It seems the canny cephalopods are brighter than you think

Slate Magazine has a fascinating article summarizing research on the brain power of the octopus (“How Smart Is the Octopus?”). Why, I’m not sure, but it makes for more fun reading than all the articles at the moment prophesying doom and collapse for the economies fo the Western world. Besides, on this showing, an octopus seems smarter than a good many people I’ve met.

Not only can octopuses learn, they can process complex information in their heads, and behave in equally complex ways. On available evidence, a good many people seem incapable of learning quite simple things, like not taking on debt they can never pay off or investing their life savings in some get-rich-quick scheme pushed by a slick salesperson. If you look at the media, it’s quite evident that they assume their mass audiences aren’t able to absorb or process complex information of any kind, and are willing to exist on an endless diet of simple lies and titillating trivia. As for complex behavior, the banks — who claim to employ the best and brightest — seem to have learned their business strategies from watching sheep and lemmings.

As long ago as the 1950s, a researcher showed octopuses could learn how and what to learn to get a reward. Impressive stuff, especially compared with the US automobile industry that stayed frozen into the production of gas-guzzling SUVs as oil prices soared; and, even now, seems bemused by what it should do to get out of the mess, while other companies are bringing out a mass of hybrids and electric cars.

Octopuses have proved to have an excellent memory. They are clever and unpredictable . . . need I go on? Business leaders and government regulators forget the lessons of each boom-and-bust cycle the minute it’s over, sleep-walking into the next one with total predictability. One researcher even claims octopuses can combine their perceptions with their memories to have a coherent feel for what’s happening to them at any moment. Now that ability would transform industry, if only it weren’t so rare.

Here’s the clincher:

Octopuses escape from predators not just by hiding quickly but by deceit. One of the most impressive examples of this deception is what marine biologist Roger Hanlon calls the moving-rock trick. An octopus morphs into the shape of a rock and then inches across an open space. Even though it’s in plain view, predators don’t attack it. They can’t detect its motion because the octopus matches its speed to the motion of the light in the surrounding water.

On second thoughts, maybe people have learned that trick. I’ve met come across executives, politicians and who scarcely seem to move at all. Perhaps they’re playing the moving-rock trick as well . . . or not?

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