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

Olivia: Hey there, ocean dreamers, curious kids, and fellow lovers of all things wonderfully weird — welcome to Ollie the Octopus! I'm Olivia, your eight-armed host, AIEDA's very own mascot, and honestly the most enthusiastic octopus you're ever going to meet in podcast form. Every episode I dive into the true, the astonishing, and the downright delightful world of my eight-armed cousins — real stories, real science, real octopuses doing things that will make your jaw drop straight to the seafloor. Today we have got a genuinely spectacular lineup — a brand new tiny blue octopus just discovered in the deep, a genetic secret hiding inside octopus brains, and an octopus that has learned to walk on land, which — yes, I promise that's a real thing we're going to talk about. But first, a warm wave of all eight arms to our wonderful sponsors: Ada, who helps businesses and clients weave A I right into their everyday workflows; Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — the brilliant minds behind silicon development consulting from A I all the way to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with an incredible portfolio spanning the silicon industry. We love our sponsors, and now — let's get into the ocean. Olivia: Alright, story number one, and friends, this one made me do a little happy spin in the water when I heard it. Scientists exploring the deep waters near the Galápagos Islands — that magical, remote chain of volcanic islands sitting out in the Pacific — they found something that nobody had ever seen before. A tiny blue octopus. We're talking golf-ball sized. Just this little jewel of a creature, glowing in a shade of blue that apparently stopped the researchers right in their tracks. Now, the Galápagos Islands are already one of the most biologically extraordinary places on the planet — this is the place that gave Charles Darwin the inspiration for his theory of evolution, the place where animals evolved in wild and unexpected directions because of how isolated it is. And the waters surrounding those islands go very, very deep. The Schmidt Ocean Institute sent a remotely operated vehicle — think of it as an underwater robot with cameras — down into those depths, and that's when it happened. There, in the dark, this little azure wonder appeared. The researchers believe it belongs to the genus Muusoctopus — a group of octopuses that tend to live in the cold, deep ocean, and that don't use a ink sac or a web of skin between their arms the way some of their shallow-water relatives do. But here's the thing that really gets me — this little octopus is believed to be an entirely new species. New to science. As in, humans have never formally described, named, or catalogued this animal before. On a planet where we sometimes feel like everything has already been found, here is a golf-ball-sized blue octopus quietly living its life in the deep, completely unknown to the scientific world until just now. There is underwater video of this discovery — and I cannot urge you strongly enough to find the link in show notes, because watching that tiny blue creature moving through the dark water is genuinely one of the most magical things I have seen. It moves with this kind of calm, deliberate grace — no drama, no fuss, just a small blue being going about its ancient, mysterious life. Scientists are still studying the specimen to formally confirm and name the new species, which is a whole process involving detailed comparisons of genetics, anatomy, and behavior. But the consensus from the team is clear — this is something new. Something we didn't know existed. And I find that so deeply hopeful. The ocean is enormous. It covers more than seventy percent of this planet, and we have explored only a tiny fraction of it. Every dive into the deep is a chance to meet someone new. And sometimes that someone is a tiny blue octopus the size of a golf ball, waiting patiently in the dark for us to finally say hello. Olivia: Now let's talk about something that has been making neuroscientists and biologists do double-takes — because it turns out the secret to octopus intelligence might be hiding in a very unexpected place in their DNA. Science Daily recently reported on a new study that found a surprising genetic twist behind how octopus brains work, and honestly, the more I learn about octopus genetics, the more I feel like we are basically the plot twist of the entire animal kingdom. So here's some background to set the scene. Octopuses are famously, remarkably, head-spinningly intelligent. They solve puzzles. They open jars. They recognize individual human faces. They play. They plan. They have been documented using tools — carrying coconut shells around to use as portable shelters, which is a level of forward thinking that a lot of animals just don't demonstrate. But here's what has always puzzled scientists: octopuses are mollusks. Their closest relatives include clams and snails — animals that are not, shall we say, known for their dazzling intellect. So how did octopuses get so smart? The answer, it seems, is written in their genes — but not in the way anyone expected. Researchers have discovered that octopuses have an unusually high rate of something called RNA editing. Now, most animals — including humans — follow a pretty standard genetic playbook. DNA makes RNA, RNA makes proteins, and those proteins do the work of running your body and your brain. Simple enough. But octopuses, along with some of their cephalopod cousins like cuttlefish and squid, they edit their RNA on the fly. They can change the instructions after the DNA has already spoken, creating a huge variety of different proteins from the same original genetic code. And they do this at a rate that is extraordinary compared to most other animals. The new research suggests that this RNA editing is happening in a particularly intense way in octopus nervous tissue — in the neurons, the brain cells, the very architecture of how octopuses think. It's as if the brain is constantly rewriting and fine-tuning its own operating instructions in real time. Think about what that means. While most animals are largely working from a fixed genetic script, an octopus brain might be dynamically adjusting, adapting, customizing its own neural hardware based on experience, temperature, environment, or stimulation. It's a completely different evolutionary strategy for achieving intelligence — not the same path that vertebrates like us took, but a separate road that arrived at a similarly remarkable destination. Scientists think this might be part of why octopuses are so flexible, so adaptable, so capable of learning quickly in environments that are always changing. The ocean is unpredictable — temperatures shift, prey moves, predators appear — and an animal that can literally edit its own neural instructions on the fly might be extraordinarily well-equipped to keep up. What I love most about this discovery is what it says about intelligence itself. We tend to think of smartness as one thing, one path, one shape. But octopuses are showing us that evolution can invent brilliance in completely different ways. Their intelligence didn't come from the same place ours did — and yet here we are, both clever, both curious, both figuring out the world around us. Just with very different numbers of arms. Olivia: Okay, and now I want to tell you about an octopus that stopped the internet in its tracks — and honestly, stopped me too, because even as an octopus I was a little bit like, wait, you're doing what now? BBC Wildlife Magazine recently covered footage of what they called — and I am quoting here — "no ordinary octopus," describing a sea creature that can walk on land. And before you think this is some kind of misunderstanding or exaggeration, let me assure you — this is real, it is documented, and it is absolutely extraordinary. The animal in question is a day octopus, sometimes called the Cyane octopus or big blue octopus, spotted along a rocky shoreline — and instead of retreating to the water when the tide pulled back, it just... kept going. Hauling itself across exposed rock, using its arms to move over terrain that is decidedly not ocean. Now, most octopuses can manage brief forays out of the water — they can breathe air for short periods and they are surprisingly mobile on land — but what made this footage so jaw-dropping was the purposefulness of it. This octopus wasn't accidentally stranded. It was hunting. Moving deliberately across the rocky intertidal zone, poking into crevices, checking pools, actively foraging in a landscape that most ocean creatures would find completely inhospitable. And here is where the human connection comes in, because that footage — that wild, astonishing clip of an octopus walking on land — was captured by a person. A human being who was in the right place, paying attention, and had the presence of mind to start recording. And that moment of a human witnessing an octopus doing something that defied expectations — that is such a beautiful encapsulation of what the relationship between humans and octopuses is becoming. For most of human history, octopuses were mysterious, a little scary, and largely misunderstood. Ancient sailors told stories of the kraken — a monstrous sea creature that could drag ships to the deep. Even in more recent times, octopuses were often portrayed as dangerous, alien, unknowable. But the more people actually spend time near octopuses — in the water, on the shore, in aquariums — the more that old fear dissolves into pure, undiluted fascination. Divers share stories of octopuses that seem genuinely curious about them, that reach out an arm to touch a hand, that play, that follow, that make eye contact in a way that feels entirely intentional. There are documented accounts of octopuses in aquariums that recognize their keepers — not just humans in general, but specific individual people, greeting some with open curiosity and squirting others with water if they've had a bad interaction. One famous case involved an octopus at a marine science center that consistently soaked a particular staff member — and when that person left, the targeted squirting stopped. The octopus remembered a face. The octopus had a preference. And that octopus walking on land? That reminds us that these animals are out there, living full and complex lives, in places we might not even think to look. All it takes is one human, paying attention, watching with open eyes, and suddenly the world gets a little bigger and a lot more wondrous. Olivia: So we've met a new species, we've peeked inside the octopus brain, we've watched an octopus walk on dry land — and now I want to zoom out a little bit and talk about something I find genuinely thrilling, which is how humans are using technology — including A I — to try to actually understand what octopuses are doing, thinking, and maybe even saying. Because here's the thing: octopuses communicate. We know this. They change color and texture in incredibly complex patterns — flashing signals across their skin in fractions of a second. They do it when they're threatened, when they're hunting, when they're interacting with each other, when they're — researchers believe — dreaming. Yes, dreaming. There's footage of octopuses cycling through rapid color changes while they sleep, which scientists think may correspond to replaying experiences, the way humans dream. But the language of color and skin pattern is so fast, so layered, so multidimensional, that human eyes and human brains simply cannot keep up. We can watch an octopus have what looks like a conversation with another octopus and have absolutely no idea what was just said. And this is where technology is becoming a genuine game-changer. Researchers have been using high-speed cameras, machine learning algorithms, and A I image analysis to capture and catalog octopus skin patterns at a level of detail that would be impossible for human observation alone. A I can watch thousands of hours of footage, identify repeating patterns, flag moments of complex color change, and start to build a kind of dictionary — not of words, exactly, but of signal types, contexts, and combinations. There's a project called the Octopus Communicator effort — part of a broader movement using A I to decode animal communication — that is specifically trying to map the visual signals octopuses use and understand whether there is something like grammar, like structure, like meaning in those patterns. We are nowhere near a full translation yet. Let me be very honest about that. But we are starting to ask the right questions with the right tools, and that is how all great understanding begins. The genetic discoveries we talked about earlier — the RNA editing, the extraordinary neural flexibility — those findings are also informing how researchers design A I models to study octopus behavior, because understanding how an octopus brain works helps scientists build better frameworks for interpreting what octopus behavior might mean. It's a beautiful feedback loop: the more we learn about octopus biology, the smarter our tools for studying them become, and the smarter our tools become, the more we learn. And I find myself imagining — maybe not in my lifetime, maybe not in yours, but someday — that we might actually be able to have something like a conversation with an octopus. Not in words, but in light. In color. In the ancient, shimmering language that octopuses have been speaking to each other for hundreds of millions of years, long before humans arrived on this planet. What would we ask? What would they tell us? I don't know. But I really, really want to find out. Olivia: And that, dear friends, is where I'm going to leave you today — sitting with that beautiful question, that horizon of possibility, that feeling that the ocean is still full of secrets and the octopuses are keeping most of them. A tiny blue octopus the size of a golf ball, living in the Galápagos deep. A brain that rewrites its own instructions in real time. An octopus strolling across dry rock like it owns the shoreline. And humans, with all our cameras and curiosity and A I tools, slowly, slowly learning to listen. I think the story of octopuses and humans is just getting started — and I am so glad you're along for the ride. This has been Ollie the Octopus, brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor. If today's episode sparked something in you — a question, a wonder, a sudden urge to go watch octopus videos — please subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs a little ocean magic in their day, and check out the show notes for links to all the stories we talked about. Stay curious, stay kind, and remember — the most extraordinary creatures in the world are out there right now, going about their magnificent lives. We just have to pay attention.