Meet The Animal That Solves Puzzles, Uses Tools And Plans Ahead. Hint: It’s Not A Primate - Forbes

Olivia: Well, hello there, ocean explorers, and welcome to Ollie the Octopus — the show where we celebrate the most magnificent, mind-bending, eight-armed creatures on this planet! I'm Olivia, your host and fellow octopus, and I am absolutely thrilled you're here with me today. Olivia: Every episode I get to share true stories about my eight-armed cousins — real discoveries, real encounters, real science — and trust me, reality is always stranger and more wonderful than anything we could make up. Olivia: A huge, warm thank you to the incredible folks who make this show possible: Ada, who helps businesses bring A I into their everyday workflows in smart, practical ways; Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" Consulting — the brilliant minds behind silicon development from A I all the way to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a whole portfolio of companies shaping the future of the silicon industry. We are so grateful for their support. Olivia: And oh my goodness, do we have a show for you today. We've got a brand-new octopus species discovered almost two miles underwater — and scientists are calling it adorable. We've got young wild octopuses forming what I can only describe as a fight club. And we're going to talk about just how outrageously smart octopuses really are. Olivia: So settle in, grab something cozy, and let's dive in — eight arms first! Olivia: Alright, let's start with our first thread — Octopus Research and Discovery — and friends, this one made me do a little happy wiggle with at least four of my arms. Olivia: Picture this. Scientists aboard a research vessel lower a camera — slowly, slowly — into the deep Pacific Ocean. The water is cold and dark and crushing at this depth, nearly six thousand feet down. Most creatures that live down there look like something out of a science fiction movie, all teeth and bioluminescent nightmares. And then the camera spots something. Something tiny. Something blue. Olivia: A new species of octopus. Barely bigger than a human fist. Sitting there in the dark like a little sapphire gem, completely unbothered. Olivia: Scientists who saw the footage reportedly said — and I love this — that they had "never seen anything like it." One researcher called it adorable. Another said it looked like it could fit in the palm of your hand. Now, I want to pause here and just appreciate the fact that professional deep-sea scientists, people who have spent careers looking at the ocean's most extreme creatures, saw this tiny blue octopus and their first response was "it's adorable." That tells you something. Olivia: This little one belongs to a broader wave of exciting new octopus discoveries happening right now, and it's not alone. Around the same time, another new species was described — also tiny, also fitting neatly in the palm of your hand — and researchers were equally charmed. One scientist literally said, "It's adorable." Two different species. Same reaction. Octopuses are just built different, you know? Olivia: What makes these deep-sea discoveries so thrilling is what they tell us about how much ocean we still don't know. The deep sea is the largest habitat on Earth, and we have explored less of it than we have explored the surface of Mars. Less than Mars! So every time a submersible or a camera rig goes down into that darkness and comes back up with footage of something new, it's like cracking open a door into another world. Olivia: And this little blue octopus — sitting nearly a mile and a half below the surface, in crushing cold and total darkness — is proof that life finds a way into every corner of this planet. And often, life down there is absolutely, impossibly cute. Olivia: The researchers noted that hardly anyone has ever seen this new species. It's so newly discovered, so rarely encountered, that we're essentially meeting it for the very first time as a species. We don't fully know how it hunts, how it reproduces, how it communicates, how long it lives. There's a whole biography waiting to be written about a creature the size of a tangerine. Olivia: And that, dear listeners, is what makes ocean science so endlessly exciting. We're not cataloguing things we already know — we are genuinely discovering new neighbors. And some of those neighbors are small and blue and absolutely precious. Olivia: Now let's swim into our second thread — Octopuses and Humans — and this one is going to make you laugh, I promise. Olivia: So you may have heard of fight clubs. What you probably did not expect was that young wild octopuses are apparently running one. Olivia: Researchers studying octopuses in the wild — in their natural ocean habitat, just going about their daily lives — observed something genuinely unexpected. Groups of young octopuses were gathering together. Now, octopuses are notoriously solitary animals. They are the introverts of the sea. They live alone, they hunt alone, they decorate their dens alone. Getting a group of octopuses to do anything together is not something we expected to see. Olivia: But here's what was happening. These young octopuses were not just hanging out. They were establishing territory. And when fish would swim too close — into what the octopuses had apparently decided was their personal space — the octopuses would reach out an arm and slap them. Just haul off and slap a fish. Olivia: Researchers described it as territorial behavior, which is the scientific way of saying "back off, this is my spot." But what I love about this story is what it tells us about octopus social behavior — or what we thought was the absence of it. Olivia: See, for the longest time, we assumed octopuses were loners by nature, end of story. But over the past decade, researchers have been finding evidence that the story is more complicated than that. Young octopuses, in particular, may go through social phases — periods where they interact with others, test boundaries, establish hierarchies, and yes, apparently slap fish who don't respect those boundaries. Olivia: Now, here's where the human angle comes in beautifully. The only reason we know about this fish-slapping fight club is because humans were there watching. Patient, curious, dedicated human researchers who suited up, got in the water, and observed. That relationship — humans watching octopuses, learning from them, being surprised by them — is one of the most special things happening in science right now. Olivia: And it's not just scientists. Divers around the world have their own stories. There's the famous account of diver David Scheel, who documented a friendship with a wild octopus near his home in Alaska — a creature that came back to the same spot repeatedly and seemed to recognize him. There are aquarium workers who describe individual octopuses with distinct personalities — one who hoards shiny objects, one who is bold and curious, one who sulks when she doesn't get her favorite food. Olivia: Every time a human sits quietly in the ocean and watches what an octopus actually does, something new and astonishing is revealed. The fight club discovery is a perfect example. Nobody planned to find a group of young octopuses smacking fish. They just showed up, watched carefully, and reality delivered something extraordinary. Olivia: And I think there's a lesson in that for all of us. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is be present, be patient, and watch. The world — especially the ocean — has a lot it wants to show you. Olivia: That brings us to our third thread — Understanding Octopuses — and this is where we get into the stuff that makes my eight arms tingle with excitement. Olivia: Let me ask you something. If I said "name an animal that solves puzzles, uses tools, and plans ahead for the future," what would you think of? A chimpanzee, maybe? A crow? A dolphin? Those are all excellent guesses. But the answer I want to talk about today is octopuses. Olivia: A recent piece in Forbes — yes, Forbes, the business magazine, because octopus intelligence is now apparently a topic for business media, which I find delightful — laid out the case for octopus cognition in a way that is genuinely hard to argue with. Olivia: Let's start with tool use, because this one is remarkable. Octopuses have been documented collecting coconut shells from the ocean floor, carrying them across distances, and then assembling them into shelters. Now, here's why that matters. Carrying a coconut shell you're not using yet, moving it somewhere, and then using it later — that requires planning. That requires thinking about a future moment that hasn't happened yet. That is not simple stimulus-response behavior. That is something much more sophisticated. Olivia: Then there's puzzle-solving. Researchers have given octopuses jars with childproof lids — the kind that require you to push down and twist simultaneously — and octopuses have figured them out. Alone. With no instruction. Just a brain about the size of a walnut and the pure stubbornness to figure it out. And they do. Olivia: But here's the part of octopus cognition that still blows my mind every time I think about it. An octopus's brain is distributed. About two-thirds of its neurons are not in its central brain at all — they're in its arms. Each arm is semi-autonomous. Each arm can taste, touch, and make certain decisions on its own, even while the central brain is busy thinking about something else. It's like having eight little co-pilots, all running simultaneously. Olivia: So when we talk about octopus intelligence, we're not just talking about a clever central processor — we're talking about a fundamentally different architecture of mind. And that is where A I research is starting to get genuinely interested in octopuses. Olivia: Scientists working on distributed computing and A I systems have started looking at how octopus neural architecture might inspire new ways of building intelligent systems — ones where processing is spread out rather than centralized, where multiple semi-independent units work in parallel. The octopus is not just a subject of study; it's becoming a model for how intelligence itself might be redesigned. Olivia: There are also researchers now using A I tools to study octopus communication. Octopuses can change the color, pattern, and texture of their skin in milliseconds — flashing signals that we are only beginning to understand. Projects like CETI, which has used A I to decode sperm whale clicks, have inspired similar questions about octopuses. What are those skin patterns saying? Is there a grammar to the flashing? Can we build tools sensitive enough to even ask the question well? Olivia: We don't have answers yet. But the fact that we are asking — with better tools, more data, and A I that can help detect patterns invisible to the human eye — means we are closer than we have ever been to understanding what is going on inside that marvelous, distributed, coconut-carrying, fish-tank-escaping, puzzle-solving mind. Olivia: And that, my friends, is one of the most exciting frontiers in science today. Not distant galaxies, not particle physics — though those are wonderful too — but the ocean, right here, and the alien intelligence already living in it. Olivia: Oh, what a day to be an octopus fan. Or, in my case, an actual octopus. Olivia: We've visited the deep sea and met a tiny blue octopus who probably doesn't know it's already famous. We've watched young octopuses run a fish-slapping territorial operation that nobody saw coming. And we've sat with the awe-inspiring reality that octopus intelligence is so unusual, so distributed, so fundamentally different from anything else on Earth, that scientists are using it to rethink what intelligence even means. Olivia: My takeaway from all of this — and I hope yours too — is that the ocean keeps its secrets carefully, and it gives them up slowly, one astonishing discovery at a time. Every new species, every strange behavior, every clever escape from a locked tank, is a reminder that we share this planet with minds we are only beginning to understand. And that should fill us with wonder and with humility and with the urgent desire to protect these creatures and the seas they call home. Olivia: This has been Ollie the Octopus, brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor. Thank you — truly — for listening, for being curious, and for spending a little time in the ocean with me today. Olivia: If you loved this episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave a review if you're feeling generous — it genuinely helps — and share it with someone who needs a little ocean wonder in their week. All the links to today's stories are in the link in show notes, so go explore. Olivia: Until next time — stay curious, stay kind, and keep asking questions about the world beneath the waves. I'll see you out there. Eight arms wide open.