Octopuses are intelligent sufficient to unscrew jars from the within and throw sand at their annoying neighbors. However solely a fraction of their smarts come from their doughnut-shaped brains. Over two-thirds of their roughly 500 million neurons reside in eight sucker-studded arms—a type of distributed intelligence distinctive to cephalopods.
Every of those highly effective appendages can transfer in any course and style and really feel with beautiful sensitivity. A nerve ring connecting all eight arms permits explorations of the seafloor that isn’t all the time ruled by the central mind upstairs.
What’s it like when your arms have minds of their own? Many mysteries—anatomical, behavioral, and philosophical—stay. However here is a few of what scientists have been in a position to find out about these unorthodox invertebrates.
