Why the octopus is the most intelligent marine species

Thanks to this extraordinary intelligence, the octopus can navigate even the darkest labyrinth. It can use its memory, like humans. It is curious, friendly, and has a sense of humor. Due to their intelligence, which is completely different from that of humans, octopuses are considered the closest thing to an intelligent alien species we can encounter on Earth. Its body, a mass of soft tissue, boneless and without a fixed shape, has three hearts and an extraordinary and rapid ability to change its skin color: 177 times an hour.

The octopus can camouflage itself anywhere, becoming invisible even from a few meters away. It feeds by capturing prey with one arm and carrying it to its mouth, along a waving carpet of suckers. At the end of the arms is the head, which contains the brain and two large eyes with horizontal pupils, like a cat's eyes but turned ninety degrees.

How big can an octopus be? From a six-meter arm span (especially Pacific octopuses) to two-centimeter spans weighing less than a gram. In any case, and returning to its intelligence, the octopus has half a billion neurons (about the same as a dog) and a high brain-to-body mass ratio. And this too is an unmistakable sign of its intelligence.

Finally, octopuses train their intelligence. Although they start out well in terms of intelligence, they manage to develop it. Scientists have found evidence of this in some of the octopuses' behaviors, which have been extensively studied in the laboratory and at sea. They can unscrew the lids of cansThey can open jars with child-safe closures. They can open the cap of any bottle by themselves. And thanks to their curiosity, octopuses never stop exploring the boundaries of intelligence, thanks to their mimicry (they can take the form of over fifteen animals). The only flaw with so much science is that octopuses have a short lifespan: from one to a maximum of four years. What a shame.