How smart is an octopus?

by University of Queensland

A day reef octopus (Octopus cyanea). Credit: Dr Wen-sung Chung

The unique brainpower of octopuses—known for their intelligence and Houdini-like escapes—has been revealed by University of Queensland researchers.

Dr. Wen-Sung Chung from UQ's Queensland Brain Institute is part of a team that studied four octopus species using MRI techniques to produce detailed 3D images for comparing their unique brain structures.

He said octopus brains varied, depending on where a species lived, when it was active and if it interacted with other animals.

"The octopus is a master of camouflage, capable of solving complex tasks and their cognitive ability is said to approach that of some small mammals," Dr. Chung said.

"We investigated four species, including one deep-sea octopus, one solitary nocturnal species and two different reef dwellers active during daylight."

Dr. Chung said the octopus found in deep waters had a smooth brain like marsupials and rodents, suited for its slow pace of life and limited interactions with other animals.

The reef octopuses had a significantly larger brain with some properties similar to primates, adapted for complex visual tasks and social interaction in a busy, well-lit environment.

"These octopuses have some remarkably complex behaviors not known in other octopuses," Dr. Chung said.

Credit: University of Queensland

"For example, collaborative hunting with reef fish has been recorded, where the octopus usually leads and coral trout join by either actively seeking prey or opportunistically snatching small organisms flushed out by the octopus.

"The ability to receive and respond to gestures between different species as part of collaborative hunting demonstrates that octopus species have complex cognitive abilities."

The differences in brain structures between species relates to the size of the brain's surface area, with a larger surface area indicating a more complex nervous system and increased cognitive ability.

Professor Justin Marshall heads the team that was first to discover the differences in brain structure, opening the door to a better understanding of the complexity and evolution of these apparently "smart" animals.

He said the team's ongoing research aimed to provide insights into how octopus brain structure is linked to behavior, vision and advanced cognition.

The research has been published in Current Biology.The secret life of baby octopuses

More information: Wen-Sung Chung et al, Comparative brain structure and visual processing in octopus from different habitats, Current Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.10.070

Journal information: Current Biology 

Provided by University of Queensland 

Queensland researchers studying octopus brains find reef species are smarter and hunt in packs
ABC Far North / By Jemima Burt
Posted Sun 21 Nov 2021 a

Riding on the success of the documentary, My Octopus Teacher, a team of Queensland researchers has studied the brains of octopuses using MRI technology to find out why they are so smart.

Key points:
Queensland researchers studied the brains of four octopus species
Reef octopuses had significantly larger brains
Some teamed up with reef fish to hunt for food

The team from the University of Queensland's Brain Institute took four species of octopus, two of which live on the Great Barrier Reef, and studied their brain structure using ultra-detailed MRI imaging.

Results, published in scientific journal Current Biology, have shown for the first time that reef octopuses had a significantly larger brain than octopuses that lived in deep-sea waters – a discovery which will provide insights into how brain structure is linked with behaviour and cognition.

Post-doctoral researcher Wen-Sung Chung said one of the purposes of the study was to find out why the invertebrates had such a short life span – approximately one year.

Dr Wen-Sun Chung is part of a team of researchers from the Queensland Brain Institute studying octopus brains using MRI technology.(Supplied: University of Queensland)

"Why do they put so much power, so much energy in developing their brains?


"Keeping a brain with so many neurons is really costly," Dr Chung said.

Dr Chung said octopuses are estimated to have 500 million neurons.

"They are quite amazing; they have eight arms and no joints and they need to control their movement across the very complex seascape.

"They are also totally colour blind, they can only see blue or green, and how they manage to see reef and then make themselves well matched with the background is a big unknown," Dr Chung said.

The day-reef octopus, Octopus cyanea, was found to have a large brain - which enabled it to camouflage with reef around it despite colour blindness.(Supplied: University of Queensland)

Unusual inter-species friendships

Dr Chung said researchers also investigated the relationship which developed between octopuses and reef fish while hunting.

He said the observations were made during visits to Lizard Island, off the coast of Far North Queensland.

"The fish usually follow the octopus, the octopus will search for crabs, and then somehow the small food item will come out and the fish will eat it.

He said the animals were able to communicate with each other to hunt together.

"The ability to receive and respond to gestures between different species as part of collaborative hunting demonstrates that octopus species have complex cognitive abilities," Dr Chung said.

He said the finding was significant, considering the species' usual behaviour.

"Most of the time they live solitary, and very rarely interact with others.

"For those nocturnal especially, they live by themselves until the mating season and find a mate, otherwise they will just go out alone to catch crab or clams."

The hidden world of octopus cities and culture shows why it’s wrong to farm them



Research shows that octopuses are sentient, emotional creatures. (Shutterstock)


THE CONVERSATION
Published: April 4, 2022 

A recently proposed aquaculture octopus farm in the Canary Islands would raise 3,000 tonnes of octopus a year, which means almost 275,000 individual octopuses will be killed annually.

Read more: Octopus farms raise huge animal welfare concerns - and they're unsustainable too

My research examines animal minds and ethics, and to me, the phrase “octopus culture” brings to mind Octopolis and Octlantis, two communities of wild octopuses in Jarvis Bay, Australia.

In Octopolis, numerous octopuses share — and fight over — a few square metres of seabed. In these watery towns, octopuses form dominance hierarchies, and they’ve started developing new behaviours: male octopuses fight over territory and, perhaps, females by throwing debris at one another and boxing.

Octopus community-building

The discovery of octopus communities came as a surprise to biologists who have long described octopuses as solitary animals that interact with others in three specific contexts: hunting, avoiding being hunted and mating.

What Octopolis suggests can happen in the wild is what has also been observed in captive octopuses: when living in an overly dense captive environment, octopuses will form dominance hierarchies.

In their fights for power, male octopuses perform an array of antagonistic behaviours, including throwing scallop shells to defend their den, and the “mantle up” display which makes an octopus look like a menacing vampire. Submissive octopuses signal their compliance with light colours and flattened body postures. For their efforts, the dominants appear to gain better access to high-quality dens and to females.

A look into the social life of octopus by Australian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith.

Animal culture

What is going on in Octopolis and Octlantis is properly called octopus culture. The idea of animal culture emerged after scientists noticed that in some groups, animals perform actions that aren’t seen in other groups of the same species.

Read more: Did they mean to do that? Accident and intent in an octopuses' garden

One of the earliest proponents of animal cultures was the Japanese primatologist Kinji Imanishi who in the 1950s observed that a group of Japanese macaques on Koshima Island would wash sweet potatoes in the water before eating them.

This was a new behaviour, not seen in other macaque groups, and observers were lucky enough to observe its origins. A monkey named Imo was the first to wash a potato in the salty water and others soon copied her, leading to a community-wide behaviour pattern.

The idea of animal culture drove much subsequent Japanese primatology, but in Europe and North America culture didn’t get much attention until 1999, when an article about culture in chimpanzees was published. Since then, evidence of culture — group-typical behaviours that are socially learned — has been found all across the animal kingdom, including among fish, birds and insects.

Japanese macaques exhibited social behaviour and influenced a cultural approach to primatology that later extended to other macaques. (Shutterstock)

A new kind of octopus

The proposal to start an octopus farm is a proposal to create a new octopus culture, because when cultural animals are brought together, they can’t help but create society. It’s also a proposal to create a new kind of octopus: the cultural behaviours coupled with the captive environment will be a novel environmental niche that shapes subsequent evolution.

Our familiar farmed animals — like Angus cows and Chocktaw hogs — have been domesticated and are entirely different from the animals they evolved from.

Many of our domesticated animals cannot survive without human care. Examples include domestic rabbits, that have evolved without the instincts and colouring wild rabbits have to protect them from predators, sheep whose wool grows too thick without regular trimming and chickens bred for meat that can’t walk as adults because their breasts are too heavy.

Starting an octopus farm is a commitment to creating a new kind of animal that relies on humans for their existence. It isn’t an idea to be taken up lightly, or a project that can responsibly be attempted and then discarded when it turns out to be too difficult or not profitable.

Managing octopus populations

There are many reasons to worry that an octopus farm will not be easy to manage. Unlike other farmed animals, octopuses need their space. Octopolis is already a battleground of boxing octopuses; one can only wonder what that will look like on a scale of thousands.

Octopuses are sentient — they are emotional animals that feel pain. A recent report commissioned by the department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs in the United Kingdom reviewed the scientific evidence for pain experience in cephalopod molluscs (octopuses, squid and cuttlefish).

Sentient animals used for food are protected under welfare laws and killed in ways that should minimize their pain. Current methods of slaughtering octopuses include clubbing, slicing open the brain or suffocating them. The report’s authors conclude that none of these methods of slaughter are humane and recommends against octopus farming.

Octopuses are escape artists. The kind of housing needed to shelter them will be difficult to achieve, especially while also providing enrichment, since an enriched environment will be one full of possible getaway routes.

Octopus are known for their ability to escape tanks. (Shutterstock)

If an octopus farm is started, and then abandoned, the thousands of domesticated cultural octopuses cannot be released into the sea and be expected to flourish. We learned from the many expensive attempts to release Keiko, the killer whale that starred in the Free Willy franchise, that successful reintroduction of captive cultural animals into the wild is not easy. Even after spending US$20 million dollars, Keiko died in captivity.

The proposal to bring thousands of animals together into an octopus megacity would scale octopus culture far beyond anything found in nature or in captivity. It would create hundreds of thousands of Keikos, aquatic cultural animals captured from the wild and brought into captivity. And it would force them to live together and create a new culture in what is sure to be a violent octopus slum.

Just now, we are learning that octopuses feel emotions and have culture, and we are starting to rethink current practices of intensive animal farming.

It is exactly the wrong moment to propose such a scheme. We now know better.

Author

Kristin Andrews
Professor, Philosophy, York University, Canada
Disclosure statement
Kristin Andrews receives funding from SSHRC, Templeton World Charity Foundation, and York University. She is on the Board of Directors for Borneo Orangutan Society Canada.

CTHULHU STUDIES

The Search for a Model Octopus

A lab in Massachusetts may have finally found an eight-armed cephalopod that can serve as a model organism and assist scientific research


PUBLISHED : 17 APR 2022
NEWSPAPER SECTION: SUNDAY SPOTLIGHT
WRITER: ELIZABETH  PRESTON

Bret Grasse, a manager of cephalopod operations at the Marine Biological Laboratory, and a lesser Pacific striped octopus, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

 MATT COSBY/nyt

LONG READ

The tank looked empty, but turning over a shell revealed a hidden octopus no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball. She didn't move. Then all at once, she stretched her ruffled arms as her skin changed from pearly beige to a pattern of vivid bronze stripes.

"She's trying to talk with us," said Bret Grasse, manager of cephalopod operations at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), an international research centre in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in the southwestern corner of Cape Cod.

A wild 'chierchiae', a miniature, zebra-striped octopus, at the lab. 

MATT COSBY/nyt

The tiny, striped octopus is part of an experimental colony at the lab where scientists are trying to turn cephalopods into model organisms: animals that can live and reproduce in research institutions and contribute to scientific study over many generations, like mice or fruit flies do.

Cephalopods fascinate scientists for many reasons, including their advanced, camera-like eyes and large brains, which evolved independently from the eyes and brains of humans and our backboned relatives.

Joshua Rosenthal, a neurobiologist, at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. MATT COSBY/nyt

An octopus, cuttlefish or squid is essentially a snail that swapped its shell for smarts. "They have the biggest brain of any invertebrate by far," said Joshua Rosenthal, a neurobiologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory. "I mean, it's not even close."

Model cephalopods would be a boon for biologists. But keeping these brainy and often bizarre animals in captivity -- particularly octopuses -- presents both ethical and logistical challenges.

The researchers at Woods Hole have had earlier success with raising squid over multiple generations. Yet a single squid can't tell scientists everything about cephalopods.

Caroline Albertin, a developmental biologist at the lab. MATT COSBY/nyt

"Having different models to answer different questions is, I think, incredibly valuable," said Caroline Albertin, a developmental biologist at the facility.

But octopuses have long confounded scientists because of several unfortunate habits: They eat each other. They're notorious escape artists. Mothers die as soon as they reproduce, so it's hard to build up a breeding population.

That has made the model octopus a kind of white whale -- until last year, when Mr Grasse and his colleagues announced they had raised three consecutive generations of an especially promising octopus species in their lab, more than anyone had before.

Meet Octopus chierchiae, a miniature, zebra-striped octopus with a trick up its sleeves.

Roy Caldwell, a behavioural ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, first met Octopus chierchiae, also called the lesser Pacific striped octopus, in the mid-1970s in Panama.

He was pulling rocks from the ocean to find mantis shrimp hiding in cracks. "Every once in a while, these cute little striped octopus would come out," he said.

He brought a few of the octopuses back to Berkeley. Soon after, "One of the females laid eggs, and I thought that was kind of a bummer because I knew that she would die," Prof Caldwell said. "And she didn't die." A couple of months later, she laid eggs again.

A 1984 paper by Arcadio Rodaniche, a Panamanian scientist, confirmed Prof Caldwell's observation: Females of this species, unlike nearly every other octopus, could reproduce several times.

A soda bottle adapted for use as an incubator for baby cephalopods at the lab. MATT COSBY/nyt

This trait, combined with their convenient size, made them an enticing subject for lab research. Unfortunately, Prof Caldwell couldn't find any more in Panama. None of the biologists or collectors he asked had seen any, either.

The little cephalopod was only a memory until around 2010, when "I got an email from a high school student," Prof Caldwell said, "who wanted to know how he could take care of his new pet octopus". The student sent a photo. The octopus's zebra stripes were unmistakable.

Prof Caldwell traced the octopus back to a collector in Nicaragua. Finally, he could obtain a few lesser Pacific striped octopuses and try to get a colony going in his lab.

But over three or four years of attempts, he never got past the second generation. After that, Prof Caldwell said, the females' eggs didn't hatch. He suspected inbreeding was a problem, as well as diet. "We didn't know quite what to feed them."

That question was still unanswered in 2016, when Mr Rosenthal came to the Marine Biological Laboratory with a dream of making model cephalopods to aid scientific research.

Bret Grasse, a manager of cephalopod operations at the lab, checks on some of his charges. MATT COSBY/nyt

He recruited Mr Grasse, who was known as something of a cephalopod whisperer, from the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Taylor Sakmar, also a Monterey Bay aquarist, came to Cape Cod to help build a new kind of facility for many-armed animals.

Today, that facility is a dim, burbling room packed with rows of tanks and smelling of seawater. People squeeze between racks, checking tanks, mopping puddles and feeding several species of cephalopod around the clock.

When the scientists started their Octopus chierchiae colony in 2018 with seven animals from Nicaragua, they offered the creatures a buffet of live and frozen seafood.

Then they watched the animals' body language and changing skin colours to see what they liked best. (Lesser Pacific striped octopuses always have their stripes, but can dial up the contrast or fade the stripes away almost entirely.)

"After you work with these cephalopods long enough, you essentially can learn how to speak cephalopod," Mr Grasse said.

An octopus will reach out to taste an offered item with its suckers. If it tastes good, the octopus quickly wraps the food close with all eight arms and scoots off to a shelter to eat it. If it doesn't like what's offered, the octopus may fling the food onto the side of its tank.

Observing the octopuses in their care, the scientists also discovered that males who are ready to mate perform a rapidly vibrating dance with their arm tips, as if twirling a bunch of maracas.

A hummingbird bobtail squid in an aquarium at the lab. 

MATT COSBY/nyt

After the octopuses mated and babies emerged from their eggs, Mr Grasse housed the young -- which are bright orange and smaller than a lentil -- in individual PVC-pipe cylinders so they wouldn't snack on one another. He discovered that the hatchlings go through a phase of "intense swimming", where they can escape through the tiniest gap between an enclosure and its lid.

Typically, materials such as AstroTurf or the fuzzy side of a Velcro strip can keep octopuses from scaling vertical surfaces, Mr Grasse said, because their suckers won't stick. But the extra-small babies of the lesser Pacific striped octopuses could climb these materials like a ladder.

"Typically, octopuses are more easily secured than this species," Mr Grasse said.

He now uses expandable foam lids to tightly seal the hatchlings' enclosures. A tank for adult Octopus chierchiae has a perimeter of Velcro, along with what Mr Grasse called his "really high-tech security system" -- a heavy rock on the lid.

In 2015, Ms Albertin was part of a team that sequenced the very first cephalopod genome. "I am astonished at how fast this has all gone," she said. "Cephalopods have a lot to teach us about the world. And we're finally at a point where we can try to start understanding them."

But an ideal lab animal for the molecular age isn't just one you can keep healthy for many generations, Mr Rosenthal said. It's also one whose DNA scientists can manipulate.

By turning genes off, or adding new genes or markers to an animal's cells, scientists can see the machinery of biology more clearly. Such research in mice and other lab animals has let researchers directly test the roles of individual genes, for example, and create animal models of human diseases. But it has been more challenging with cephalopods, especially the octopus.

Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory have succeeded in using the tool CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the genes of a squid local to Cape Cod, as well as the lab's hummingbird bobtail squid, they said.

To inject materials into these animals' tough eggs, they've used sharpened quartz needles and specially designed tiny scissors.

For scientists who want to manipulate cephalopod genetics, the hummingbird bobtail squid is the most promising model animal to date, Ms Albertin said: "Easy to raise, easy to poke and easy to keep in our incubation chambers."

But studying squid isn't enough.

"People often think about cephalopods as kind of all the same thing," Ms Albertin said. "Octopuses, squid -- they're all squishy and float around in the ocean. But they're actually quite different."

There's a problem with octopus eggs. All the ones Ms Albertin has worked with have a "hard, leathery eggshell", she said. Her needles can't pierce it.

She's been able to cut into the eggs with scissors -- only to encounter another problem, which Mr Rosenthal politely called "positive pressure", and Ms Albertin described as the yolk "squeezing out of its eggshell like toothpaste out of a tube".

"Honestly, I don't know that anyone has figured out how to inject into an octopus egg yet," Ms Albertin said.

The scientists don't think it's impossible. But they'll have to figure it out before the lesser Pacific striped octopus becomes the type of model organism Mr Rosenthal has envisioned.

While gene editing with the lesser Pacific striped octopus remains elusive, the species could help tackle another cephalopod mystery.

Octopus bimaculoides, or the California two-spot octopus, is a common lab cephalopod that scientists can get from the wild. But it has disadvantages. For one, it's much bigger -- a two-spot octopus tank at the Marine Biological Laboratory has a brick on top so its occupant can't get out.

The other problem is that the mums die. One two-spot octopus at the lab was active and curious, shooting a jet of water at visitors; a neighbouring tank held a dying female hunched over her clusters of transparent eggs. The mother was unmoving, one eye visible.

The rapid decline of mother octopuses fascinates Z Yan Wang, an evolutionary neuroscientist at the University of Washington, Seattle. "This animal that has such a complex nervous system lives such a short amount of time," Prof Wang said.

In a 2018 study, she documented how female two-spot octopuses first stopped eating while they tended their eggs, stroking them and blowing water across them. Then the mothers turned pale and began acting strangely, sometimes eating their own arm tips or wounding themselves with their suckers, before dying.

Prof Wang hopes to learn more about this process when she launches her own lab this autumn. She plans to acquire lesser Pacific striped octopuses from the colony started by Mr Grasse and company, and start her own colony using their methods. In the animals' brains, she may find the key that lets them survive reproduction.

She has been meeting with a group of other cephalopod researchers, including the Cape Cod team, to talk about how to move forward with using the lesser Pacific striped octopus in research. "We're all very invested in this species," Prof Wang said.

Prof Caldwell, who wasn't able to breed Octopus chierchiae beyond two generations, has also been a part of these conversations. He said the results at the facility in Woods Hole, keeping the animals alive for three generations, show promise.

From the seven wild Octopus chierchiae, Mr Grasse and his colleagues have raised over 700 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In the last generation, though, they let the colony peter out.

It was 2020, and because of Covid restrictions, only one person could be in the facility at a time.

A two-spot octopus, with a brick atop his aquarium lid to thwart his ability to escape, at the lab.

 MATT COSBY/nyt

The scientists had to put the brakes on breeding the octopuses, to make sure they didn't make more animals than they could care for. Only one colony member, a geriatric female over 2 years old, is still alive.

Additionally, the colony was showing signs of inbreeding trouble. Fewer hatchlings were living to adulthood. One baby hatched with 16 arms.

This winter, though, five new lesser Pacific striped octopuses arrived at the facility from Nicaragua. The scientists will use what they've learned to start a new colony. This time, they hope to keep the gene pool healthy by periodically adding new wild animals.

With their welfare in mind, Mr Grasse is providing shells, artificial plants and other objects to enrich all the cephalopods' artificial homes.

He also makes sure the animals have variety in their diets, changes of scenery and now and then a fun project such as a shrimp in a jar. These enrichments help their "mental health", he said.

Letting species perform their natural behaviours, whether that means hunting for prey or hiding in sand, lowers their stress, said Robyn Crook, a neuroscientist at San Francisco State University. In her own lab, "The enclosures we use for octopuses are incredibly rich, to the point that we often can't find them," she said.

Prof Crook keeps a self-sustaining colony of hummingbird bobtail squid, which she began with individuals from the Marine Biological Laboratory.

In a study last year, she showed that octopuses seem to experience pain. She hopes that her lab's biological findings will influence how other scientists care for these animals in captivity.

"The better the welfare of the animal, the better experimental data that you get. And the fewer animals you need," Prof Crook said. "And just generally, it's better science."

In the United States, no laws regulate research on invertebrates. When scientists want to study an animal with a backbone, such as a mouse or bird or fish, they need ethics approval from a committee within their institution. Scientists studying worms -- or highly intelligent cephalopods -- can do whatever they want.

Baby cephalopods at the lab. 

MATT COSBY/nyt

Some institutions, including the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), are voluntarily using the same review process for their research on cephalopods. "We want to do the right thing by them," Mr Rosenthal said.

In the absence of new laws, Prof Crook says captive breeding is another way to improve the welfare of octopuses and other cephalopods. If an animal comes from the wild, researchers don't know how it was caught or handled before reaching them.

"There's not really any sources of captive-bred cephalopods other than the MBL. So it's an amazing resource," she said.

A lesser Pacific striped octopus curls into a hiding spot.

 MATT COSBY/nyt

Prof Crook hopes that by raising animals like the lesser Pacific striped octopus, the team in Woods Hole will not only improve the lives of lab animals, but give scientists a powerful new tool to answer big questions in biology.

"They're incredibly complex -- evolutionarily speaking, neurobiologically speaking -- and they're totally different from us, which is why we study them," Prof Crook said. "Cephalopods are in a really unique position to tell us things about the brain that we might not otherwise ever learn."

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright: © 2022 by The New York Times

CTHULHU SAY NO

The world's first octopus farm - should it go ahead?

Claire Marshall - BBC environment & rural affairs correspondent
Mon, December 20, 2021,

Octopuses have the largest and most complex brains of any invertebrate

News that the world's first commercial octopus farm is closer to becoming reality has been met with dismay by scientists and conservationists. They argue such intelligent "sentient" creatures - considered able to feel pain and emotions - should never be commercially reared for food.

Playing with a Giant Pacific Octopus is part of Stacey Tonkin's job. When she lifts the lid on the tank to feed the creature known as DJ - short for Davy Jones - he often scoots out from his cave to see her and stick his arms on the glass. That's if he's in a good mood. Octopuses live to be about four - so, at one year old, she says that he's the equivalent of a teenager.

"He definitely exhibits what you'd expect a teenager to be like - some days he's really grumpy and sleeps all day. Then other days he's really playful and active and wants to charge around his tank and show off."


Stacey is one of a team of five aquarists at Bristol Aquarium, and she sees DJ reacting differently to each of them. She says he will happily stay still, and hold her hand with his tentacles.

The keepers feed the octopus with mussels and prawns and bits of fish and crab. Sometimes they put the food in a dog toy for him to tease out with his tentacles, so he can practise his hunting skills.

She says his colour changes with his moods. "When he's an orangey brown, it's more like an active or playful kind of feeling. Speckly is more curious and interested. So he'll be swimming around orange and brown, then he'll come over and sit beside you and go all speckly and just look at you, which is quite amazing.

Stacey says the octopus shows his intelligence through his eyes. "When you look at him, and he looks at you, you can sense there's something there."

The level of awareness that Stacey witnesses first-hand is to be recognised in UK law through an amendment to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill.

The change has come after a team of experts sifted through more than 300 scientific studies and concluded that octopuses were "sentient beings" and there was "strong scientific evidence" that they could experience pleasure, excitement and joy - but also pain, distress and harm.

The authors said they were "convinced that high-welfare octopus farming was impossible" and the government "could consider a ban on imported farmed octopus" in future.

But octopus tentacles sizzle in pans, coil on plates and float in soups around the world - from Asia to the Mediterranean, and increasingly the USA. In South Korea, the creatures are sometimes eaten alive. The number of octopuses in the wild are decreasing and prices are going up. An estimated 350,000 tonnes are caught each year - more than 10 times the number caught in 1950.

Against that background, the race to discover the secret to breeding the octopus in captivity has been going on for decades. It's difficult - the larvae only eat live food and need a carefully controlled environment.

The Spanish multinational, Nueva Pescanova (NP) appears to have beaten companies in Mexico, Japan and Australia, to win the race. It has announced that it will start marketing farmed octopus next summer, to sell it in 2023.

The company built on research done by the Spanish Oceanographic Institute (Instituto Español de Oceanografía), looking at the breeding habits of the Common Octopus - Octopus vulgaris. NP's commercial farm will be based inland, close to the port of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands according to PortSEurope.

It's reported the farm will produce 3,000 tonnes of octopus per year. The company has been quoted as saying it will help to stop so many octopus being taken from the wild.

Octopuses drying on a line

Nueva Pescanova has refused to reveal any details of what conditions the octopuses will be kept in, despite numerous approaches by the BBC. The size of the tanks, the food they will eat and how they will be killed are all secret.

The plans have been denounced by an international group of researchers as "ethically and ecologically unjustified". The campaign group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) has written to the governments of several countries - including Spain - urging them to ban it.

Dr Elena Lara, CIWF's research manager, is angry. "These animals are amazing animals. They are solitary, and very smart. So to put them in barren tanks with no cognitive stimulation, it's wrong for them."

She says anyone who has watched the 2021 Oscar-winning documentary - My Octopus Teacher - will appreciate that.

An octopus hiding in a shell

Octopuses have large, complex brains. Their intelligence has been proven in numerous scientific experiments. They've been observed using coconut and sea shells to hide and defend themselves and have shown they can learn set tasks quickly. They've also managed to escape from aquariums and steal from traps set by people fishing.

What's more, they have no skeletons to protect them and are highly territorial. So they could be easily damaged in captivity and - if there was more than one octopus in a tank - experts say they could start to eat each other.

If the octopus farm does open in Spain, it seems the creatures bred there would receive little protection under European law. Octopuses - and other invertebrate cephalopods - are considered as sentient beings, but EU law covering farm animal welfare is only applied to vertebrates - creatures that have backbones. Also, according to CIWF, there is currently no scientifically validated method for their humane slaughter.

Farming in the sea

Aquaculture is the term given to the rearing of aquatic animals for food

It is the fastest-growing food-producing sector in the world

The global aquaculture market is growing at around 5% a year and is projected to be worth almost $245bn (£184bn) by 2027

Some 580 aquatic species are farmed around the world

As the human population grows, global aquaculture could provide a vital source of food

Fish kept in captivity tend to be more aggressive and contract more diseases

The EU recently published guidelines acknowledging the "lack of good husbandry practises" and "research gaps" in aquaculture's impact on animal and public health

Humans and octopuses had a common ancestor 560 million years ago, and evolutionary biologist Dr Jakob Vinther, from the University of Bristol, also has concerns.

"We have an example of an organism that has evolved to have an intelligence that is extremely comparable to ours." Their problem-solving abilities, playfulness and curiosity are very similar to those of humans, says Dr Vinther - and yet they're otherworldly.

"This is potentially how it would look if we were ever going to meet an intelligent alien from a different planet."

Nueva Pescanova says on its website that it is "firmly committed to aquaculture [farming seafood] as a method to reduce pressure on fishing grounds and ensure sustainable, safe, healthy, and controlled resources, complementing fishing".

But CIWF's Dr Lara argues that NP's actions are purely commercial and the company's environmental argument is illogical. "It doesn't mean that fishermen will stop fishing [octopuses]."

She argues that farming octopuses could add to the growing pressure on wild fish stocks. Octopuses are carnivores and need to eat two-to-three times their own weight in food to live. Currently around one-third of the fish caught around the planet is turned into feed for other animals - and roughly half of that amount goes into aquaculture. So farmed octopus could be fed on fish products from stocks already overfished.

Dr Lara is concerned consumers who want to do the right thing may think eating farmed octopus is better than octopus caught in the wild. "It's not more ethical at all - the animal is going to be suffering its entire life," she says. And a 2019 report - led by associate professor of environmental studies at NYU, Jennifer Jacquet - argues that banning octopus farming wouldn't leave humans without enough to eat. It will mean "only that affluent consumers will pay more for increasingly scarce, wild octopus," it states.

Pulpo a la Gallega is a common Spanish dish

The whole debate is fraught with cultural complexities.

Factory farming on land has evolved differently around the world. Pigs, for example, have been shown to be intelligent - so what's the difference between a factory-farmed pig producing a bacon sandwich, and a factory-farmed octopus being put in the common Spanish dish Pulpo a la Gallega?

The conservationists argue the sentience of many farmed animals wasn't known when the intensive systems were set up, and the mistakes of the past shouldn't be repeated.

Because pigs have been domesticated for many years, we have enough knowledge about their needs and know how to improve their lives, says Dr Lara. "The problem with octopus is that they are completely wild, so we don't know exactly what they need, or how we can provide a better life for them."

Given all we know about the intelligence of octopuses, and the fact they are not essential for food security, should an intelligent, complex creature start to be mass-produced for food?

"They are extremely complex beings," says Dr Vinther. "I think as humans we need to respect that if we want to farm them or eat them."

Follow Claire on Twitter @BBCMarshall

 

New insights into the genetics of the common octopus: Genome at the chromosome level decoded

by University of Vienna

Octopus vulgaris. Credit: Antonio, Valerio Cirillo (BEOM SZN), 2023

Octopuses are fascinating animals—and serve as important model organisms in neuroscience, cognition research and developmental biology.

To gain a deeper understanding of their biology and evolutionary history, validated data on the composition of their genome is needed, which has been lacking until now. Scientists from the University of Vienna together with an international research team have now been able to close this gap and, in a study, determined impressive figures: 2.8 billion base pairs—organized in 30 chromosomes.

What sounds so simple is the result of complex, computer-assisted genome analyses and comparisons with the genomes of other cephalopod species. The research has just been published in G3: Genes / Genomes / Genetics.

Octopuses, together with squid and cuttlefish, belong to a group of coleoid cephalopods consisting of several hundreds of species that are characterized by highly diversified lifestyles, body structure and adaptations to their environment. The study of these animals looks back on a long tradition, especially since the neuronal plasticity of the octopus brain—meaning the brain's ability to change and adapt as you learn and experience new things—provides evidence for the existence of functionally analogous structures to the brains of mammals.

This is making them a comparative model group for neurophysiological studies. Also, their ability to regenerate parts of their bodies as well as the rapid changes of their body patterns, which are important for camouflage and communication, make octopuses a popular research subject for studying how these innovative traits arose—and how they have changed—during evolution.

Closing a gap

In the research community there has been a rising need for detailed knowledge on cephalopod genomes to understand the evolution of their unique traits and their biology. An important contribution to this aim is encoding the common octopus' genome at chromosome level—an information that has not been available until now.

This has now been remedied by a research team from the University of Vienna, which—together with colleagues from the KU Leuven (Belgium), the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG; Spain) and the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn (Italy)—"supplied" the missing data and carried out extensive, molecular biological and computer-assisted studies of the octopus genome.

"With our current technologies used in genomics research, we were able to create a kind of 'genome map' for the octopus, showing how genetic information is arranged at the chromosome level," explains study first author Dalila Destanović, a scientist at the Simakov Laboratory in the Department of Neuroscience and Developmental Biology at the University of Vienna.

This reference genome, which is highly resolved at the chromosome level, will allow the scientific community to better understand the characteristics and biology of these fascinating animals on the one hand, and also to trace the evolutionary history of Octopus vulgaris on the other. Research teams can now further investigate or understand the evolutionary trajectory of coleiid cephalopods and more distantly related mollusks such as clams or snails.

2.8 billion base pairs—30 chromosomes

In fact, the researchers were able to identify 30 chromosomes in the Octopus vulgaris genome, in which 99.34% of 2.8 billion base pairs are arranged. This means that scientists now have a high-quality reference sequence that will serve as a basis for further studies on the function of genes and thus for a better understanding of biological properties of the common octopus.

The chromosomal structure of the Octopus vulgaris genome will also provide insight into the dynamic evolutionary history of these organisms by estimating chromosome rearrangement rates. Already, by comparing the Octopus vulgaris genome with the genomes of four other octopus species, the researchers have been able to show that all chromosomes exhibit numerous structural changes that have occurred during evolution by breaking off pieces of chromosomes, rearranging them and reconnecting them at the same chromosome.

"Even among closely related species, we observed numerous structural changes of the chromosomes. This finding poses questions on genome dynamics throughout their evolutionary history and opens the door to investigate how this relates to their unique traits", explains Dalila Destanović.

The dynamic evolutionary history of the octopus genome spans a period of 44 million years—and many exciting research questions are still open. The results of the current study will amount to answering some of these questions by bridging traditional Octopus vulgaris research in neurobiology, behavior and development to molecular genetic insights in these areas.

More information: Darrin Schultz, A chromosome-level reference genome for the common octopus, Octopus vulgaris (Cuvier, 1797), G3: Genes / Genomes / Genetics (2023). DOI: 10.1093/g3journal/jkad220

Journal information: G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics 

Provided by University of Vienna Octopus brain and human brain share the same 'jumping genes'

 

Scientists Succeed in Culturing the Pygmy Zebra Octopus – The Size of a Grain of Rice When They Hatch

By EMILY GREENHALGH, MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY DECEMBER 24, 2021

A pygmy zebra octopus hatchling in the Cephalopod Mariculture Lab at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. These octopuses are about the size of a grain of rice when they hatch. They reach full size (about the size of a table grape) within six months. Credit: Tim Briggs

For generations, scientists have relied on a handful of organisms to study the fundamentals of biology. The usual suspects—fruit flies, zebrafish, and mice, among others—all have short lifespans, small body size, can be bred through multiple generations in the laboratory, and have been developed for genetic investigations. These research organisms leave out a whole swath of biological diversity and scientists have lacked access to a cultured octopus laboratory organism—until now. Introducing the pygmy zebra octopus (O. chierchiae).

In a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, researchers from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) introduce scientists to successful culturing methods for O. chierchiae that were developed at the MBL.

“The pygmy zebra octopus has certain biological features that make them attractive and more appropriate for laboratory research, compared to other octopuses,” says Bret Grasse, MBL’s manager of Cephalopod Operations and co-author on the paper.

Adult pygmy zebra octopus (Octopus chierchiae). Credit: Tim Briggs

Also known as the “lesser Pacific striped octopus,” the pygmy zebra octopus shares many useful similarities with other research organisms—such as small adult body size—but it also has unique features that distinguish it from other cephalopods (the group of animals that include octopus, squid, and cuttlefish).

O. chierchiae adult in a shell looking at a snail. Credit: Tim Briggs

“The majority of octopuses are ‘live fast, die young.’ They breed once and then immediately start to senesce and age and then die relatively quickly,” says Anik Grearson, former MBL intern and co-lead author on the paper. Unlike other octopus species, a female O. chierchiae lays several clutches of 30-90 eggs over her reproductive period.

Anik Grearson, co-lead author on the paper, leans over a tank in the Cephalopod Mariculture Lab at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. Credit: Marine Biological Laboratory

“We can mate them and know exactly when they’ll lay their eggs. We know exactly how long they’ll incubate and we can raise offspring at a relatively high survivorship rate compared to other octopuses,” says Grasse. Add that to its small size, sexual dimorphism, and predictable breeding schedule and it’s easy to see why O. chierchiae is an ideal candidate for further exploration and research.

Reference: “The Lesser Pacific Striped Octopus, Octopus chierchiae: An Emerging Laboratory Model” by Anik G. Grearson, Alison Dugan, Taylor Sakmar, Dominic M. Sivitilli, David H. Gire, Roy L. Caldwell, Cristopher M. Niell, Gül Dölen, Z. Yan Wang and Bret Grasse, 13 December 2021, Frontiers in Marine Science.
DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2021.753483

CTHULHU STUDIES

Tracking a new path to octopus and squid sensing capabilities

Research reveals that the octopus explores the marine environment with sensing features that are evolutionarily related to human brain receptors

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

 

VIDEO: A CALIFORNIA TWO-SPOT OCTOPUS (OCTOPUS BIMACULOIDES) USES ITS ARM SUCKERS TO SECURE A FIDDLER CRAB. RESEARCH LED BY UC SAN DIEGO (HIBBS LAB) AND HARVARD UNIVERSITY (BELLONO LAB) HAS TRACED THE EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTATIONS OF OCTOPUS AND SQUID SENSING CAPABILITIES. THE STUDIES, FEATURED ON THE COVER OF THE APRIL 13, 2023 ISSUE OF NATURE, REVEAL EVOLUTIONARY LINKS TO HUMAN BRAIN RECEPTORS. view more 

CREDIT: ANIK GREARSON AND PETER KILIAN

Along their eight arms, octopuses have highly sensitive suckers that allow methodical explorations of the seafloor as they search for nourishment in a “taste by touch” approach. Squids, on the other hand, use a much different tactic to find their next meal: patiently hiding until they ambush their prey in swift bursts.

In a unique analysis that provides a glimpse into the origin stories of new animal traits, a pair of research studies led by University of California San Diego and Harvard University scientists has traced the evolutionary adaptations of octopus and squid sensing capabilities. The studies, featured on the cover of the April 13 issue of Nature, reveal evolutionary links to human brain receptors.

Researchers with Ryan Hibbs’ newly established laboratory in the School of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego (formerly based at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center) and Nicholas Bellono’s lab at Harvard analyzed octopuses and squids, animals known as cephalopods, through a comprehensive lens that spanned atomic-level protein structure to the entire functional organism. They focused on sensory receptors as a key site for evolutionary innovation at the crossroads of ecology, neural processing and behavior.

By looking at the way octopuses and squids sense their marine environments, the researchers discovered new sensory receptor families and determined how they drive distinct behaviors in the environment. With cryo-electron microscopy technology, which uses cryogenic temperatures to capture biological processes and structures in unique ways, they showed that adaptations can help propel new behaviors.

“Cephalopods are well known for their intricate sensory organs, elaborate nervous systems and sophisticated behaviors that are comparable to complex vertebrates, but with radically different organization,” said Hibbs, a professor in the Department of Neurobiology. Hibbs brings expertise on the structure of a family of proteins in humans that mediate communication between brain neurons and other areas such as between neurons and muscle cells. “Cephalopods provide striking examples of convergent and divergent evolution that can be leveraged to understand the molecular basis of novelty across levels of biological organization.”

In one Nature study, the research teams described for the first time the structure of an octopus chemotactile (meaning chemical and touch) receptor, which octopus arms use for taste-by-touch exploration. These chemotactile receptors are similar to human brain and muscle neurotransmitter receptors, but are adapted through evolution to help evaluate possible food sources in the marine environment.

“In octopus, we found that these chemotactile receptors physically contact surfaces to determine whether the animal should eat a potential food source or reject it,” said Hibbs. “Through its structure, we found that these receptors are activated by greasy molecules, including steroids similar to cholesterol. With evolutionary, biophysical and behavioral analyses, we showed how strikingly novel structural adaptations facilitate the receptor’s transition from an ancestral role in neurotransmission to a new function in contact-dependent chemosensation of greasy environmental chemicals.”

The second Nature study focused on squid and their wholly different ambush strategy for capturing food. The researchers combined genetics, physiology and behavioral experiments to discover a new class of ancient chemotactile receptors and determined one structure within the class. They also conducted an evolutionary analysis to link adaptations in squid receptors to more elaborate expansions in octopus. They were then able to place chemotactile and ancestral neurotransmitter receptors on an evolutionary timeline and described how evolutionary adaptations drove the development of new behaviors.

“We discovered a new family of cell surface receptors that offer a rare lens into the evolution of sensation because they represent the most recent and only functionally tractable transition from neurotransmitter to environmental receptors across the entire animal kingdom,” said Hibbs. “Our structures of these unique cephalopod receptors lay a foundation for the mechanistic understanding of major functional transitions in deep evolutionary time and the origin of biological novelty.”

Hibbs says the pair of new studies offers an excellent example of how curiosity in interesting creatures can lead to insights important for all of biology, namely how proteins—life’s building blocks—adapt to mediate new functions and behaviors.

“These studies are a great example of what being a scientist is all about—wonder, exploration and understanding how things work,” he said.

Octopus chemotactile receptor (VIDEO)

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

Research led by UC San Diego (Hibbs Lab) and Harvard University (Bellono Lab) has traced the evolutionary adaptations of octopus and squid sensing capabilities. The research teams described for the first time the structure of an octopus chemotactile (meaning chemical and touch) receptor, which octopus arms use for taste-by-touch exploration. These chemotactile receptors are similar to human brain and muscle neurotransmitter receptors, but are adapted and evolved to help evaluate possible food sources in the marine environment.

CREDIT

Guipeun Kang

Research led by UC San Diego and Harvard has traced the evolutionary adaptations of octopus and squid sensing capabilities. The researchers describe for the first time the structure of an octopus chemotactile receptor, which octopus arms use for taste-by-touch exploration of the seafloor.

CREDIT

Anik Grearson and Peter Kilian

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-023-05808-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Sensory specializations drive octopus and squid behaviour

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Apr-2023