撬锁逃跑的章鱼

二零一六年，新西兰一家小型水族馆遇到了一个难题。他们养的一只章鱼，名叫因基，从鱼缸里消失了。玻璃没有破损，警报也没有响起。工作人员早上到达时，因基已经不见了。

In 2016, a small aquarium in New Zealand had a problem. One of their octopuses, called Inky, had disappeared from his tank. There was no broken glass. No alarms had gone off. The staff arrived in the morning, and Inky was simply gone.

大家在房间里四处查看后，终于找到了答案。因基在夜里推开了鱼缸的顶盖，然后拖着身体爬过地面，来到一根通向大海的小排水管旁。它挤进管子，滑过八英尺长的金属管道，最后游进了大海。到了早晨，它已经自由了。

After looking around the room, they finally found the answer. Inky had pushed open the top of his tank during the night. He had then dragged his body across the floor to a small drain pipe that led out to the ocean. He squeezed inside the pipe, slid through eight feet of metal, and came out in the sea. By morning, he was free.

令人惊讶的不只是因基做了什么，还有这件事背后的意义。章鱼是地球上最聪明的动物之一。它们大约有五亿个神经元，和狗的大脑相似。这些神经元大多不在头部，而是分布在它的触手里。每条触手几乎都能独立思考。

What is incredible is not just what Inky did, but what it means. Octopuses are some of the smartest animals on Earth. They have about 500 million neurons, similar to the brain of a dog. Most of those neurons are not in the head but spread through their arms. Each arm can almost think for itself.

在世界各地的实验室里，章鱼学会了转动瓶盖来打开罐子。它们能解开谜题，从箱子里取出一块螃蟹肉。有些章鱼还记住了特定研究人员的脸，并朝它们不喜欢的人喷水。

In labs around the world, octopuses have learned to open jars by turning the lid. They can solve puzzles to reach a piece of crab inside a box. Some have remembered the faces of specific researchers and squirted water at the ones they did not like.

科学家至今仍未完全理解章鱼智力的运作方式。这种智力是独立演化出来的，早在五亿多年前就已出现。从某种意义上说，这是我们在地球上所能遇到的最接近外星智慧的东西。

Scientists still do not fully understand how octopus intelligence works. It evolved separately from ours, more than 500 million years ago. It is, in a way, the closest thing we have to meeting an alien mind on this planet.

因基再也没有出现过。水族馆后来换了一只新章鱼，但这一次，他们把鱼缸改造得更难逃脱。

Inky was never seen again. The aquarium replaced him, but they made the new tank much harder to escape from.