This Octopus Escaped His Aquarium… And Was Never Seen Again

One night in New Zealand, an octopus called Inky slipped out of his tank, crossed the floor and vanished down a drain barely wider than a grapefruit. He was never seen again. How does an animal with no bones find its way out of a building it has never left? The answer is one of the strangest minds on Earth. Chapters 0:00 The octopus that vanished 0:51 The Great Escape 2:33 The Troublemakers 3:48 A Brain in Every Arm 5:51 Masters of Disguise 8:25 An Alien Mind 10:40 Do Octopuses Dream? 11:54 Going Home In this video: Inky and the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier, Otto the octopus at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg (2008), three hearts and blue blood, a brain spread through eight arms, the coconut-carrying veined octopus (2009), the deep-sea mother that guarded her eggs for 53 months, and the 2023 discovery that octopuses have two stages of sleep. Sources - AP / KTVU, "So long, suckers: Inky the octopus makes an amazing escape" (2016) - NPR and The Boston Globe on Inky's escape (April 2016) - van Giesen et al., Cell (2020) – taste receptors in octopus suckers (Harvard) - Finn, Tregenza & Norman, Current Biology (2009) – coconut-shell tool use - Robison, Seibel & Drazen, PLOS ONE (2014) – 53-month egg brooding (MBARI) - Pophale et al., Nature (2023) – two-stage sleep in octopuses (OIST) #octopus #animals #science