Beyond Human Intelligence: What Octopuses Teach Us About Rethinking Animal Cognition

The Alien Intelligence of Octopuses: Reconsidering How We View Animal Minds

When we watch an octopus solve a complex puzzle, unscrew a jar from the inside, or recognize a familiar human face, it's tempting to describe these behaviors as "intelligent" or "clever." But the revolutionary new Prime documentary series "Octopus!" narrated by Phoebe Waller-Bridge suggests we might need to fundamentally rethink how we understand and describe animal cognition altogether.

The series begins by following the seemingly human-like journey of an octopus named Doris through courtship, motherhood, and ultimate sacrifice for her nearly 31,000 offspring. However, the documentary takes an unexpected and thought-provoking turn by questioning whether our tendency to anthropomorphize animals—attributing human characteristics, motivations, and emotions to them—helps or hinders our understanding of these fascinating creatures.

This exploration couldn't be more timely, as octopuses have captured the public imagination through numerous bestselling books and award-winning documentaries in recent years. From Sy Montgomery's moving memoir "The Soul of an Octopus" to the Oscar-winning "My Octopus Teacher" and the popular novel "Remarkably Bright Creatures," these eight-armed invertebrates have established themselves as unlikely stars of the nature world.

The Remarkable Abilities of Octopuses That Challenge Our Definition of Intelligence

What makes octopuses so compelling is their remarkable set of abilities that seem to suggest a form of intelligence that evolved entirely separately from our own. These cephalopods can:

• Navigate complex mazes with surprising efficiency
• Use tools to accomplish specific tasks
• Remember individual humans and react differently to them
• Solve multi-step problems requiring planning
• Escape from seemingly secure enclosures
• Learn by observing other octopuses perform tasks

One particularly striking anecdote highlighted in both the documentary and Montgomery's book involves an octopus that would sneak out of its tank at night, travel across the floor to another tank to feast on fish, and then return to its own habitat—carefully replacing the lid to conceal its nighttime adventures.

These behaviors have led many to conclude that octopuses possess remarkable intelligence. However, as the documentary emphasizes through interviews with experts like Piero Amodio, an animal behavior and cognition researcher from Napoli, our very concept of "intelligence" might be inherently biased by our human perspective.

Evolutionary Divergence: The Alien Nature of Octopus Cognition

The evolutionary lineage of octopuses diverged from our own more than 500 million years ago—making our last common ancestor more than twice as old as the first dinosaurs. This means that whatever form of intelligence or consciousness octopuses possess evolved completely independently from our own.

This separate evolutionary path has produced a fundamentally different neural architecture. While humans have approximately 100 billion neurons concentrated primarily in our brain, octopuses possess about 500 million neurons distributed throughout their entire body. Remarkably, two-thirds of these neurons are located in their eight arms, which can act semi-autonomously and even "taste" the environment around them.

As philosopher and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith wrote in his influential book "Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness," these creatures represent "the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien."

"If we can connect with them as sentient beings," Godfrey-Smith explains, "it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over."

Recent scientific research has further emphasized this fundamental difference. The first observations of octopus brain waves, highlighted in the documentary, revealed patterns entirely unlike those found in mammals, birds, or reptiles—confirming just how alien their neural processes truly are.

The Scientific Debate: Should We Anthropomorphize Animals?

The documentary "Octopus!" doesn't just showcase these fascinating creatures—it places viewers directly into an ongoing scientific debate about anthropomorphism that has divided researchers for decades.

The Case Against Anthropomorphism

For much of modern scientific history, attributing human traits to animals was considered a significant bias that needed to be eliminated. The scientific method that emerged in the 19th century emphasized objective observation and measurement, viewing anthropomorphic interpretations as unscientific projections of human qualities onto other species.

In a 2007 review cited in the documentary, ethologist Clive D. L. Wynne from the University of Florida argued forcefully that "the study of animal cognition will only proceed effectively once it rids itself of pre-scientific notions like anthropomorphism."

This perspective held considerable sway, and for decades, scientists risked professional ridicule for suggesting that dogs might "smile" at their owners or that chimpanzees could "kiss and make up" after conflicts. The concern was that seeing animals through a human lens would prevent us from understanding their true, potentially alien nature.

The Case For Strategic Anthropomorphism

However, as "Octopus!" explores through interviews with researchers and writers, a countermovement has emerged suggesting that some degree of anthropomorphism might actually be beneficial—or even unavoidable—when studying animal behavior.

Behavioral ecologist Mark Bekoff argued in a 2000 paper that "anthropomorphism allows other animals' behavior and emotions to be accessible to us." Rather than abandoning this natural human tendency entirely, Bekoff suggested that "critical anthropomorphism"—a careful, scientifically-informed form of perspective-taking—could serve as a useful starting point for generating testable hypotheses about animal behavior.

This approach has yielded significant scientific insights. The documentary highlights primatologist Frans de Waal's groundbreaking 1979 study on reconciliation behaviors in chimpanzees as a prime example. After observing what appeared to be "kissing" behavior between chimps who had previously fought, de Waal designed experiments to test what was occurring during these interactions.

His research confirmed that chimps who had recently been in conflict would indeed come together afterward for specific reconciliatory behaviors—touching mouths, extending hands, or making other physical contact. These behaviors reduced stress indicators like elevated heart rates and decreased the likelihood of future conflicts between the same individuals.

De Waal later described his career as largely dedicated to "unwinding human exceptionalism"—the view that we are fundamentally different from other animals. "I've brought apes a little closer to humans," he explained, "but I've also brought humans down a bit."

Conservation Implications: How Our Perspective Affects Animal Protection

The documentary "Octopus!" also explores the practical implications of how we perceive and relate to other species, particularly regarding conservation efforts.

Research has consistently shown that empathizing with animals significantly influences human behavior and can motivate people to take action to protect threatened species. This aligns with evolutionary psychology—various species have developed protective mechanisms toward their own kind to enhance survival, and humans may extend this protective instinct to other species we relate to.

Conservation strategies often capitalize on this tendency by focusing on "flagship species" like giant pandas, polar bears, or bald eagles that evoke strong emotional responses in humans. While this approach doesn't guarantee success—nearly half of the world's animal species continue to decline—it has contributed to notable conservation victories for specific species like the giant panda and bald eagle, which have begun to recover from the brink of extinction.

However, the documentary raises an important question: What about species that don't easily evoke human empathy? Invertebrates like octopuses have historically received far less conservation attention than mammals with expressive faces and seemingly familiar social behaviors.

Finding Middle Ground: A New Approach to Understanding Animal Cognition

"Octopus!" ultimately presents viewers with contrasting perspectives from experts like Amodio, who cautions against anthropomorphism, and Sabrina Imbler, a writer who specializes in narrative storytelling from the viewpoint of animals. Rather than definitively resolving this tension, the documentary invites viewers to form their own conclusions about how we should approach our understanding of other species.

This approach aligns with a broader trend in nature documentaries, where filmmakers increasingly acknowledge the influence of the human perspective while attempting to present animals on their own terms. The series shows Waller-Bridge appearing almost disappointed when she discovers that Doris the octopus isn't living the human-like narrative arc constructed for her, but is instead following her own unique octopus journey.

The documentary suggests embracing a balanced approach that acknowledges our natural tendency to anthropomorphize while remaining open to the possibility that other species may possess forms of cognition, intelligence, and experience that differ fundamentally from our own.

Reimagining Intelligence Beyond Human Parameters

Perhaps the most profound insight from "Octopus!" is the suggestion that we need to expand our very definition of intelligence beyond human parameters. If intelligence evolved independently in octopuses—creatures with whom we share an ancestor more ancient than dinosaurs—then our current understanding of cognition may be far too limited.

Instead of asking whether animals like octopuses are "intelligent" by human standards, we might instead consider how different evolutionary pressures have shaped unique cognitive adaptations suited to their specific ecological niches. The distributed neural network of an octopus—with independent processing occurring simultaneously in its eight arms—represents a fundamentally different solution to environmental challenges than our centralized brain structure.

This perspective invites us to appreciate octopuses not for how closely they approximate human abilities, but for the remarkable alien intelligence they represent—a second experiment in cognitive evolution on our own planet.

Conclusion: Embracing the Alien and the Familiar

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection demonstrated that all species share common ancestry, suggesting we likely share some traits and behaviors with even distant relatives like octopuses. Yet as "Octopus!" powerfully illustrates, evolutionary divergence has also created profound differences that deserve appreciation on their own terms.

The documentary challenges viewers to find a thoughtful middle ground—acknowledging both the shared characteristics that connect us to other species and the unique, sometimes alien qualities that make each species distinct. Perhaps moving forward, as the narrator suggests, we can learn to admire octopuses and other animals both for what makes them similar to us and for what makes them fundamentally different.

In doing so, we might develop a more nuanced understanding not just of octopuses, but of the diverse forms of cognition that have evolved across the animal kingdom—and possibly even gain new insights into the nature of our own consciousness along the way.

This more expansive view of animal cognition could transform how we relate to other species, how we design scientific studies to understand them, and ultimately how we work to protect the remarkable diversity of minds with whom we share our planet.

Open Your Mind!!!

Source: Salon