This kind of animal does not even have the heavenly lid, but it is so smart that people are scared.

Author:Beijing Science Center Time:2022.08.10

Review expert: Li Weiyang

Well -known science writer

When it comes to octopus, what features do you think about it? In the eyes of everyone, octopus is like this: moving in the opposite direction by hydropower jet to avoid danger; it is like a black smoke bomb when it encounters danger ...

Octopus spray ink

Source | See watermark

But this feature to be introduced today may be a bit unexpected -octopus is the highest intelligence among all vertebrates! Why is the IQ so high?

Octopus's brain structure

First of all, let's take a look at the octopus's brain structure. General creatures are a brain, but octopus is different. It has nine brains! There are two types of octopus brain: central brain and distributed brain. There are 500 million neurons in the octopus, 40 % of which are distributed in the central brain, and the remaining 60 % are in the distributed brain. Can you guess what is the distributed brain of octopus? It's its tentacles! The eight tentacles are 8 brains, including about 300 million neurons.

Octopus structure

Source | sciencehuman.com

In addition, the role of the nine brains of octopus is also different. The main brain mainly plays the role of thinking and memory, and the auxiliary brain that grows on the tentacles is only responsible for the memory function. Therefore, the octopus has two sets of memory systems, and it is naturally very smart. At the same time, each brain of octopus corresponds to a tentacle activity to enhance the flexibility of these eight tentacles. The main brain gives an order to the auxiliary brain, and the auxiliary brain immediately controls its tentacles to achieve cooperation, so that eight angles can complete a series of cooperation and operations similar to twisting bottle caps.

According to this characteristic, scientists have found that the wisdom of octopus is very high. Between these troublesome and complicated cooperation and operation, scientists believe that the wisdom of octopus can even be compared with humans.

So what are the aspects of their wisdom?

Genius camouflage master

The octopus can also change its own color and structure like a color -changing dragon; at the same time, the octopus is also climbing masters and camouflage masters. It can use flexible wrists and feet to crawl on various complex sea floor. Sometimes you dress yourself into anemone swaying with the seawater.

So how does octopus achieve the purpose of camouflage? Octopus's skin is like our storage bag. There are various "pigments" (that is, pigmented cells), and each "pigment" is wrapped in a circular muscle that can shrink and expand. When the "pigment" is pushed to the top, the skin will show the corresponding color. In other words, octopus can control the effect of "pigment" through the contraction and relaxation of muscle.

For example: If the octopus wants to show gray, it only needs to control the muscles and let the gray "pigment" be pushed to the top. With this ability, octopus can accurately control the muscles, so as to achieve the purpose of disguise, so that it is perfectly integrated into various environments. Does it sound very cool?

Source | Pixabay

At the same time, it can also be transformed into different creatures based on the surrounding environment. For example, when predating, it can be disguised as a seemingly non -lethal shell, waiting for the prey to slowly hook it; when encountering a powerful opponent, it can also disguise it as a natural enemy to scare the opponent. The name of this camouflage master is really deserved.

What do you want to become?

Source | Elias Levy CC by 2.0

With thinking ability and skilled in use tools

A zoologist named Fito did an experiment. He put the small shrimp he liked to eat in a bottle and tightened the lid. As a result, octopus easily opened the bottle cap with his own tentacles, and then ate the small shrimp in the bottle.

At the same time, octopus also has its own method for eating shells. They first secrete a chemical substance that allows the shell to open their shell. Then in order to prevent the shell from closed again, it will use a tentacle to push a small piece of stone to get stuck the shell, and finally eat the meat in the shell slowly.

Source | Pixabay

In April 2016, an interesting thing happened in the New Zealand National Aquarium. An octopus named "Inky" successfully achieved victory. The aquarium where INKY was at that time was semi -open at night, so it used this omissions to climb out of the aquarium, climbing through the room and drilled into a drainage. Essence This successful octopus is really a little "old -fashioned".

After reading this, do you admire the wisdom of Mr. Octopus very much? In the vast nature, there are still many magical creatures waiting for us to discover.

- END -

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