All language subtitles for C12399BA9A028875038D2CA58E9F0C69_eng

We take our way of existence for
granted, but there are other ways of being.

The octopuses followed a
different evolutionary path, making

them different from all the
other animals on this planet.

But me, I'm less intrigued
by the differences and more

interested in our similarities
and the nature of a

relationship I might
have with such a creature.

This year, I got to
experiment with an idea.

What would I find out if I
invited an octopus into my home?

What kind of connection is
possible with an animal that has

three hearts and blue blood
running through its veins?

My name is David Scheele.
I'm professor of marine biology

at Alaska Pacific University
here in Anchorage. I've studied

all sorts of animals, but for
the past 25 years, my focus

has been on octopuses. I
have two girls. Juniper is away at

university right now, and
Laurel is with me about half

the time, lives here. Laurel's
16, she's in 10th grade. We

should check with her, make
sure dad hasn't screwed that

up. Hey Laurel, you're 16 right
in 10th grade? There we go.

I'm going out on a limb a little, taking
my octopus fascination one step further.

I'm going to fill my living room
with a large tank of saltwater.

My daughter's in and out of
the house, but she was eager to

have a pet. And so this is a
compromise between a girl who

really wanted a dog and a
dad who's overly interested

in octopuses. Actually, it's
not a compromise. I got the

octopus.

Inviting an octopus into your
home is no small undertaking.

All right. Yeah, it's coming. No,
it's coming. All right. There we go.

This new setup is going to
allow me to spend more time

with an octopus than I've
been able to do otherwise.

Here in Alaska, I work with
the species that's native to

these cold waters, the giant
Pacific octopus. But I wanted

something that was different,
something that will be new

to me, a warmer water
species that's faster, more active.

This is a species
that's been kept in

aquariums to be
studied for its intelligence.

It's an octopus cyanea, known
as the day octopus. They call

it that because, unlike some
other octopus species, these

guys are active during the day,
and so you get to see them more.

No, pulling hard. Well, just
a minute. I'll put you in the

tank. No, no, not yet. Not yet.
Just a minute. There you go.

There you go.

There she goes. Oh, nice color change.

Oh, look at this. Nice. I
mean, I guess the big thing for

me about keeping an animal
in the home is it's just more

relaxed. If I don't want to
do anything, I don't have to do

anything, just see what the
animal does. And I'm not trying

to do science here. I'm
just trying to think a little bit.

So it's just a chance to be
more available and more present

for whatever the
animal's living day to day.

She's very careful to
keep her eyeball in view

of mine. And she's
already checking me out.

I always get the sense when he's scuba
diving that they play this game with you.

Octopuses adapt their
environments around them to their own

liking. They clean out a hole
under a rock or in a crevice,

blowing out sand and
debris with their siphon.

And at that point, it's
not just shelter. It's home.

Hey, there. Are you interested
in some food? Octopus love crab.

Oh, there it is. She's
definitely feeling for it. Oh, she's

after the tube, not the crab.
There we go. There we go.

There we go. Oh, all right. Look at the
color pattern. That is a satisfied octopus.

I like the texture she's
put on. She didn't have that

before. The papilla coming up
around the eye and the sort of

bumps and things all over her
head. It's very nice. Now she

at least will know that the
tube and the environment have

interesting possibilities.

Laurel is also going to be helping
me take care of the octopus.

You know, the octopus was very
happy to see Laurel every day.

Hello. Laurel was just glad
to have a pet that was glad to

see her. I think a lot of
her pets kind of indifferent to

her. Her goldfish and her
rabbit outside. So an octopus

is kind of fun because it
comes running. Looks like she's

coming back over. Laurel
would send me little video clips of

the octopus getting up and
waiting on the glass and ready to

play. And, you know, I'm
sure Laurel looked forward to it

every day. Come here, Heidi.
Some of the things that she

would do remind me of what
like dogs would do. Oh, you're

already up here. Come here.
You know, she comes over to the

wall of the tank and just
kind of like all excited to see

you. And so being an intelligent
animal means that you need

a lot of stimulus. So being
played with or having just like

interactions with people is
entertaining for her. Laurel

tells me she'd sit for 30
minutes with the octopus just

holding on to her and wait
for it to let go. And now she's

excited. So she'd sit there
with her hand in the aquarium

for 30 minutes. So they're
pretty affectionate. She's

filming more of the sand right now.

Well, now she's filming me.

Hi, Heidi.

The reason we call her Heidi
was because when we first got

her, she spent a very, very
long time in her den and she was

just hiding the whole time.
She didn't seem to want to come

out. And then basically once
we taught her that we meant

food, she just grabbed on and was
like, okay, I'm keeping you with me.

The cephalopod community,
we're all excited about octopuses

and we're fairly close-knit
group of researchers share all

kinds of different experiences
and advice. Well, hi there.

Hi, David. How are you doing?
All right. How are you? Brett

is an expert on the early
stages of cephalopod life. That

group of animals that
include octopus, cuttlefish, and

squid. So how's everything
going over there? Because I've

never kept an octopus in my
living room before. You want to

take a look at the setup?
Yeah, I'd love to. All right.

Let's see if I can get the
computer over there and show you.

So she's actually out right
now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's great. She's got a good
marbled coloration going on.

My day octopus is already a
few months old. But at Brett's

lab, we get a glimpse
into the first few weeks of a

cephalopod's life. We're
watching the mother until she

starts going through her egg
laying phase. And once she

starts laying her eggs, she'll
sit there and pulse jets of

water over her eggs. What
that does is basically keep them

oxygenated and the eggs
continue to develop until they get

basically look almost like
little octopuses inside of each

individual egg. And then we know
they can kind of hatch at any time.

This is one of the few places you
can see octopuses hatch from the egg.

From this moment,
octopuses are on their own.

The first instinct of
this hatchling is to

construct a den out
of whatever it can find.

Baby bobtailed squid hide
by sticking grains of sand

to their bodies with a mucus
extruded from their skin.

These are all hardwired
little predators. They don't

hesitate to take down prey,
even when it's two or three

times their size.

Their color-changing cells start
flashing while they're still in the egg.

Three types of cells with neural control
make color change almost instantaneous.

These young pajama squid use this to
produce their signature striped pattern.

But there is one
cephalopod that is the master.

Just a few centimeters long,
these baby flamboyant cuddles

can beguile anyone with a
shape shift that is out of this

world.

The day octopus can also perform
an extraordinary display with their skin.

And I already have some
experience with these octopus in

the wild. I've been in the water
with them on the southwest

coast of Madagascar,
working with a local Vesuvian

fisherman, designing a way to
census the octopus population.

Brice has an amazing ability to
find the octopus in amongst the coral.

It's amazing to me how fast
they are here. The octopuses in

Alaska, they're kind of big
slow giants and these guys are

just quick and agile and
limber and they're really

everything they do they seem
to do it at ramped up speed.

I've had them in my hands
and then they're already gone

and then I look over and
Brice has caught it again.

The day octopus is a master of camouflage.

Its skin can change color in
milliseconds and it can use

muscles on the surface of
its skin to change texture as

well.

And this species has recently
been recorded demonstrating

an incredible behavior
with its color displays.

It's a display called passing cloud.

It's just so stunningly beautiful.
It's like wow what's that?

The thing about passing cloud is it's
a very impressive physiological ability.

And at the same time
it's a bit of a mystery.

The most common theory you
hear is that octopuses are using

passing cloud to startle its
prey and trap it in the web of

its arms.

My octopus is showing impressive
color changes of her own.

Observing what we're doing.
We've seen how closely the

octopus we have here at the
house is watching our eyes. You

look at them and you feel
like they're looking back. That's

not an illusion. They are looking
back. And so when you have

an animal that's that attentive
to another animal's eyes

that is very suggestive of
high level of awareness of the

world.

Well scientists do find questions
about octopus intelligence

particularly intriguing. At
the Seattle Aquarium they did

some experiments giving different objects
to octopuses and recorded what happened.

In one of the most telling
experiments the researchers put a

pill bottle in the tank with
just enough air in it to float.

There was no food or anything
to be gained here but still

a few octopuses found
reason to be interested. Nothing

happened at first but after
the fourth time the octopus

would bounce take the pill
bottle and blow it out into a

stream of water that was circulating
around the tank. There it goes.

And the water would bring
the pill bottle back to the

octopus again and it would
start the whole thing over again

and do it again and again.
Blowing the pill bottle into the

water until it came back and
then blowing it back into the

water again. A bit like
bouncing a ball. The conclusion

from this experiment was
simple. It fit all the criteria for

play. Play of course is
something that intelligent animals

do. And Laurel spends
many hours playing with Heidi.

Now she's now you say hello to me.

Octopuses have up to 240
suckers on their arms. Each has

sensitive chemical receptors.
Heidi can touch and taste

Laurel at the same time.
She's just she's just lightly

jetted up. She doesn't want
me to leave. Octopus also have

estrogen like humans do. Is
it possible that Heidi can be

detecting the estrogen on
Laurel's skin? Does Heidi maybe

taste the difference between
males and females? Heidi her

arm is now up my sleeve.
That's fun. Heidi you're you're

being you're being naughty.

She's lifting herself almost
all the way out of the tank

right now. Come here. Come
here. Come here. Oh now I'm wet.

The idea of Laurel having
any kind of relationship with a

mollusk is extraordinary when
you think about it. This is an

animal that has 600 million
years of distance from us.

That's almost as deep as
any divide can be between two

animals.

With three hearts, no bones,
a beak with a venomous bite,

and a gut that runs through
its brain, to one point of view

the octopus is completely alien.

As science fiction movies
have long demonstrated, humans

spend a lot of imagination
dreaming up what it might be like

to meet an alien.

In the latest blockbuster
Arrival, the filmmakers imagine

what it might be like to
encounter a species that changes

the way we think about the universe.

And I think it's an important
observation that they

culminate this encounter with
cephalopod-like figures from

outer space.

To really understand quite
how alien octopuses are to us,

and to every other intelligent
form of life on Earth, we

need to appreciate the unique evolutionary
path of the octopus on the Tree of Life.

It's Octopus Lecture 101 for my students.

Okay, what does the Tree
of Life look like? Here are a

couple of artistic versions.
Now just to give you a quick

overview, here's the plants,
here's the animals, this is the

branch that has the... To meet
the common ancestor of humans

and octopus, you would have
to travel back in time more than

half a billion years, millions
of years before any animal

crawled out of the ocean
onto the land. So here's the

octopus, and here's the
human, and their last common

ancestor is something that
was fairly like a flatworm. And

what would this common
ancestor look like? Well, maybe a

little bit like this. A small, flat worm.

Barely any eyes to
speak of, with a cluster

of neurons forming
just a pinprick of a brain.

From this beginning, one
path of evolution gave rise to

every bird and every reptile,
every mammal, all of them, us

included, all adaptations
from this common ancestor.

Designs of eyes and brains
and hearts becoming ever more

sophisticated and more
varied. That was the path

for every intelligent
animal, except for one.

That is why people talk about
meeting an octopus being like

meeting an alien, because
octopus branch of life evolved on

its own separate track,
inventing its own version of an eye,

its own version of a brain,
its own version of a heart. The

octopus is a unique expression
of evolution. So any contact

I have with these animals
is possible because evolution

built our eyes, our minds,
our behavior twice over.

There is no other intelligent
animal on the planet that has

evolved separately from all
the other animals in this way.

And this is why people are so
fascinated to make contact and

to understand every facet of
this very particular sentience.

In aquarium tanks
all around the world,

octopuses have been
put through their paces.

They have solved complex
mazes, even learned symbols, past

memory tests for their
rewards. Learning from feedback,

forward thinking, applying
diverse behaviors to novel

situations. When you stack
them one on top of another,

that's what we call intelligence.

And the unique evolutionary
journey of the octopus

makes this intelligence
particularly intriguing.

For a start, the intelligence
of an octopus is not just

gathered as one lump in
its head, like it is with us.

Parts of the octopus intelligence
are distributed in its arms.

And that means that to some
extent the body can be its own

controller, rather than having
a body being driven entirely

around by the brain.
Eight arms independently

gathering data and reacting
to the world around them.

All kinds of intelligence
require feedback. I think that's

why humans are intelligent, is
because we just know you try

and you learn from your
errors. So trial and error is really

the intelligent thing. And
octopuses make trial and error do

more than you might expect.

Our understanding of octopus
intelligence took another leap

forward when in Indonesia in
2009, researchers reported a

veined octopus doing
something truly remarkable.

It was a discovery that would
put our understanding of the

octopus onto a new level of
sentience occupied by only a few

species of animals. Living on
the sand flats, they have very

few places to hide, but this
octopus has a unique solution

to the problem.

It carries half a coconut shell with it.

But it needs to find something
else to complete the set.

Two coconut halves. A perfect shelter.

What is remarkable about this discovery
is how the octopus dismantles its home,

carries it around, and uses it

to hide and to ambush prey.

And now it's putting it back
together again. This octopus is

thinking ahead. This is real
flexibility. The octopus has to

anticipate to carry that
awkward object around, and then

correctly assemble the
separate parts to create a single

functioning tool. And less than 1% of all
animals have ever been seen to use tools.

And it's not just
science that is starting

to take notice of the
extraordinary octopus.

Laurel is showing me all the attention
these animals are getting from people.

I've seen Heidi do this before.
Oh yeah. So my real question

on this one is who's taking
the video? Is it another octopus

who's stolen this thing from?

Maybe he's filming himself. Yeah, he's
doing a vlog. Oh yeah, video blog. Yeah.

And he's like, look at this strange
thing that came and found me.

We're no longer just eating
octopuses. People are meeting

them now, making contact
in the ocean. I held the fish in

front of his shell and he
grabbed it from my hands. He

touched my finger with his
arm and I think that we were both

a bit surprised. So we both
pulled back. This time he

grabbed my finger and he
tried to pull my finger inside.

This clip has 11 million hits.
He was punching the fish away

with his arms. It was the
funniest thing I've ever seen.

This octopus trying to
punch away little fish. It was

definitely the coolest encounter
I've had with an octopus. I

tried to see how he respond
to different objects, like a

cone shell or a mirror, but he
never really respond the way

that I expect. I went on
holiday and I didn't see him for a

few days before. I was worried
he wouldn't be there anymore

when I came back, but I found him and
he swam up to me and he touched my foot.

985 clams disliked this video.

This one also went viral.

It wasn't hard to get Heidi to
demonstrate these impressive

skills of contortion. She
doesn't have a skeleton.

Octopus are able to squeeze
through the smallest of gaps.

Good girl. Come on. Come
on. Little squeeze. There we go.

That a girl. Keep coming.
You can do it. Almost. You can

squeeze.

I need to be very careful.
This ability makes Heidi a real

escape risk. She is quite
capable of leaving the tank if she

gets a chance. In fact, octopus can
move across land with surprising ease.

In Northern Australia, it's part of the
hunting strategy of the abdipus octopus.

Octopus have gills, so they
can't survive out here for long,

but they do absorb some
oxygen through their skin. Allowing

them enough time to find a new
rock pool with new opportunities.

And leaving the water is
not just being seen in the wild.

There's stories everywhere. There's
far more stories than there are data.

One story tells of a trawler
in the English Channel and an

octopus caught in a net and left
on deck. Somehow it manages

to slither from the deck down
the companionway into the

cabin and hours later is found
hiding in a teapot. Now we

turn to a tale of escape, a
daring act by an octopus. Inky

the octopus. In a New Zealand
aquarium, another octopus

named Inky becomes famous
on the news when it was reported

for escaping its tank and
crawling across the floor,

disappearing down a drain,
escaping to the sea. The

manager of the aquarium
says Inky will not be pursued.

Some of my favorite
stories are about pet octopus

popping out of their tank to
snack on their neighbors. My

investigations into this suggest
an octopus leaving its tank

to grab a snack does happen.
But finding its way back? That

is probably urban legend.

Back in our living room, Heidi has
become a fully-fledged consummate predator.

Sometimes when Heidi hunts,
before the attack she might

be camouflaged. But as she
gets ready, she'll drop all her

camouflage. And then
there's this ghostly white form.

And then pounce.

While she's a master of her environment,

she is also taking part in
our lives outside the tank,

adapting to our daily routine
with remarkable ease. We'd

come in, we'd turn on the
TV, we'd sit down and a couple

minutes later she'd move
over to the front of the tank,

closer to the TV.

She started doing that pretty
much every time we would come

into the living room to watch
TV. So we'd have TV time with

the octopus.

I think this is how she
would orient herself if she's

actually watching it, because
her eyes just moved so that

they're more facing towards the TV.

There seems to be like
very subtle changes like slight

widening of eyes and like
a slightly faster breathing.

But is Heidi really watching
TV with Laurel? The idea isn't

as far-fetched as it sounds.
Researchers for a long time

have used a video to show
cuttlefish and octopuses and see

how they react to it. Are they
signaling to one another? Is

there sort of a language
of behavior? So it's

completely believable that
Heidi is watching television.

But to what extent is she watching us?

Increasingly we can see just
how well Heidi recognizes us.

There is good evidence that
she is aware of who we are.

So sometimes I take extra
measures to be someone else.

This isn't an octopus horror show.
It's actually based on hard science.

There is plenty of evidence
that shows octopus recognize

people. I'm going to weigh
Heidi today and to do that I've

got to capture her so that I
can lift her up on the scale

and she might not like that.
So I'm going to wear a mask.

Well you see there's an
interesting study that was done in

2008 that showed that octopuses
in aquariums remember and

recognize individual human faces.

The experiment dressed
two people in identical

uniforms. One would
feed the octopus.

The other would annoy the
octopus with a bristly stick.

Within just a week the octopus
would move towards the person

that fed them and avoid or
even squirt the annoying one.

What do you think Heidi?
Here goes. And so when I weigh

Heidi this just might make
it a little easier for her to

forgive me for capturing
her and weighing her.

It's harder to tell in a living
room experience but Laurel's

quite convinced that Heidi
showed a difference between the

way she reacted to either of
us and visitors to the house.

Recognizing people on the
other side of the glass is an

unlikely ability for a creature
that comes from the ocean.

Okay you've been weighed. And
there is a new dimension being

added to this study of octopus
intelligence. Personality.

Scientists have used the
relationship between octopus and

humans in an aquarium
setting like this. That's the first

time that she's ever taken it
away from me. To demonstrate

how individual octopus have
their own personality. And

Laurel is certainly
convinced about the particular

character of our octopus.
Heidi's definitely a troublemaker.

When we feed her she grabs
onto you. Heidi! And then she

jets at you. It's wet. It's
very wet. It's just cold she got

it right up my sleeve. And
you know you're trying to pull

away with this octopus stuck
to your arm and she's jetting

water in your face and
it's you know she's trying to

get attention and she doesn't
want us to leave the room.

There have now been several
studies that have looked for

signs of personality in different
cephalopods and typically

find that there are individual
personalities. Bringing the

octopus into an area of study
normally reserved for animals

like chimpanzees and dolphins
is another milestone in the

understanding of octopus
intelligence. And certainly the

first time for an invertebrate.

This experience with the
octopus in our living room helps me

understand a little bit more
about how they experience the

world but it also highlights a paradox,
one of the cephalopod mysteries.

Scientists have a model
that suggests that some of the

things that go along with
intelligence are longer lifespans

and complex social lives.
Neither of those things apply to

octopuses. Octopuses, they
live short lives and they spend

them alone. The fact that
octopuses are solitary seems

at odds with how Heidi can
have this kind of intelligent

relationship with us at
all. Recently I've been

investigating a unique
discovery in Australia. One that

suggests octopuses may
not always be solitary after all.

This extraordinary discovery
happened in 2009 in a small

bay not that far from Sydney
Harbour. A diver named Matt

Lawrence plunged over the
side of his boat and drifting

along just exploring in areas
of the bay that everyone else

found were pretty boring.
And in the middle of a

silty area he came across
something very unexpected.

Piles of empty scallop shells
and in amongst the scallop

shells about a dozen
octopuses had made their homes.

We have nicknamed the site
Octopolis although it's hardly a

city of octopuses but an
aggregation like this is unheard of

anywhere else in the world.

I'm helping to try and find
out what's going on here and

working with Matt we are putting
some remote cameras down to

get a closer look at the
behaviour at this unusual site. We

wanted to capture this sort
of natural behaviour and Matt

started putting GoPro down,
you know one or two GoPros on

the site to sort of film the
octopuses when divers were

around. And so it's it's kind
of exciting to come back and

track what's going on with
the octopuses from moment to

moment.

So that's the octopus. Yeah
he's pulling down another

camera. Taken over the camera
now all the man like all the.

Oh he's got the camera. No
wonder we can't keep the cameras

alive. They take a beating. I
love it when this happens and

then another video records
the octopus vandalizing our

cameras. And when the
cameras aren't getting pulled apart

they are recording social
interactions that you simply can't

see anywhere else. They
appear to signal to one another and

make themselves look really
dark and conspicuous and large

when they're approaching
and rather flat and pale when

they're retreating. You see
octopuses reaching towards each

other. I wouldn't want to
speculate yet what that is but

they're interacting. This is pretty new.

So this this is more of that
signaling but why does the

approaching octopus evict
this one and not that one. I

wonder if it's possible that
they're like recognizing one

another. You know yeah they
prefer one animal over another

you know like a smaller
rival. That's the high five. Oh

yeah there it is. Gather and
touch each other and just yeah.

Otopolis is a sort of a
wonderland it's just kind of awe

inspiring. There's octopuses
side by side in adjacent dens

and that's so surprising
for an animal that we always

thought was solitary. You
see octopuses approaching one

another and chasing one
another. We see them wrestle with

one another. It's always
fairly spectacular because it's

like watching two umbrellas have a fight.

What makes octopolis unique
is that this is a spot where the

conditions occur that force
social skills upon the octopus.

It's a very exciting find it
does sort of shake up the

cephalopod world a little bit
to think that octopuses may

have to deal with one another and in
doing so sort of hone their social skills.

The research has only just
begun and we'll need to work

out how these environmental
conditions might create what we

thought did not happen.

Octopuses living side
by side with one another.

Each new discovery makes a
little more sense of how Heidi

can have a relationship like
she does with Laurel and me.

having an octopus
in our living room has

enabled us an intimacy
not possible in the lab.

And last night I witnessed something
I've never seen recorded before.

You know if she is dreaming
this is a dramatic moment.

You could almost just narrate
the body changes and narrate

the dream. So here's she's
asleep she sees a crab and her

color starts to change a
little bit. Then she turns all

dark. Octopuses will do that
when they leave the bottom.

This is a camouflage like she's
just subdued a crab and now

she's going to sit there and
eat it and she doesn't want

anyone to notice her.

It's a very unusual behavior to
see the color come and go on

her mantle like that. I mean
just to be able to see all the

different color patterns just
flashing one after another.

You don't usually see that
when an animal is sleeping which

really is fascinating.

But yeah, if she's
dreaming that's the dream.

The solitary octopus
does not fit our theories of

how animal intelligence
can evolve. And yet it is.

And there is another thing
about the octopus which also

contradicts our theories of
the development of intelligence.

It is something Laurel and I
will soon have to come to terms

with because most octopus
live for only a year or two at

most.

It is incredible that octopus can become
so sophisticated in such a short time.

There is a connection here.
The cross is a divide not just

from air into water but also
across half a billion years of

separation. And it's
been a privilege to have a

relationship with such a
strange and wonderful creature.