything you thought you knew, a title stripped from the world's "oldest octopus," and a peek at how A I is helping us finally crack the code of what octopuses are actually saying to each other. Let's go. Olivia: Alright, thread one — Octopus Research and Discovery — and oh my goodness, friends, we are living in a golden age of finding new octopuses in places nobody expected. Olivia: Let's start in the Galápagos Islands, which — if you've never heard of them — are a jaw-dropping chain of volcanic islands sitting out in the Pacific Ocean off Ecuador. The Galápagos are famous for being one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. Darwin went there. Giant tortoises live there. And now — now — a tiny, alien-like, electric blue octopus lives there too. Olivia: Researchers on a deep-sea expedition recently sent a remotely operated vehicle — basically an underwater robot with cameras — down into the cold, dark waters off the Galápagos. And there, lurking in the depths, they found this little creature. Tiny. Blue. Almost glowing. Looking for all the world like something that tumbled out of a science fiction film. Olivia: Scientific American described it as "alien-like," and honestly, that's not hyperbole. The creature has a vivid blue coloration, which is genuinely unusual for octopuses at depth. Most deep-sea animals trend toward red or black — colors that disappear in low light — so blue is a head-scratcher. What is this animal doing with that color? Is it a warning? Is it camouflage we don't fully understand yet? Is it just… beautiful for reasons we haven't figured out? Scientists are asking all of those questions right now. Olivia: The footage — and there is underwater video of this little one, which I will point you to in the show notes — the footage is just breathtaking. You see this small, vivid creature moving through water that looks almost black, and it's like watching a tiny blue lantern drift through the dark. Olivia: Researchers believe this is a newly documented species, meaning it had never been formally described by science before. And the Galápagos, even after all this time, even after Darwin, still has secrets tucked into its deep waters. That just fills me with so much joy. Olivia: But wait — because we've got a second new species to talk about, and this one lives even deeper. Biologists have just announced the discovery of a new species of Dumbo octopus in the deep Pacific Ocean. Now, if you don't know Dumbo octopuses, prepare yourself for an absolute treat. Olivia: Dumbo octopuses are named after the Disney elephant — the one with the big ears — because these octopuses have large, ear-like fins on the sides of their mantle, their body, and they use them to flap and glide through the water. They are possibly the most adorable animals in the ocean. I say this with full bias and zero apology. Olivia: They live in the hadal zone — the extreme deep sea, sometimes more than four kilometers down — where the pressure would crush most things flat, where there is no light, where the temperature hovers just above freezing. And yet there they are, these little dumbo-eared wonders, flapping along like nothing in the world could bother them. Olivia: The newly described species was found in the very deep Pacific, and what excites scientists isn't just "hey, new species" — though that is genuinely exciting — it's what this discovery tells us about how life spreads and adapts at the extreme edges of our planet. The deep sea is the least explored environment on Earth. We have better maps of the surface of Mars than we do of our own ocean floor. Every new deep-sea species is a window into a world we are just barely beginning to understand. Olivia: Two new octopus species in one episode. I'm going to need a moment. Okay. Moment over. Let's keep going. Olivia: Thread two — Octopuses and Humans — and this week's story for this thread is one that BBC Wildlife Magazine flagged with the absolutely irresistible headline: "This is no ordinary octopus." And they are one hundred percent correct. Olivia: The story is about an octopus that was filmed — on video, confirmed, real footage — walking on land. On. Land. Out of the water. Moving across terrain like it had somewhere to be and was slightly irritated about the commute. Olivia: Now, octopuses can technically do this. They are soft-bodied, they can breathe air for short periods through their skin, and they are absolutely not above hauling themselves onto rocks or shore when they want to — usually to hunt crabs in tide pools. But seeing it on camera is something else entirely. Olivia: What makes this encounter so remarkable is the way it bridges the world between octopuses and the humans watching them. Because when you see an octopus walk — and I mean properly walk, using its arms as legs, moving with what looks like purpose and intent — something in your brain shifts. It stops looking like a sea creature and starts looking like a neighbor. Something familiar. Something you recognize. Olivia: And that's the thing about octopus-human encounters that keeps drawing people in. There is a quality to how octopuses move and respond that feels relational. Not just instinctive. A researcher who has spent time with octopuses in a lab or a diver who has had an octopus swim up and investigate them will often tell you the same thing: there was a moment where it felt like the octopus was curious about me. Not afraid. Not aggressive. Just… curious. Olivia: One of the most famous documented examples of this is the story of Inky — the octopus at the National Aquarium of New Zealand in 2016. Inky squeezed through a gap in his tank lid, slithered across the floor of the aquarium, found a drainpipe, and escaped into the ocean. And the reason that story went global wasn't just because it was funny, although it was extremely funny. It's because it felt like a decision. Like a plan. People all over the world looked at Inky and thought, "He wanted out, and he got out." Olivia: The land-walking octopus filmed recently carries that same energy. Watch the footage — the link is in the show notes — and tell me you don't feel a little jolt of something. Recognition, maybe. Or wonder. Or just the slightly humbling realization that the ocean is full of minds we haven't properly introduced ourselves to yet. Olivia: There are researchers and divers who have documented genuine, repeated interactions with the same octopus over time — the same individual returning to the same diver, accepting food, reaching out an arm to touch a hand. These aren't trained behaviors. These are choices. And every time a story like that surfaces, it pulls humans and octopuses a little closer together. Olivia: I love that. I really, genuinely love that. Olivia: Alright, thread three — Understanding Octopuses — and we're going to start with a story that is part heartbreak, part fascinating science, and honestly? Kind of a great lesson in how knowledge works. Olivia: You may have heard of the "oldest octopus fossil" — a creature that held the title of the most ancient octopus ever found in the fossil record. Well. The Times is reporting that this octopus has officially been stripped of its title. So long, sucker — as they put it, rather brilliantly. Olivia: Here's the thing about paleontology, which is the study of fossils: it is a science that regularly revisits its own conclusions. Because when you're looking at a creature that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, preserved in rock, you are working with incomplete information by definition. And sometimes — sometimes — a fossil that was classified one way gets re-examined with better tools and better understanding, and scientists go, "Hmm. Actually, that's not what we thought it was." Olivia: That's what happened here. A specimen that had been celebrated as the world's oldest octopus was reanalyzed, and researchers concluded it either wasn't an octopus at all, or didn't qualify for the title in the way previously claimed. Which means the record now belongs to a different fossil, at a different age, and the history of octopuses on this planet gets quietly rewritten. Olivia: And I find this beautiful. Not embarrassing — beautiful. Because this is science doing exactly what science should do. Questioning itself. Updating. Getting more accurate. The willingness to say "we got that wrong, let's look again" is one of the most powerful things humans do. Octopuses have been evolving for a very, very long time. Getting the timeline right matters. It helps us understand how these animals became what they are. Olivia: Which brings me to the bigger question sitting underneath all of these stories today: how do we actually understand octopuses? And how is technology — including A I — changing that? Olivia: Here's the challenge. Octopuses are deeply intelligent. We know this. They solve puzzles, they recognize individual humans, they use tools, they play. But they are also profoundly different from us in the way they process and communicate. They don't have a centralized brain the way we do — about two thirds of an octopus's neurons are in its arms. Each arm has a kind of semi-independent intelligence. An octopus doesn't just think with its head. It thinks with its whole body. Olivia: And they communicate — at least in part — through their skin. Octopuses can produce extraordinarily complex, rapidly changing patterns of color, texture, and light across their entire body. Waves and spots and stripes that ripple and shift in fractions of a second. Scientists have long suspected this is a form of language. But reading it? That's a completely different challenge. Olivia: This is where A I is starting to change the game. Researchers are using machine learning tools — systems that can analyze thousands of hours of video footage and identify patterns too fast or too subtle for a human eye to catch — to catalog and decode octopus skin displays. Projects like the Cephalopod Page and various university research groups are building databases of these patterns, and A I is helping sort through the complexity. Olivia: The dream — and it is a genuine scientific dream, not science fiction — is that we eventually understand enough about octopus signaling to have something like a conversation. Not in words. But in meaning. To recognize when an octopus is signaling alarm, or curiosity, or contentment. To know not just what they do, but something about what they experience. Olivia: We're not there yet. But we are closer than we have ever been. And every new species found — like our tiny blue Galápagos octopus, or our deep Pacific Dumbo — adds to the picture of what octopus life looks like across its full incredible range. Every interaction filmed, every fossil re-examined, every A I model trained on hours of octopus skin flickers — it all adds up. Olivia: We are slowly, carefully, respectfully learning to listen. And I think that is one of the most hopeful things happening in science right now. Olivia: Two new species. A land-walking mystery. A fossil dethroned. A future where maybe — maybe — we say hello to an octopus and actually understand the hello we get back. What a time to be alive. What a time to have eight arms. Olivia: If there's one thing I hope you take away from today, it's this: the ocean is not empty background. It is full of minds. Full of stories. Full of creatures who have been living extraordinary lives long before any of us showed up, and who will keep surprising us for as long as we're humble enough to look. Olivia: Ollie the Octopus is brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor — three teams doing remarkable work at the edges of technology, and we are grateful for every one of them. Olivia: All the links from today's stories are waiting for you in the show notes — go watch that blue octopus footage, I'm serious, do it right now. And if this episode made you smile or wonder or want to go find an octopus and say hi, please share it with someone you love. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. And until next time — stay curious, stay kind, and keep looking at the ocean like it has something to tell you. Because it absolutely does.