A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

A Spanish seafood company says its octopus farm would benefit animals in the wild, citing growing demand for octopus meat. Here, an octopus is seen at the Get Fish market in Sydney, Australia, last December. (Jenny Evans/Getty Images)

Octopuses are capable of sophisticated tasks, from solving puzzles to decorating their dens to remembering people's faces. So when a company in Spain announced that it wanted to commercially farm octopuses to harvest them for seafood, the plan sparked an uproar.

"I was appalled," Sy Montgomery, author of the bestselling book The Soul of an Octopus, told NPR.