Genius Octopus Can Open Jars | Octopus In My House | BBC Earth
39 Video Views·Feb 19, 2025
A professor develops an extraordinary relationship with an octopus when he invites it to live in his home. The octopus, called Heidi, unravels puzzles, recognises individual humans and even watches , The episode also shows remarkable behaviour from around the world - from the day octopus, which can change colour and texture in a split second, to the coconut octopus, which carries around its own coconut shell to hide in. But most fascinating of all is seeing how Professor David Scheel and his daughter Laurel bond with an animal that has nine brains, three hearts and blue blood running through its veins.
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And the unique evolutionary journey of the octopus
Come on Heidi
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.
Heidi and I are playing around,
recreating an early one of these experiments into octopus cognition.
In 1959, a Harvard scientist asked a simple question.
Can an octopus learn to pull and release a lever to get a reward?
That experiment was successful.
And so I thought, wouldn't it be fun to play with whether Heidi would be interested
in manipulating something outside of her tank?
And so this is sort of a way to see if she can learn that when she gets the light to turn on,
she can bring us into the room.
It's kind of an interesting thing to play around with.
When you pull on the string, the light goes on.
Oh, and the buzzer.
We chase the ball.
Come on up here.
Come on.
The concept, which didn't get fully explored, was
all the way.
Can she learn that by doing something in the tank,
she can affect my behavior when I'm not actually in view?
That's it.
Come on.
There you go.
That a girl.
Oh, oh, you got it.
Oh, you vicious predator.
So I was curious about, does the octopus retain enough of a concept of the person?
Not present in her view, but present in her mind.
You're going to get it, Heidi?
It's on.
Well, hi.
You did it.
Well done.
It didn't take her any time at all to learn that there was a cue over here.
You want some shrimp?
But the rest of it, you know, that was challenging.
This idea was more fun in the concept than at any point in the execution.
Yeah.
Heidi got fairly insistent, and I decided to take this all apart.