The Body That Thinks

On the third morning, Chiara set up a new experiment. She placed a small acrylic maze on the floor of the tank. There was a piece of crab meat at the centre. The walls were clear, but the route was complex: two right turns, a left, and a small gate that opened from one side only.

Pasta watched from her corner. Chiara stepped back.

What Polly saw next was something she had never seen before.

Pasta sent two arms toward the maze before her body left the corner. The two arms moved independently. One went over the top. The other slid along the floor, into the maze. The arms did not coordinate. They moved as if they were separate creatures.

This was not a metaphor. An octopus has about five hundred million neurons. Two thirds of them are not in the central brain. They are in the arms. Each arm has its own nervous system. Each arm can solve simple problems on its own.

The first arm threaded the corridor. It hit the first turn, paused, felt, and turned. The second arm found the small gate and tested its edges. The first arm reached the gate from inside. The second arm pushed from outside. The gate opened.

The arm took the crab meat.

Pasta had not moved her body from her corner.

Chiara, watching the video, exhaled slowly. "The arms got the food. Did the octopus solve the maze, or did the two arms solve it together? We do not know."

Polly looked at Pasta. The octopus stretched slowly, gathered her arms together, and pulled the crab meat to her beak.

There is a phrase scientists use when they cannot fit a creature into the categories they had before they met it. Alien intelligence. Polly had thought it was poetic. Today she revised that. It might be literal.