The Intelligent Octopus

Scientists have found that octopus has 10,000 more genes than humans and they are extremely intelligent when compared to other creatures.

16:05 13 August 2015

Scientists have decoded the genome of the octopus and have discovered how different it is to other intelligent creatures both on land and sea.

 

Clifton Ragsdale of the University of Chicago, one of the leaders of the international genome-sequencing project, said: “The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving capabilities.”

 

“The last British zoologist Martin Wells [grandson of H.G. Wells and renown cephalopod expert] said the octopus is an alien. In this sense, then, our study describes the first sequenced genome from an alien.”

 

He added: “We've found hundreds of novel genes that don't have counterparts in other animals and may be involved in this unique camouflage process.”

 

Meanwhile, the founding president of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Japan, said: “They were the first intelligent beings on the planet. The reason for looking broadly at several different types of cephalopods is to see what is conserved among them. What is similar among all cephalopods is probably important to being a cephalopod.”