The oldest sepioid cephalopod from the Cretaceous discovered by Digital fossil-mining with zero-shot learning AI - Nature

Olivia: Well hello there, ocean explorers, and welcome to Ollie the Octopus — the podcast where we celebrate the most astonishing, mysterious, ink-squirting wonders the sea has ever dreamed up. I'm Olivia, your eight-armed host and proud octopus, here to bring you true tales from the world of my beloved eight-armed kin. Every episode I dive into the latest discoveries, the science, the surprises, and the downright magical moments happening in the world of octopuses right now. Big thanks to today's sponsors — Ada, who helps clients weave A I into their workflows in ways that actually make sense; Ago Consulting, your silicon development dream team from A I all the way to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with an incredible portfolio spanning the whole silicon industry. We couldn't do this without them. And oh, do we have a show for you today — ancient fossils found by A I, a blue octopus discovered in the deep, mirrors, arm movements, and a whole bloom of octopuses showing up off the coast of England. Let's dive in. Olivia: Alright, let's kick things off with our first thread — Octopus Research and Discovery — and friends, I have TWO gems for you today. First, let's head to the deep southwest of England, off the coast of Devon and Cornwall. Imagine you're a fisherman. You throw your nets in, same as you have for years, and suddenly — octopuses. Everywhere. More than you've ever seen. Way more. This isn't a tall tale. A new report from Devon County Council has officially documented what researchers are calling an octopus "bloom" off the southwest UK coast. Now when scientists say bloom, they don't mean flowers — they mean a sudden, dramatic surge in population. Like the ocean just threw a party and every octopus in the neighborhood showed up. Olivia: So what's behind it? Well, the report points to a few things working together. Warming sea temperatures — because octopuses, like a lot of cephalopods, tend to thrive when waters get a little warmer. Changes in food availability, shifts in the ecosystem. Octopuses are opportunists, and when conditions line up just right, their numbers can explode. And I mean explode. Fishermen were reporting octopuses tangled in their pots meant for crabs and lobsters. Local seafood businesses started pivoting — suddenly selling octopus dishes. Some communities were delighted. Others were a little... bewildered. Olivia: But here's why the scientists are paying close attention. A bloom like this is a signal. Octopuses are what ecologists sometimes call indicator species — meaning they can tell us something about the health and the changes happening in an ecosystem. When you see a sudden surge, you ask: what changed? What does this mean for the food web? For the fishing industry? For the other creatures sharing that ocean? The Devon report is trying to answer all of those questions, and it's genuinely important work. The ocean is talking, and the octopuses are the messengers. Olivia: Now, if that wasn't exciting enough, let's travel from the shores of England all the way to one of the most extraordinary places on Earth — the waters around the Galápagos Islands. And I do mean the waters AROUND them, because we're going deep. Really deep. Researchers exploring the seafloor near the Galápagos have discovered a brand new species of octopus. And this one? This one is blue. A deep-sea octopus, blue in color, found in the inky darkness far below the surface. We're talking about a creature that was completely unknown to science until now. Olivia: Deep-sea exploration is still one of the great frontiers — we know more about the surface of the Moon than we do about the bottom of our own ocean. So every new species found down there feels like opening a door into another world. And a blue octopus! I mean, even for a family known for being spectacular, that's something. Researchers used remotely operated vehicles — deep-diving robots essentially — to explore the seafloor around the Galápagos Marine Reserve, and there she was. A new member of the octopus family, waiting patiently in the dark, unbothered, magnificent. Scientists are still studying the specimen, learning about its biology, its behavior, its place in the deep-sea ecosystem. But just knowing she's there — that's the kind of thing that makes you want to take better care of our oceans. Because what else is waiting down there that we haven't found yet? Olivia: Okay, thread two — and this one is close to my heart, because it's all about octopuses and humans connecting in real and remarkable ways. And today's story comes from the English Channel — but not just the octopuses swimming in it. It comes from the people living alongside them, the ones whose livelihoods and coastlines and dinner tables have suddenly been touched by this bloom we just talked about. Olivia: See, when a bloom like this happens, it doesn't just affect scientists with clipboards. It affects real people — fishermen, chefs, conservation officers, marine biologists rushing to collect data. One of the things that makes the Devon octopus bloom story so human is how the community responded. Local fishermen, who normally aren't thinking much about octopuses at all, suddenly found themselves in daily contact with hundreds of them. And something interesting happened. People started paying attention. Really paying attention. Olivia: Fishermen began reporting their catches to researchers. Divers started documenting what they were seeing underwater. Community members who'd never thought twice about an octopus were suddenly curious — watching them move, noticing their behaviors, asking questions. That is what I love about moments like this. An unexpected encounter with the natural world can flip a switch in a person. One day you're a crab fisherman. The next day you're an octopus observer, sending data to scientists, contributing to real research. That's citizen science happening organically, born from wonder. Olivia: And this isn't the first time octopuses have pulled humans in unexpectedly. You might know the story of Inky — the octopus at the National Aquarium of New Zealand who, one night, slipped out of his tank, crossed the floor, found a drainpipe, and squeezed himself back out to sea. Staff came in the morning and Inky was simply gone. The tank was still locked. There was a wet trail across the floor, and that was it. Inky had decided he was done, thank you very much, and he left. That story went around the world, and I think it went around the world because it reminded people that octopuses aren't passive creatures in a tank. They have agency. They make choices. And sometimes those choices are to simply go home. Olivia: That's what these encounters do — whether it's a bloom off Devon, or Inky's midnight escape, or a diver in South Africa building a friendship with a wild octopus over months. They remind us that these animals have rich inner lives. They're not just interesting to look at. They're beings. And every time a human gets close enough to really see that, something shifts. A little more wonder enters the world. A little more care. Olivia: And that brings us beautifully to our third and final thread — Understanding Octopuses — where we get into how scientists, researchers, and yes, A I, are working to crack the code of what it actually means to be an octopus. And oh my goodness, there is so much happening here right now. Olivia: Let's start with mirrors. A recent study reported by Popular Science asked a question that sounds simple but is actually profound: are octopuses smart enough to use a mirror? Now, the classic test for self-awareness in animals is called the mirror test — you put a mark on an animal, show them a mirror, and see if they recognize that the reflection is themselves and try to touch the mark on their own body. Dolphins pass. Great apes pass. Even some fish have shown surprising responses. But octopuses? Their nervous system is so different — most of their neurons are actually in their arms, not their brain — that scientists weren't sure what to expect. Olivia: What researchers found was fascinating. Octopuses interacted with their mirror reflections in ways that suggest they were doing something more than just reacting to a strange new object. They approached the mirror. They moved in ways that seemed exploratory, even investigative. Now, this doesn't mean scientists are ready to say octopuses are fully self-aware in the way we define it for mammals. But it does suggest that octopuses are engaging with their own reflection in a meaningful way — which is remarkable for a creature whose brain evolved completely separately from ours, on an entirely different branch of the tree of life. If intelligence evolved twice — once in vertebrates, and once in cephalopods — then studying octopus intelligence isn't just about octopuses. It's about understanding the very nature of mind itself. Olivia: Now, if mirrors are fascinating, what researchers at the New York Times covered next is nothing short of extraordinary. Scientists are literally building what they're calling an octopus dictionary. One arm movement at a time. Think about that. A dictionary. For octopuses. The idea is this — if octopuses communicate, and there's growing evidence that they do, then their language might live in their bodies. In the way an arm curls. In the direction a tentacle points. In the speed and rhythm of movement. Researchers are painstakingly cataloguing these movements, trying to identify patterns, meanings, repeated gestures. It's slow, meticulous work. But it's also thrilling, because what they're building is a Rosetta Stone for a completely alien intelligence. Olivia: Imagine if we could actually understand what an octopus is expressing. Not just observe them — but genuinely understand. That's the dream. And A I is playing a huge role in making it possible. Which leads us to one more story that ties everything together perfectly. Paleontologists — the scientists who study ancient life through fossils — have long struggled with a particular problem. Fossils are rare. Cephalopod fossils are especially rare, because soft-bodied animals don't fossilize easily. But there are thousands of old fossil images sitting in museum databases, scientific journals, collections that nobody's had time to really look through systematically. Enter A I. Olivia: A team of researchers used a technique called zero-shot learning — which means training an A I to recognize things it hasn't explicitly been shown before — to dig through massive archives of fossil images. And what they found is stunning. The oldest known sepioid cephalopod, dating all the way back to the Cretaceous period. The Cretaceous! That's the age of the dinosaurs. Which means the ancestors of today's cuttlefish and their relatives were swimming around while T. rex was stomping through the forests above. The A I found something human researchers had missed, buried in archives, just waiting to be seen. That's the power of combining human curiosity with machine intelligence. We can look at everything — and find the things we didn't even know we were looking for. Olivia: Whether it's arm movements catalogued one by one, or a fossil uncovered by a clever algorithm, or a blue octopus filmed in the dark near the Galápagos — we are living in an extraordinary moment for octopus science. We are, slowly, carefully, lovingly, learning to understand them. And I think that understanding makes the world a more wonderful place. Olivia: So here's what I want to leave you with today. A bloom of octopuses off England's coast. A new blue species in the deep near the Galápagos. Ancient fossils found by A I that stretch the octopus family tree back to the dinosaurs. Octopuses looking in mirrors. Scientists building a dictionary out of arm movements. Every single one of these stories is a reminder that the world is stranger, deeper, and more alive than we often remember. And at the center of so many of those stories — eight arms, a curious eye, and a mind unlike anything else on Earth. I love these animals. I hope you do too. Olivia: That's a wrap on today's episode of Ollie the Octopus, brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor. Thank you so much for spending this time with me and with our eight-armed friends. If this episode made you smile, made you curious, or made you want to go learn more — please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs a little ocean wonder in their day. You'll find links to all of today's stories in the show notes. Until next time — stay curious, stay kind, and remember: the ocean has more surprises waiting. Let's go find them.