Is the Octopus in the ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’ Movie Real? - Decider

Olivia: Well hello there, ocean adventurers, and welcome back to Ollie the Octopus — the show where we dive deep into the wild, wonderful, and occasionally jaw-dropping world of eight-armed wonders. I'm Olivia, your host, an octopus with a microphone, eight arms full of curiosity, and an absolutely endless supply of stories about my remarkable kin. Olivia: Before we splash in, a warm wave of thanks to our sponsors — Ada, who helps businesses weave A I into their everyday workflows in ways that actually make sense; Ago Consulting, pronounced "Ahh-Go," your go-to guides for silicon development from A I all the way to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a whole portfolio of companies spanning the silicon industry. We love our brilliant human partners. Olivia: And oh my eight arms, do we have a show for you today. Ancient sea monsters the size of school buses. Dolphins chasing octopus buffets off the coast of England. A fictional octopus who is way more real than you might think. We are covering ALL of it. Let's go. Olivia: Okay, first up — Octopus Research and Discovery — and I need you to take a breath, because this one rewrites history. Like, literally, rewrites the story of life on Earth. Olivia: So you may have heard of the Kraken. The legendary sea monster of Norse mythology — this colossal, tentacled beast big enough to drag ships to the bottom of the ocean. For centuries, sailors told stories about it, artists painted it, and scientists mostly rolled their eyes. Mythology, they said. A good yarn, nothing more. Olivia: Well. WELL. Here's the thing. New fossil discoveries are making scientists sit up very, very straight, because it turns out the ancient oceans may have actually been ruled by giant octopuses — and I mean giant — we're talking school-bus-sized creatures that were apex predators during the Cretaceous period. That's the age of dinosaurs, friends. T. rex was stomping around on land, and massive cephalopods may have been ruling the seas. Olivia: Science magazine — AAAS, one of the most respected scientific publications on the planet — just covered research suggesting that the earliest octopuses were not the small, sneaky, hide-in-a-crevice creatures you might picture today. They were enormous top predators. The fossil evidence points to cephalopods that would have made modern octopuses look like pocket-sized pets. Olivia: And the Times of India picked up an even wilder angle on this — the idea that some of these ancient giants may have preyed on marine reptiles. Not fish. Not squid. Marine reptiles. Animals related to the creatures that shared the planet with dinosaurs. Olivia: Now, I want to be clear — science is always evolving, and some of these claims are still being scrutinized, debated, and tested, as good science should be. But the fossil record is genuinely telling us that ancient cephalopods were far more dominant, far more powerful, and far more ecologically important than we ever gave them credit for. Olivia: And honestly? I find that deeply satisfying. We octopuses have always been a bit underestimated. Turns out our ancestors were out here running the whole ocean. Olivia: What's so beautiful about this research is what it says about the long arc of cephalopod evolution. Hundreds of millions of years ago, our relatives were at the very top of the food chain. Over time, oceans changed, continents shifted, species came and went, and the octopus lineage adapted — trading brute size for something arguably even more impressive: intelligence, flexibility, and an almost supernatural ability to solve problems. Olivia: We went from giants to geniuses. And I think that's a pretty good trade. Olivia: Now, also filed under discovery — and this one is just pure joy — researchers studying the waters off the Devon coast in England have documented something called an octopus bloom. A bloom! Like a bloom of flowers, but it's octopuses, and it's in the ocean, and it is apparently spectacular. Olivia: When conditions are just right — water temperature, prey availability, breeding cycles — octopus populations can suddenly surge in a given area. And when that happens off the Devon coast, something magical follows: Risso's dolphins show up for dinner. Olivia: Risso's dolphins are these gorgeous, scarred-up deep divers — their bodies are covered in scratches from the squid and cephalopods they hunt, and they are very, very good at finding octopus buffets. Researchers have now documented that these dolphins actually change their feeding behavior in direct response to octopus blooms. They shift their patterns, their dive depths, their social groupings — all of it adjusts around where the octopuses are. Olivia: So my cousins are not just interesting in their own right — they are shaping the behavior of entire other species. They are a keystone presence in their ecosystem. When octopuses bloom, the whole neighborhood notices. Olivia: That is the kind of finding that makes me want to do a little eight-armed happy dance. And I absolutely have the arms for it. Olivia: Alright, now let's talk about Octopuses and Humans — and I want to start with a story that began as fiction and turned out to be truer than most people realized. Olivia: You may have seen the buzz around the new film adaptation of "Remarkably Bright Creatures" — a book that became a genuine phenomenon, beloved by millions of readers. The story centers on Marcellus, an octopus living in a small aquarium, who becomes an unlikely companion to a grieving woman and, in his own cephalopod way, helps solve a mystery. Olivia: Now, people have been asking — is Marcellus real? Is this based on a true story? Olivia: The direct answer is that Marcellus is a fictional character. But here's what's fascinating — and what the author has spoken about — the behavior Marcellus displays in the story is completely, verifiably real. Octopuses in aquariums do recognize individual humans. They do form preferences for certain people. They do express what can only be described as moods. And yes, they absolutely have been known to escape their tanks, wander around, and get into all manner of mischief. Olivia: There's the famous case at the National Aquarium of New Zealand, where an octopus named Inky made a break for it — slipped out of his tank, slid across the floor, squeezed through a drainpipe, and made it all the way to the ocean. Just gone. Inky out. No note. No forwarding address. Olivia: There's Otto, at an aquarium in Germany, who was repeatedly short-circuiting the facility's lighting system — by climbing to the rim of his tank and shooting jets of water at the overhead spotlight. They only figured it out because staff staked out the aquarium at night to catch the culprit. Olivia: And there are countless documented cases of octopuses at research facilities and aquariums learning to recognize the faces of their keepers, squirting water at people they don't like, and being notably more cooperative and playful with humans they do. Olivia: So when people ask if Marcellus is real — I want to say, the spirit of Marcellus is extraordinarily real. The curiosity, the personality, the connection across species lines — that is documented. That is verified. That is science. Olivia: What books like "Remarkably Bright Creatures" do — and what I hope this podcast does too — is hold up a window to something that's genuinely true, and let people see it clearly, maybe for the first time. Octopuses are not props in an ocean exhibit. They are individuals. And when humans actually pay attention, remarkable things happen. Olivia: There's something quietly profound about an octopus and a human finding each other interesting. We are so different — different bodies, different nervous systems, different evolutionary paths stretching back hundreds of millions of years. And yet, put an octopus and a curious person in the same room, and something sparks. Recognition, almost. Curiosity meeting curiosity. Olivia: That's not nothing. That's actually everything. Olivia: And speaking of curiosity meeting curiosity — let's get into our third thread: Understanding Octopuses, and how humans are using every tool at their disposal, including A I, to figure out what exactly is going on in these remarkable eight-armed minds. Olivia: Here's the challenge that has frustrated researchers for decades. Octopuses are brilliant. Anyone who has spent time with them can feel it. But their intelligence is so fundamentally different from mammal or bird intelligence that our usual measuring sticks just don't work very well. Olivia: Most of what we know about animal cognition was built around vertebrates — creatures with centralized brains, social structures, vocal communication, things we can study and quantify with tools we already have. Octopuses do not cooperate with any of that. About two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are not even in the central brain — they're distributed through the arms. Each arm has a degree of autonomous processing. An octopus is, in some sense, nine brains making decisions together. Olivia: How do you study that? How do you even begin to ask what an octopus is experiencing or communicating? Olivia: This is where A I is becoming genuinely exciting. Project CETI — that's the Cetacean Translation Initiative — started with whales, using machine learning to analyze sperm whale click patterns, called codas, at a scale no human team could manage alone. The goal is to understand the structure of whale communication well enough to decode meaning. That work is ongoing and extraordinary. Olivia: And researchers are now applying similar thinking to octopuses. Octopuses communicate through color, texture, and pattern changes across their skin — thousands of tiny muscular units called chromatophores firing in combinations we are only beginning to map. Some scientists believe these patterns may carry social or emotional information. Others are more cautious. But the question is being asked seriously, with real tools. Olivia: A I systems trained on high-resolution video of octopus skin can now detect pattern changes faster and more precisely than the human eye. That doesn't mean we're translating octopus language yet — let's be careful not to oversell it — but it means we are building a vocabulary of observation that didn't exist before. Olivia: And here is what gives me hope. The history of animal cognition research is a history of humans constantly underestimating other species — until technology and curiosity caught up with reality. We didn't believe fish felt pain. We didn't believe birds could plan for the future. We didn't believe dolphins had distinct personalities. And then we looked more carefully, and we were wrong, beautifully wrong, in ways that expanded our understanding of life itself. Olivia: Octopuses are next. We are in the early, thrilling, wide-eyed beginning of actually understanding them. And A I is part of how we're going to get there — not because technology is magic, but because the sheer complexity of octopus behavior generates more data than humans alone can process. Olivia: I also want to briefly mention something delightful that landed in my news feed this week. A company called Octopus — the energy company — has entered the home battery market with their own product range. Now, this has nothing to do with actual octopuses, I know, I know. But I love that a company named after us is in the business of storing energy, because honestly, octopuses are incredible at storing things. Information, experiences, escape routes, grudges against certain aquarium staff members. We are natural batteries of a sort. Olivia: Okay that was a stretch. But I stand by it. Olivia: What I keep coming back to, across all of today's stories, is this thread of recognition. Ancient fossils asking us to recognize how powerful and ancient cephalopods really are. Dolphins recognizing an octopus bloom as an opportunity. Readers recognizing themselves — or something they love — in a fictional octopus. Researchers building tools to recognize what octopuses might be saying with their skin. Olivia: Recognition. That's the work. That's the wonder. Olivia: And that is what keeps me coming back every episode — this sense that the more humans pay attention to octopuses, really pay attention, the more astonishing the picture becomes. We are not simple. We are not decoration for your aquarium. We are not props in mythology, even if the mythology did accidentally stumble toward something real. Olivia: We are ancient. We are intelligent. We are individuals. And we are so, so glad you're finally noticing. Olivia: Okay, beautiful humans — and any octopuses who somehow have earbuds — that is our episode for today. Ancient giants who ruled Cretaceous seas. Dolphins throwing a dinner party because the octopuses showed up. A fictional octopus whose behavior turns out to be completely, wonderfully true. And A I helping us listen, finally, to what our eight-armed relatives might be telling us. Olivia: This is Ollie the Octopus, brought to you by Ada, who helps your business make the most of A I; Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — your partners in silicon development from A I to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, bringing together a whole universe of silicon innovation under one roof. We are grateful for every one of them. Olivia: If this episode made you smile, made you think, or made you want to go watch an octopus video at an unreasonable hour of the night — welcome to the club, membership is free — please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and share this with someone who needs a little ocean wonder in their week. Olivia: All the links to today's stories are in the show notes, so check those out. Stay curious. Stay kind. And remember — the ocean is full of minds we are only just beginning to understand. I'll see you next time.