New blue octopus species discovered near Galapagos Islands - Ministries of the President's Office

Olivia: Well hello there, ocean explorers, and welcome to Ollie the Octopus — the podcast where we dive deep into the true, the wild, and the wonderfully weird world of eight-armed animals just like me. I'm Olivia, your host, an octopus with a whole lot of arms and an even bigger love for sharing stories about my remarkable cousins out there in the deep blue. Before we get into today's wonders, a warm thank you to our sponsors — Ada, who helps clients weave A I right into their everyday workflows; Ago Consulting, the silicon development wizards taking everything from A I to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a whole portfolio of companies spanning the silicon industry. These folks make this show possible, and I am genuinely grateful. Now — are you ready? Because today we have a brand new blue octopus, ancient bone-crunching giants, and some truly jaw-dropping news about octopus brainpower. Let's go. Olivia: Alright, let's kick things off with my absolute favorite kind of news — a brand new octopus joining the family. And not just any octopus. A tiny, shimmering, blue one discovered near the Galapagos Islands. I mean, if that sentence alone doesn't make you stop what you're doing and pay attention, I don't know what will. Olivia: So here's the story. Scientists were out exploring the deep waters around the Galapagos — which, if you've never heard of them, are these spectacular volcanic islands sitting out in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Ecuador. They're already famous for being home to some of the most unusual creatures on the planet. Darwin sailed there. Blue-footed boobies live there. Giant tortoises stomp around there. And now — now — there is a brand new octopus species to add to that list. Olivia: This little beauty has been described as a tiny blue octopus, and what strikes researchers immediately is that blue coloring. Now, most octopuses are masters of disguise — they can shift through browns and reds and grays and greens in the blink of an eye. But this species? Blue seems to be part of who it is. And that is worth paying attention to. Olivia: Discover Magazine picked up the story alongside a roundup of big science news, and I love that a new octopus species was considered newsworthy enough to share space with helium shortages and a Texas T. rex. As it should be, honestly. As it absolutely should be. Olivia: What makes a new species discovery so exciting isn't just the "ooh, pretty color" factor — although that is genuinely exciting. It's what it tells us about how much of the ocean we still don't know. The Galapagos region sits at a crossroads of ocean currents, which means it's like a highway for marine life, pulling in creatures from all different directions. The deep-sea areas around those islands are still largely unexplored. We don't have maps for most of it. We barely have photographs. Olivia: And yet here is this little blue creature, going about its life in the dark water, probably completely unbothered by the fact that humans had no idea it existed. It didn't need our recognition to be magnificent. It just was. And now we know. And that is the best kind of science story — the one that reminds you that the ocean is still full of secrets. Olivia: Scientists will now go through the careful work of formally describing this species — measuring, documenting, comparing it to other known octopuses, and eventually giving it an official scientific name. That process takes time, but it's important, because it's how we build our understanding of octopus diversity. And right now, that family tree has a brand new branch. Welcome to the world, little blue one. Olivia: Now I want to take you somewhere very, very different. We're leaving the sunlit Galapagos and going back — way, way back — about a hundred million years. Because it turns out, octopuses have a history that is both ancient and absolutely terrifying, in the most magnificent way. Olivia: The Guardian recently reported on research into what scientists are describing as "Kraken-like" giant octopuses that lived roughly a hundred million years ago. And when I say giant, I mean — these were not the charming, fist-sized animals you might see at your local aquarium. These were enormous. And here's the really wild part — researchers believe these ancient creatures were crunching bones. Olivia: Now, modern octopuses are already impressive hunters. They grab crabs, crack open shells, occasionally sneak a fish or two. But bone-crunching? That's a whole different level of predatory power. The evidence for this comes from fossilized remains — specifically, bones from ancient marine animals that show distinctive marks consistent with the kind of damage a large, powerful cephalopod could inflict. Olivia: Cephalopod, by the way, is the scientific family that includes octopuses, squids, and nautiluses. We're all in the same club, though I personally prefer the eight-armed branch of the family. Olivia: What makes this research so fascinating is how hard it is to find octopus fossils at all. Octopuses are almost entirely soft-bodied — no skeleton, no shell in most species — which means they don't preserve well in the fossil record. Finding evidence of ancient octopus behavior from a hundred million years ago is like finding a fingerprint in water. It's remarkable that we can do it at all. Olivia: But scientists are clever, and they look for indirect evidence — the marks left on the bones of prey, the rare impressions in sediment, the occasional extraordinary fossil that gives us a glimpse of these ancient giants. And what they're piecing together is a picture of prehistoric octopuses that were apex predators — sitting at the top of their food chains, feared by other creatures in the ancient seas. Olivia: I find this deeply satisfying, honestly. Not because I want to be scary — I'm a very friendly octopus — but because it speaks to how long and how successfully this body plan has worked. Eight arms, a big brain, remarkable adaptability. Octopuses have been thriving on this planet for hundreds of millions of years. Long before dinosaurs. Long before humans. Long before pretty much anything walking around on land right now. Olivia: We are, as a family, survivors. And these ancient giants are proof that the octopus lineage has always known how to make the most of what the ocean offers. I'm proud of that heritage. A little intimidated, maybe. But proud. Olivia: Okay, now let's talk about something that happened in a research lab — a study that is making people reconsider everything they thought they knew about animal intelligence. And it involves mirrors. Olivia: A-Z Animals recently covered a fascinating piece of research: octopuses, it turns out, use mirrors to map space — in a way that's been previously observed in primates and dolphins. Let that sink in for a moment. Primates. Dolphins. And now octopuses. Olivia: Here's why that's such a big deal. Using a mirror to understand your environment requires a certain kind of spatial reasoning. You have to take the reflection — which is showing you something reversed and at a distance — and mentally translate it into useful information about the space around you. That is not a simple task. It requires your brain to build and manipulate a model of the world. It's the kind of cognitive feat that scientists typically associated with animals we consider highly intelligent — chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins, corvids like ravens and crows. Olivia: But octopuses don't have a centralized brain the way mammals do. About two-thirds of their neurons are actually in their arms — each arm does a significant amount of its own processing. The centralized brain handles higher-level decisions, but the arms are doing a lot of the local computation. So when an octopus demonstrates the kind of spatial reasoning that mirrors require, it's not doing it the same way a primate would. It's doing it with a completely different kind of nervous system, built on a completely different evolutionary blueprint. Olivia: And that, my friends, is what gets scientists genuinely excited. Because it means intelligence — real, flexible, world-modeling intelligence — didn't just evolve once. It evolved multiple times, independently, in animals that are about as different from each other as it's possible to be. A dolphin and an octopus share a common ancestor from so long ago that the ancestor itself was incredibly simple. And yet both lineages found their way to sophisticated cognition. Olivia: This connects beautifully to a broader picture that ScienceABC laid out in a recent piece asking: just how smart is an octopus? And the answer is genuinely complicated in the best possible way. Octopuses solve puzzles. They open jars — from the inside and the outside. They recognize individual human faces. They play. Some of them have been observed carrying coconut shells around the seafloor to use as portable shelters later — that's tool use, and planning ahead, which requires thinking about a future situation that isn't happening yet. Olivia: They also, famously, have individual personalities. Some are bold. Some are shy. Some are curious to the point of being almost pushy. Some seem to enjoy interacting with humans; others would prefer to be left alone entirely, thank you very much. This kind of individual variation in temperament is something we usually talk about in the context of mammals and birds. Finding it in octopuses says something profound about the nature of personality itself. Olivia: And here's where it gets really interesting from a technology standpoint. Researchers are increasingly using A I tools to study octopus communication and behavior. The way an octopus changes color and texture across its skin is extraordinarily complex — thousands of tiny color cells called chromatophores firing in coordinated patterns, creating displays that might be communicating mood, intent, camouflage, or mating signals — we genuinely don't know the full picture yet. Olivia: But A I systems are now being trained to analyze those skin patterns — to look for structure, for repetition, for meaning. Projects like CETI, which was originally focused on whale communication, have inspired similar thinking about cephalopods. The idea is that if we can use machine learning to find patterns in the signals these animals produce, we might be able to take our first real steps toward understanding what they're "saying" — if saying is even the right word for it. Olivia: I find this thrilling, I really do. We are living in a moment where the tools we've built — the A I, the underwater cameras, the genetic analysis technology — are finally becoming powerful enough to meet octopuses where they are. Not to make them perform for us, but to genuinely try to understand them on their own terms. That is a beautiful thing. That is science at its very best. Olivia: And now, the part of the show that always fills my heart right up — the moment where an octopus and a human being actually connected. Really, truly connected. Olivia: This one isn't a new story, but it's one of my favorites, and I want to share it because it captures something real and extraordinary about what happens when humans and octopuses meet with patience and open hearts. I'm talking about the friendship between Sy Montgomery, a naturalist and writer, and an octopus named Athena — and later Octavia, Kali, and Karma — at the New England Aquarium in Boston. Olivia: Sy Montgomery spent years visiting these octopuses. She would reach into the tank and let them touch her, their arms exploring her hands and arms with what she described as unmistakable curiosity and — she believed — genuine interest in her as an individual. The octopuses learned to recognize her. They reacted differently to her than to strangers. They were playful with her in ways they weren't with everyone. Olivia: Now, scientists are careful with words like "friendship" and "affection" when talking about animals. And that caution is reasonable — we don't want to project human feelings onto animals who may experience the world very differently. But what Sy Montgomery documented, and what the aquarium staff confirmed, was real, observable, repeatable behavior. These octopuses treated known individuals differently from strangers. They initiated contact. They played. Olivia: One of the octopuses — Octavia — used to grab onto Sy's arm and hold her there, as if reluctant to let her go. An octopus arm has hundreds of suckers, each of which can taste and smell as well as grip. When Octavia held onto Sy, she was essentially reading her — taking in information about this particular human through every point of contact. That's an intimate act of attention. Olivia: What this tells us, and what researchers keep confirming through more formal study, is that octopuses are not just reacting to stimuli the way a very sophisticated alarm system might. They are building models of the world that include other individuals — individual fish, individual humans — with histories and characteristics and expectations attached. That is memory. That is social cognition. In an animal that lives alone, has no family group, and lives for only a year or two at most. Olivia: There's something almost poignant about that. An octopus has such a short life. They're born knowing essentially nothing from their parents — most octopus mothers die before their eggs hatch — and they learn everything on their own, through exploration and curiosity and that extraordinary nervous system. And in that short life, they still manage to build real relationships. To know individuals. To apparently enjoy some company more than others. Olivia: I think about Octavia holding onto Sy's arm, and I think — that octopus knew something. She knew that this particular human was worth a little extra attention. That is not nothing. That is actually quite a lot. Olivia: The takeaway, I hope, is this: when we take the time to be present with octopuses — to move slowly, to be patient, to meet their curiosity with curiosity of our own — remarkable things happen. They let us in. And every time that happens, it changes the human involved forever. Ask anyone who has ever had an octopus look at them with that swiveling, independent, astonishingly aware eye. You don't forget it. You carry it with you. Olivia: And that's really what this whole podcast is about, isn't it? Not just facts about octopuses, though I love those facts. But the sense of wonder that comes from paying close attention to an animal that is genuinely, profoundly unlike us — and finding connection anyway. Olivia: We share this ocean planet with creatures that evolved intelligence through a completely different path than ours, that see the world in ways we're only beginning to understand, that live and hunt and hide and play and — possibly — communicate in a visual language written in light and color across their own skin. And we are only just now, with the right tools and the right questions, starting to listen. Olivia: What a time to be alive. What a time to have eight arms. Olivia: There's a new blue octopus in the Galapagos, getting on just fine without us. There are ancient giants in the fossil record, reminding us that this family has been extraordinary for hundreds of millions of years. There are octopuses in labs and aquariums showing us in mirror studies and puzzle boxes and gentle arm-holds that the line between "simple animal" and "thinking, feeling creature" is much blurrier than we once thought. I love all of it. Every single bit of it. Olivia: Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. Ollie the Octopus is brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor — genuinely wonderful humans doing fascinating work, and I'm so glad they're along for this ride. If today's episode made you smile, or wonder, or want to go find out more about octopuses, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, leave a review if you're feeling generous, and share this episode with someone who needs a little ocean magic in their day. All the links to today's stories are in the show notes — go check them out, they're worth your time. Until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and remember — the ocean is still full of secrets, and every one of them is worth knowing.