Octopuses are incredible, almost otherworldly creatures. 

They can change their color, shape and texture in less than a tenth of a second—making them masters of camouflage.

With no bones, they can squeeze their entire bodies through tiny openings—making them great escape artists.

They’re highly intelligent and demonstrate short- and long-term memory. They learn to recognize people and have even been trained to operate a camera to take their picture.

They play, use tools and solve problems. They can learn how to open containers and do puzzles. They’ve even been seen stealing aboard fishing boats to eat crabs from a trap.

But this intelligence doesn’t work anything like ours—perhaps because they diverged from us evolutionarily more than 750 million years ago.

They have about the same number of neurons as a dog, but they’re distributed. A third are in a central donut-shaped brain that encircles their esophagus. The other two-thirds are in ganglia in each of their arms. This allows their arms to “think” their moves independently.

And all those neurons are processing a huge amount of sensory data from their environment.

Each of their hundreds of suckers can have more taste buds than a human tongue. Their skin has special proteins that allow it to sense the color of the surfaces it touches.

Imagine tasting with your fingers, seeing with your skin, and changing your shape and color to anything you want, and you can begin to appreciate the amazing octopus.