Hello and welcome to Amaze Me.
Those little nuggets of new natural history, which will amaze you.
And today we've got a gem, an absolute beauty.
We've got a pugilistic cephalopod.
I bet you can't wait.
A pugilistic cephalopod.
What more do you want.
Oh come on! It's so good.
But first, let's get to grips with cephalopods.
The squid, the cuttlefish and of course, the octopus.
And what are they famed for?
Well, they're famed for their remarkable capacity for camouflage.
That's one thing. They've got these tiny little organs in their skin called for chromatophores,
muscles which can expand and contract allowing pigments into vessels there.
So look, in a fraction of a second,
They can match the background of the environment where they are absolutely perfectly.
But then only that, they can also change the texture of their skin
.
In seconds. It looks amazing
Oh, look at that.
They can be rough, they can be smooth, they can be rocky, they can be sandy.
Oh, so quick.
So quick.
But aside from that capacity for camouflage,
They're also renowned for their intelligence, the most intelligent invertebrates that we've got.
You might remember Paul with the octopus from the 2010 World Cup, living in an aquarium in Germany.
He was used to predict the results of the games.
He got all of the German games right.
Seven out of seven managed to predict the third place playoff right as well.
And even the final - Spain one nil.
Paul was on it.
In fact, he was right.
Eighty seven point five percent of the time.
The better luck going on there as far as intelligence.
It wasn't high science.
We've got to say it wasn't the high science,
But it did serve a great job in increasing people's awareness of this fascinating group of animals.
And promoting the cephalopods globally.
It really did. And they are stories of their intelligence from all over the world.
In fact, there was an aquarium in New Zealand that had something pretty remarkable happen.
Staff would come in every morning and they would notice that the fish in the tanks were disappearing,
But they have no idea what was going on.
But they did think that people were potentially coming in,
Breaking in and taking the fish for their own private collections.
So what they did is they put cameras all over the aquarium.
What they saw next was pretty surprising because it wasn't a human at all.
It was that very own octopus who is opening up its own tank, coming out, going into the neighbouring tank,
Then the next tank, then the next and the next, and essentially finding an extra snack, a few more fish to eat.
But the most intelligent thing about it was, was that it came back into its own tank, put the lid on carefully,
Went back into its usual spot just a few minutes before the staff returned in the morning.
So it's a concept that over time now it has this routine at night when people were coming back,
You know, back into his tank and pretend like nothing happened
So clever, so, so clever.
And of course, they are carnivorous animals eating fish in that aquaria.
Typically the common octopus always out and about looking for crustaceans, crabs and shrimps.
And its soft, pliable body means that it can slip down into those cracks and crevices.
Where those animals are hiding or even underneath stones.
But, you know, there is one species of octopus, the big blue octopus.
That likes to collaborate with other species when it goes foraging.
Collaboration feeding is really important throughout the animal kingdom.
It improves success significantly of the amount of prey that you can catch.
And the big blue has been seen surrounding itself with a number of different fish species.
in order to better catch its prey.
So some of the fish species that are around it will be looking for food within the water column.
Other species will be looking for food on the sandy bottoms and the octopus itself will be looking for food,
as Chris says, in those crevices or under rocks.
But the thing is that some of these fish are actually pointing out the food to the octopus as well.
They will be saying, I've spotted a crab in a crevice.
Come over here and have a look.
Yeah. So it's all about communication between them and finding food all together is much better than finding food when you're alone.
And all of those fish fill in different niches, the octopus fills in a different niche from the fish.
So it all works together rather well, or it does anyway up until a certain point.
Now, scientists have been looking at the big blue in particular and found a behaviour that was rather surprising.
They were looking in Egypt and in Israel and they saw this behaviour, a number of accounts with the same species.
The octopus ends up punching the fish in the face if it's not quite happy.
Yeah, totally unbelievable.
You can see it happening here and look very carefully.
Look up on the right hand side of the octopus.
There you go. One tentacle comes out, pushes the fish off.
Amazing. But why are they doing this?
Well, we've still got a little bit of research left to do, but there are a couple of theories.
The first theory is that the octopus has had its fill.
It simply doesn't want to expend more energy in feeding and searching for food when it's already had enough.
So to stop this feeding.
It's game over.
Stop this feeding it gets a bit bored essentially, and it says, you know, I've had enough of you guys,
You know, get over there now, I'm done.
So that's one option, the other is that it's a bit of a punishment for the fish that misbehave.
While they misbehave because they're actually cheating.
These are fish that come into the group and may not be pointing out food to the octopus.
So it's all take no give and it doesn't want them in the group.
What's also quite interesting is that it will punch some fish.
And when it does so, the goldsaddle goatfish, for instance, then the group will dissipate.
There are others, lyretail groupers that if it punches well,
the one that it punches might disappear, but all the rest stay.
So there's still a complex of behaviour there that we need to understand.
But one thing's for sure, this is a remarkable example of collaborative feeding.
And it certainly came as a welcome surprise to the scientist who was watching it Eduardo Sampaio.
The first time I saw this behaviour and I just burst out laughing.
I almost choked on my regulator.
It was a moment I will never forget.
There's two levels to this, because we want to understand,
first, the octopus part, so how does the octopus interpret the social information here?
Is he aware that he is punching a less collaborative fish or is it a bit a bit more random?
So we have all these interesting questions from the octopus, but also from a group level.
It's very interesting to understand how these groups move throughout the habitat.
Each one has a different role there.
And when all worked together, they get more prey.
But if they start having too much competition, that the collaboration just breaks down.
How incredible is that?
I mean, it's just mind blowing. And of course, the octopus is, miles, more intelligent than those fish.
So essentially what it's doing is putting these fish to work to help it find food.
And that's often indicative of intelligence.
It's these social interactions which can be used to harness.
and for us to be able to understand just how smart these animals are.
Yeah, and the thing is that the octopus intelligence has evolved independently.
than that that we see in vertebrate animals like ourselves,
the great apes, the dolphins, all the other things we perceive as intelligent because they are invertebrates.
And we split from them a long, long time ago.
But it does also highlight the fact that when we look at animal intelligence, we can't always think about it from a human point of view.
I mean, no octopus is going to take an IQ test.
It develops its intelligence to benefit itself.
So we need to transform our thinking about how we measure that intelligence.
But I think there's no doubt at all that the pugilistic cephalopod.
One smart animal.
Yeah, we love that.
It's amazing.
And if it's amazed you and you've been similarly amazed by other things.
then do let us know about them and we might feature them on one of our broadcasts.
So until next time from Megan and I, it's
goodbye.