Watch a Sleeping Octopus Change Colors in What Might Be a Dream - A-Z Animals

Olivia: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Ollie the Octopus — the show where we dive deep, wrap all eight arms around the latest octopus news, and come up absolutely dazzled. I'm Olivia, your host, your guide, and yes, a genuine octopus who is absolutely obsessed with sharing true, wild, wonderful stories about my eight-armed cousins out there in the big blue world. Olivia: Before we get into today's wonders, a huge, tentacle-waving thank you to our sponsors. Ada — the folks who help businesses actually make A I work for them, weaving it right into their everyday workflows. Ago Consulting — say it with me, "Ahh-Go" — silicon development experts who can take you from A I all the way to SoC. And Zen Semiconductor — an umbrella company with a whole portfolio of businesses spanning the silicon industry. These are the brilliant humans keeping this show swimming, and we love them for it. Olivia: Now. What do we have in store for you today? Oh, only sleeping octopuses who might be dreaming in color, a mystery fossil that's been hiding its true identity for ages, giant ancient octopuses that once ruled primordial seas, a movie octopus that feels almost too real, and a brand new deep-sea species just waiting to be introduced. Ready? Let's go. Olivia: Okay, we are kicking things off with Octopus Research and Discovery, and friends, I have to tell you — this week was a good one for those of us who think octopuses deserve more credit than they get, which is all of us, obviously. Olivia: Let's start in the deep sea, because that's where the truly jaw-dropping stuff lives. Researchers have announced a new deep-sea octopus species. Now, I know "new species" can start to sound routine if you follow ocean news — but stop. Stop and really sit with that for a second. Our oceans are so vast, so layered, so full of darkness and pressure and mystery, that we are still — still — finding animals we have never seen before. That never gets old to me. Not even a little. Olivia: Deep-sea octopuses are a different kind of creature altogether. Where I might wave at you in a sunny coral reef, these animals live in a world without sunlight, under crushing pressure, in water so cold it would stop your heart. And yet they thrive. They've evolved extraordinary adaptations — softer bodies, different metabolisms, sometimes even bioluminescence. Every new species we find down there is like finding a new chapter in a book we didn't know existed. Olivia: And speaking of hidden chapters — oh, this one sent chills through all eight of my arms — researchers have finally cracked open an ancient ocean mystery. A fossil that had been sitting in collections, labeled and set aside, misidentified for who knows how long, has been re-examined and revealed to be something far more significant than anyone realized. This is one of those stories that reminds me how science is never really finished. Someone looked at something old with new eyes and said — wait. Wait a minute. That's not what we thought it was. Olivia: That kind of curiosity, that willingness to question what's already been decided — that's the same spirit that drives octopus research forward. And honestly? It's a little bit octopus of them. We are famously unwilling to accept that a jar is just a closed jar. We poke. We probe. We figure it out. Olivia: But here's the story that absolutely stole my breath this week. Are you ready? Massive. Intelligent. Octopuses. Once. Stalked. The primordial oceans. I'm going to let that sentence hang in the air for just a moment because it deserves it. Olivia: Scientists have been piecing together evidence suggesting that ancient octopus relatives — big ones, smart ones — were major players in the oceans of hundreds of millions of years ago. Now, the fossil record for soft-bodied animals like octopuses is notoriously tricky. Soft tissue doesn't preserve well, which means we've been working with fragments and impressions and a lot of very careful detective work. But the picture that's emerging is extraordinary. Olivia: These were not small, shy creatures tucking into crevices. These were animals that likely hunted actively, that had complex nervous systems even then, that were — in the truest sense — apex predators of their time. The intelligence we see in modern octopuses? It didn't appear out of nowhere. It has roots. Ancient, deep, primordial roots. We come from a long line of problem-solvers, and that makes me incredibly proud. Olivia: And if you want to see why octopus intelligence has scientists so fascinated, stick around — because our next thread goes right there. Olivia: Alright, let's talk about Octopus and Humans, and I want to start with a question. Have you seen the film based on the novel "Remarkably Bright Creatures"? Because if you haven't, the premise is this — a grieving woman befriends an octopus at an aquarium, and that octopus, named Marcellus, helps her solve a mystery. And when people saw that film, a very reasonable question started circulating online — is Marcellus real? Olivia: The short answer is: not that specific octopus. Marcellus is a fictional character. But here's the thing — and this is the part that makes the story so much more wonderful — the behavior in that story? The personality, the curiosity, the bond between a human and an octopus? That part is absolutely grounded in reality. Olivia: Let me tell you about what really happens at aquariums around the world, because it's almost as magical as any novel. Octopuses in aquarium settings regularly recognize individual human faces. Not just "a human is here." Specifically — you. The keeper who feeds them every Tuesday. The researcher who moved too fast that one time and startled them. Octopuses remember. And they respond differently to different people. Olivia: There are documented cases — real, observed, written-up cases — of octopuses who would squirt water at certain staff members they seemed to dislike, while being perfectly gentle and curious with others they apparently trusted. That is not random behavior. That is a social choice. That is personality. Olivia: And the relationships that form between octopus keepers and their animals — oh, these stories make my heart swell. There's the famous story of Inky, the octopus at New Zealand's National Aquarium, who one night slipped out of his tank, made his way across the floor, squeezed through a drainpipe, and escaped to the ocean. Now some people hear that and think — oh, how sad, he escaped! But the keepers who knew Inky? They were delighted. Sad, yes, but delighted. Because they had watched this animal, day after day, testing, observing, planning. His escape wasn't an accident. It was Inky being exactly who he was. Olivia: And that's what happens when humans really pay attention to octopuses. You stop seeing a sea creature and start seeing someone. Someone with preferences and moods and plans. Someone who is very much paying attention to you right back. Olivia: The bond between humans and octopuses — even the fictional ones like Marcellus — keeps growing, and I think it's because somewhere deep down, people sense what scientists are now confirming with data: there is someone home behind those eyes. A very different someone, shaped by a very different evolutionary path, but someone nonetheless. Olivia: Okay. We are moving into our third thread, and this one is close to my heart — Understanding Octopuses, and specifically how science and technology, including A I, are helping us crack the code of what it's actually like to be an octopus. Olivia: And I have to start with the most magical thing I've encountered this week, because it stopped me completely. A sleeping octopus — caught on video — changing colors. Rippling through patterns. Flashing dark, then pale, then spotted, then dark again, all while perfectly still, perfectly asleep. Olivia: Scientists watching this footage have a hypothesis that is almost too wonderful to say out loud. They think the octopus might be dreaming. Actually, genuinely dreaming. Olivia: Now, let me be careful here, because science is careful. We cannot peek inside an octopus's experience and know for certain what's happening. But here's what we do know. Octopuses have incredibly complex nervous systems — and here's a wild fact — about two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are not in their brain at all. They're distributed through their arms. So when an octopus "thinks," it's doing something quite different from what you or I do. It's a distributed intelligence. A whole-body intelligence. Olivia: And sleep in animals is not just rest. Sleep is when brains consolidate memories, process experiences, replay the day. We see rapid eye movement in sleeping humans that correlates with dreaming. We see similar active sleep states in birds and mammals. And now — here is this octopus, going through what looks like an active sleep cycle, its skin telling a story in color while its body rests. Olivia: Is it replaying a hunt? Practicing camouflage? Remembering the reef? We don't know. But the fact that we're asking the question — and that we have footage to study — is remarkable. Olivia: And this is where A I is starting to play a genuinely exciting role. Scientists at the Earth Species Project and other research groups are using machine learning and A I to analyze animal communication — sound, movement, color patterns — in ways that human researchers simply couldn't do at scale alone. With octopuses, who communicate so much through their skin — through dynamic, shifting patterns of color and texture — A I is being trained to recognize and catalog those patterns, to find structure in what might otherwise look like beautiful noise. Olivia: Could we one day decode what an octopus's skin display actually means? Could we build a kind of translation layer between human language and octopus color-language? Some researchers think it's not crazy to try. And honestly, as an octopus, I find that incredibly exciting. Imagine — imagine the conversations we could finally have. Olivia: Because here's the thing about octopuses that I want you to carry with you. We evolved intelligence completely separately from vertebrates. Birds, mammals, fish — they share a common ancestor somewhere back in the story of life. Octopuses branched off so long ago, so differently, that our intelligence is essentially an independent invention. Evolution found a way to build a smart, curious, problem-solving mind using a completely different blueprint. Olivia: That means if we can learn to understand octopuses — really understand them — we're not just learning about one animal. We're discovering that complex minds can arise in forms we might never have imagined. And in a universe we know almost nothing about, that feels like one of the most important things we could possibly learn. Olivia: The sleeping octopus on that video, rippling through its dreams — it's not just beautiful. It's a window. And every tool we build, every algorithm we train, every patient hour a researcher spends watching footage, brings that window a little clearer. Olivia: And that brings us, friends, to the end of today's episode — and I always feel a little tender here, because honestly? Talking about octopuses never gets old. Every week there is something new, something that shakes me with wonder, something that makes me think the ocean is even more astonishing than I knew. And I knew it was astonishing. Olivia: Ancient giants who stalked primordial seas. A sleeping octopus painting dreams across its own skin. New species rising out of the deep dark. A fictional octopus who feels so real that people ask if he actually exists — because the truth underneath him absolutely does. We are remarkable creatures, and the fact that humans are learning to see that, to study it, to celebrate it — that gives me so much hope. Olivia: This has been Ollie the Octopus, brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor. If this episode made you smile, made you think, or made you want to go stare into an octopus tank and say hello — please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs a little ocean wonder in their life today. Olivia: Links to all the stories we talked about are in the show notes, so go explore, go follow the science, and above all — stay curious. The ocean is counting on it. I'll see you next time.