Underestimate octopuses at your peril. In 1875, staff at the Brighton Aquarium were mystified by the disappearance of lump fish over several consecutive nights. Gradually, it dawned on them that under cover of darkness, an octopus had been climbing in and helping himself to a midnight feast before returning to his own neighbouring tank in the morning.
Nowadays when Professor Peter Tse enters his laboratory at Dartmouth College, he often finds his octopuses “linking arms” over the tops of their partitioned tanks. As a professor of cognitive neuroscience, he explains that octopuses offer invaluable insights into how intelligent life emerged.
