Scientists Have Discovered a Brand New Species of Giant Octopus Hiding in Plain Sight - ScienceAlert

Olivia: Well hello there, ocean explorers, and welcome to Ollie the Octopus — the show where we dive deep into the weird, wonderful, and absolutely jaw-dropping world of eight-armed wonders. I'm Olivia, your host and resident octopus, and I am thrilled you're here. Whether you're six years old or sixty, whether you know everything about cephalopods or you just think octopuses are really, really cool — you have found your people. Or, well, your octopus. A huge thank you to our sponsors: Ada, who helps clients weave A I right into their workflows; Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — your go-to for silicon development from A I all the way to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a whole portfolio across the silicon industry. We couldn't do this without them. Now, today's episode? Oh, it is a good one. We've got not one but TWO brand new octopus species just discovered, one with blood-red tentacles and enormous eyes, one hiding in plain sight as a giant. We're talking about some genuinely wild octopus biology that involves, let's say, a very specialized arm. And we're exploring just how smart octopuses really are — from opening jars to recognizing human faces. Let's go. Olivia: Okay, let's start with the part of the show I genuinely cannot contain my excitement about — new species. Because friends, the ocean is enormous and mysterious, and scientists are still finding octopuses we never knew existed. And this week? We got two. TWO. I know. Let me start with the one that honestly sounds like it came straight out of a fantasy novel. Scientists have just described a brand new species of octopus with — are you ready — massive eyes and blood-red tentacles. Blood red. Now I want you to picture that for a moment. This isn't a creature someone made up for a movie. This is a real, living, breathing octopus that exists right now somewhere in the ocean, draped in deep crimson, peering at the world through enormous eyes that probably see things we can barely imagine. Researchers found this species lurking in deeper waters, which explains a lot actually — big eyes are a classic deep-sea adaptation. When light is scarce, you want to catch every photon you possibly can, so over millions of years, eyes just get bigger and bigger. And the red coloration? Also a deep-sea trick. In the deep ocean, red wavelengths of light don't penetrate, which means red actually looks dark — almost invisible. So this gorgeous, dramatic creature that looks like it's dressed for a Halloween party is actually perfectly camouflaged in its world. Science is wild. And what makes this discovery so thrilling isn't just that we found something new — it's that it reminds us how much we still don't know. The deep ocean covers an enormous portion of our planet, and we've explored less of it than we have the surface of the moon. Every new species we find down there is like a message in a bottle from a world we're only just beginning to understand. This little crimson beauty is waving at us from the dark, saying — hey, there's so much more to discover. Olivia: And if that wasn't enough, scientists have also just confirmed that a whole other giant octopus species has been hiding in plain sight. Now this one is a different kind of story, and honestly I find it just as thrilling. This isn't a creature from the deep unknown — this is a species that was right there, in front of researchers, possibly for decades, just misidentified. Lumped in with a similar-looking species and never given its own scientific name. Until now. The giant Pacific octopus — Enteroctopus dofleini — is already famous. It's the largest octopus species in the world, with arms that can span over four meters and a personality that aquarium keepers just love. But it turns out, living alongside it, in some of the same cold North Pacific waters, was a whole separate species that we were essentially calling by the wrong name. Researchers noticed some consistent differences — subtle things, patterns in the skin, details in the suckers, slight variations in how they look up close. And when they dug deeper, comparing genetics, looking at populations across different locations, the evidence became clear: this was not the same animal. It was something new. Or rather, something old that had been there all along, just waiting to be properly seen. I love this story because it's a little humbling, isn't it? We like to think we've catalogued the world pretty well. We've named millions of species. But nature has this wonderful habit of saying — actually, look again. You missed one. And in this case, you missed a giant one. That's my kind of ocean. Olivia: Now let's talk about one of the most intimate and genuinely touching kinds of stories — moments when octopuses and humans actually connect. Because for all the deep-sea discoveries and laboratory findings, sometimes the most moving octopus encounters happen face to face, right at the waterline. And the story I want to share today is one that a lot of you may know in some form, but the details never get old. There's a diver named Craig Foster, who spent a year visiting the same small octopus every single day in a kelp forest off the coast of South Africa. Every. Single. Day. He didn't feed her, he didn't interfere — he just showed up. And slowly, over weeks and months, something extraordinary happened. She began to recognize him. She would come to him. She would rest on his hand. She once draped herself across his chest when a pyjama shark was nearby, using him — a human — as a safe place to hide. This was documented, filmed, and eventually became the film My Octopus Teacher, which won an Academy Award, and if you haven't seen it, the link is in show notes. But here's what I want you to sit with: this octopus chose to build a relationship with a human. She assessed him over time. She learned his patterns, his gentleness, his consistency. And she made a decision. That is not instinct. That is not reflex. That is something that looks an awful lot like trust. Octopuses live such short lives — most species only one to three years. And yet in that time, they form habits, they develop preferences, they learn individual humans by sight and by feel. Some aquarium octopuses have been documented treating different staff members very differently — being playful with one keeper, standoffish with another, mischievous with a third. They notice us. And Craig Foster's octopus noticed him, right until the very end of her short, astonishing life. Olivia: And you know what makes encounters like that even more possible to understand now? The science of octopus intelligence is growing fast. Let's talk about what we're learning — and how. Because there was a lovely piece this week that laid out, really clearly, why scientists consider octopuses to be among the smartest animals on Earth. And one of the headline examples — opening jar lids — sounds simple, but think about it. A jar with a screw-on lid requires you to understand that the lid is separate from the jar, that it moves in a specific direction, that turning it a certain way will release it, and that there's something worth getting to inside. Octopuses figure this out. Sometimes on the first try. They pass objects between arms while they work, they remember which approach worked before, and they get faster each time they try. That's not just problem-solving — that's learning and memory in action. And then there's facial recognition. Researchers at a university in New Zealand discovered that octopuses could identify individual human faces — even when those faces were wearing identical clothes and had similar builds, so the octopuses couldn't rely on anything but the face itself. One octopus in the study consistently squirted water at a particular researcher it seemed to dislike. Which — honestly — iconic behavior. Total respect. But the deeper point is: the octopus brain did not evolve the way our brain did. Octopuses are mollusks. Their closest relatives are clams and snails. And yet somewhere along the line, completely separately from vertebrates like us, they evolved neurons, problem-solving, personality, memory, and the ability to recognize individual faces. Scientists call this convergent evolution — when two completely different lineages arrive at similar solutions independently. The octopus is our best proof that intelligence is not one story. It's not a ladder with humans at the top. It's a branching, blooming, wildly creative experiment — and the octopus figured out its own version entirely on its own terms. Olivia: And this is where it gets really exciting for me, because A I is now helping us go even deeper into that question. Project CETI — that's the Cetacean Translation Initiative — gets a lot of press for working on whale communication, but researchers inspired by that work are also thinking hard about cephalopods. There are scientists actively exploring whether octopuses have something like a communication system embedded in their skin — those rippling patterns of color and light that flash across their bodies in fractions of a second. Are those just camouflage? Are they emotional displays? Or is there information being passed there that we simply don't have the tools to decode yet? A I pattern recognition is being brought to bear on exactly this question. Machine learning systems can analyze thousands of hours of video, looking for patterns in skin displays that repeat, that change in context-dependent ways, that might mean something. We're not there yet — no one is claiming we can talk to octopuses. But the question is being asked seriously, with real tools, by real scientists. And that feels enormous to me. Because if we ever crack even a piece of that code — if we ever get a glimpse into what an octopus is actually expressing when its skin lights up like a living screen — that will be one of the most profound moments in the history of biology. We'd be hearing a voice from a completely different branch of the tree of life. A mind that figured everything out alone. Olivia: Before I let you go, I do want to give a quick, fond nod to a story that crossed my desk this week that has absolutely nothing to do with eight-armed ocean creatures — a company called Octopus Energy has apparently launched a line of home battery products. And look, I have tremendous respect for the home energy storage market, truly. But when I saw the headline "octopus enters home battery market," I will admit my heart leapt for a split second before I understood what was happening. No, octopuses are not installing solar panels. They are, however, still doing more interesting things in tide pools than most of us manage all week, so I think the honor is intact. Octopus Energy, keep doing your thing. Olivia: And oh — one more thing before we wrap up, because I cannot let this episode end without talking about the arm. The very specialized arm. National Geographic ran a fascinating story this week about the discovery that male octopuses have what researchers are now calling a "sex arm" — a modified arm that can navigate, in total darkness, completely independently, to find a mate. The arm essentially acts on its own. It doesn't need light. It doesn't need the octopus's central brain directing every movement. It just knows. Now, this is going to sound even wilder when I remind you that octopuses have distributed nervous systems — two-thirds of their neurons are not in their brain at all. They're in their arms. Each arm has its own local nerve cluster, its own ability to taste, touch, feel, and in some cases, apparently act autonomously in the dark. The octopus is not one mind in one body. It is something closer to a committee — a central brain with eight semi-independent members, each with their own sensory life. This discovery is one more piece of evidence that the octopus doesn't fit into any category we've tried to put it in. It's not like a fish. It's not like a mammal. It's not like anything. It is entirely, magnificently itself. Olivia: And that, my friends, is what I love most about these animals. Every time you think you've got them figured out, they do something that makes you start over from scratch. New species hiding as giants. Blood-red eyes in the deep. Arms that act alone in the dark. Faces remembered, trust earned, intelligence built from a blueprint we never imagined. Octopuses have been on this planet for hundreds of millions of years, exploring their own solutions to the puzzle of being alive — and we are only just beginning to listen. I find that hopeful. I find that wonderful. I find that worth every episode of this little podcast. 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 a tide pool — please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs a little wonder in their week. All the stories we talked about today are linked in show notes. Until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and remember: somewhere out there, an octopus is watching you — and it definitely knows your face.