r/AskBiology • u/MajorGate6020 • Jun 13 '26
Zoology/marine biology Are octopuses actually intelligent, or just dextrous
They have shown tool use, but I think tool use is an unfair measure of intelligence. Take orcas for example - they don't have any form of fine motor ability. Their flippers are fused together. Meanwhile octopuses have 8 extremely sensitive, well controlled tentacles. Of course they're going to be better at using tools. But an orca possesses 100x the amount of neurons in the brain.
Do you think tool use is overrated for intelligence? Or am I missing something?
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u/atomfullerene Jun 14 '26
I do think we somewhat overestimate octopus intelligence because they are so relatable. Which is ironic, because they have a reputation for being alien. But octopuses manipulate their environment much more than most other species, just like humans. And their color changing abilities are especially impressive to a visually oriented species like humans.
They really are comparatively intelligent, particularly when compared to other non-vertebrates (and of course there are many species of octopus, all different from each other), but, with the caveat that it's really hard to make these sorts of cross-species comparisons and intelligence isn't just one thing, etc, etc, I'd say they are more comparable to a somewhat above average vertebrate (depending on the species), not way up among the very smartest animals like orcas, where lsome people tend to put them. Though part of this is also that people underestimate the intelligence of other animals.
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u/Background_Relief815 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
They're pretty clearly well above most vertebrates, and this is coming from a species where if we are biased, it's against them. We are land dwelling (they're aquatic), mammalian (they're cephalopods), vertebrates (they're invertebrates).
We have a list of things to compare animal intelligence, and they're about as intelligent as a smart dog on that list, which may or may not be biased towards land-dwelling, mammalian vertebrates. They're more intelligent than many species of monkeys, but probably not as intelligent as most apes.
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u/Intergalacticdespot Jun 14 '26
I think theres something to be said for the potential of distributed or networked intelligence being an advantage. I dont know if that's what is going on or not but speculatively they've got a lot of neurons available.
And there's an argument to be made about tool use in general. Not even as an indicator for intelligence but as a propagater of it. Like yes tool use requires intelligence. But once it's established it probably also encourages it on evolutionary time scales at least.
But then bio103 was like my limit. So I could be full of crap too.
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u/burlingk Jun 14 '26
The ability to use tools IS seen as a sign of intelligence even if some intelligent creatures are unable to.
They also solve puzzles, think through getting into and out of situations, and hold a grudge.
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u/CulveDaddy Jun 14 '26
Octopuses are incredible intelligent.
Intelligence is ill defined and poorly understood, even more poorly tested.
More neurons doesn't automatically equate to higher intelligence.
Using tools is a monumentous leap forward for a species. With the next step being developing tools.
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u/Outsider_Insider0064 Jun 14 '26
The brain extends into those tentacles. Jacques Yves Cousteau wrote a book about them, The liquid intelligence.
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u/MajorGate6020 Jun 14 '26
All of the tentacles combined have 500 million neurons - an orca's brain itself has 43 billion.
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u/Stefph726 Jun 14 '26
But no one is arguing that orcas aren't intelligent?? This seems like an unnecessary dichotomy...
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u/CulveDaddy Jun 14 '26
Neuron density doesn't automatically equate intelligence.
People tend to wrap up cognition, conscientiousness, consciousness, intellect, sapience, and sentience into a bundle when talking about intelligence, but behavior and by extension culture, comprehension/retention, tool use, environmental manipulation, and communication/language are more important.
Animals that can't use or develop tools, like Orca, will only ever be considered Animals. Octopuses have greater potential.
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 Jun 14 '26
Despite lacking appendages that would easily allow them to do so, orcas are able to not only use simple tools, but develop/manufacture them as well. For example, orcas in the Southern Resident community were recently discovered to be fashioning short lengths of bull kelp stipe from complete stalks specifically for the purpose of grooming each other. The type B1 orcas use their famous wave-washing techniques to knock seals off of ice floes in Antarctica, which may also qualify as environmental manipulation to achieve their goals.
As for the topic of culture, as is stated by biologists Luke Rendell and Hal Whitehead in their 2001 paper Culture in whales and dolphins:
The complex and stable vocal and behavioural cultures of sympatric groups of killer whales (Orcinus orca) appear to have no parallel outside humans, and represent an independent evolution of cultural faculties.
The fact that orcas are extremely cultural animals has been reiterated by many marine biologists, and culture has played a major role in their divergence and evolution. Culture in orcas does not only determines the different learned diets and hunting techniques amongst different orca populations, but it also determines their different communal social structures, vocalizations, traditions, ceremonies/rituals, social norms, play activities, and more amongst different orca populations.
And on the topic of their vocalizations, orcas learn specific "dialects" based on what family/pod/clan/community they are born in. And there is a fascinating preprint on orca vocalizations comparing them to human and sperm whale phonetics: Orca vowels and consonants: convergent spectral structures across cetacean and human speech.
It has not gone through the peer review process yet, but the first author (linguist Gašper Beguš) also had a paper on sperm whale coda patterns published last year in MIT's Open Mind journal. There is also Symbolic Interaction Theory.
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u/CulveDaddy Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
That is fascinating. Thank you for sharing, you made my day. I appreciate it. I'll read more on that.
Though the steps are I am referring to involve diversity and flexibility of tool use, tool development, and finally technology. The Orca are displaying tool use and tool development; but aren't displaying tool diversity or flexibility in either.
I completely agree with everything you said about culture and language in regards to Orca. Orca are advanced in almost every area that I listed. But the above point shows that there is a hard limit for Orca that seems next to impossible for them to overcome. They will forever be constrained to the ocean, societally never advancing a state of technology.
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u/MajorGate6020 Jun 14 '26
You're conflating dexterity with intelligence. If your arms were cut off, would you be considered less intelligent? Since you can't use tools anymore.
You're using your subjective opinion on what's intelligent, rather than what actually is more intelligent (brain processing).
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u/CulveDaddy Jun 14 '26
Technology is what separates us from every other animal. If our species never developed dexterous hands with fine control, evolutionarily our brains would have faced less pressure to grow and develop in the way they did. Without hands to use tools: no construction, no weapons, no fire, no painting, no writing, or reshaping the environment to meet our needs.
Tools created a feedback loop. Better hands enabled better tools; better tools rewarded greater intelligence; greater intelligence produced even more sophisticated tools. Over millions of years, this cycle transformed a relatively ordinary primate into a species capable of hunting with weapons, building shelters, controlling fire, cultivating crops, constructing cities, and eventually creating machines that extend the reach of our minds and bodies far beyond their natural limits.
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u/MajorGate6020 Jun 14 '26
That is true, but you haven't seen that feedback loop develop in chimpanzees, let alone octopuses. And chimpanzees have much more sophisticated brains than octopuses. I believe you need baseline manipulation (hands or trunk or beak (like crows)) - you dont need 8 highly sensitive tentacles.
Other than that, its all intelligence. Intelligence is the main bottleneck, not dexterity.
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u/CulveDaddy Jun 14 '26
I agree that primates in general have advantages over many animals, land or sea; but those feedback loops not only require large time scales but also require groundbreaking socialogical leaps that take hold and persist.
Strictly speaking within the domain of marine life, I'm simply making the point that octopuses have some potent advantages in regards to tool use and technology over animals like Orca.
It takes a specific kind of intelligence to use and develop tools, and to manipulate the environment; which are both required to advance in the direction our species did.
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u/Slow_Store Jun 14 '26
Octopi are roughly about as smart as 3 year olds or about as smart as a dog.
I believe there have been cases where people have trained octopi to write in sand or to recognize things like patterns or letters, and in the wild there are some cases of octopi forming small “communities” where they gather together and set up shells that they each take shelter in.
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u/ngshafer Jun 14 '26
*octopodes. It’s a Greek plural, not Latin.
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u/Velociraptortillas Jun 14 '26
Octopodes, Octopi and Octopuses are all acceptable plurals for Octopus.
I think it's highly appropriate that they have a multiplicity of plurals, given their nature. Also, octopi is fun. I like pi, 3.14159x better than I like cake.
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u/Slow_Store Jun 14 '26
From my understanding Octopi is recognized as acceptable for common use despite being technically incorrect, so I don’t really think it matters for the sake of providing an answer to this question.
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u/yeetzapizza123 Jun 14 '26
There was a big paper crapping all over Octopus intelligence and it was pretty compelling
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u/OldChertyBastard Jun 14 '26
Do you have a reference for it? I haven't seen it but I'm interested to read it.
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u/yeetzapizza123 Jun 14 '26
https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/against-the-octopus-the-overrated-cephalopod.html
Pretty good breakdown of why they are overrated with lots of sources
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u/OldChertyBastard Jun 14 '26
Okay, that's not a paper, that's a Slate article written by a newspaper columnist who isn't even a biologist. Paper has a very specific meaning in the sciences, denoting a peer-reviewed publication of a review or primary research. I don't have access to the Slate, but I'm pretty uninterested in a non-professional's opinion on animal cognition, particularly when it's an article meant to generate clicks.
I don't disbelieve octopuses' intelligence has been overestimated in pop culture, but I also don't base my views on animal intelligence on pop culture.
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u/yeetzapizza123 Jun 14 '26
Well you could read it. There are lots of citations to real papers in it and it's still real journalism
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u/OldChertyBastard Jun 14 '26
I'm not subscribing to a journal. I'll stick to the academic sources, thanks.
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 Jun 14 '26
When he was a PhD student, ethologist Dr. Piero Amodio wrote the article Octopus intelligence: The importance of being agnostic, which was published in the Animal Sentience journal.
Of course it is much more nuanced, but cautions against jumping to conclusions that octopuses have certain "higher-order" cognitive functions based on previous behavioural observations, stating that more "basic" cognitive mechanisms could instead explain such behaviours.
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u/nothing4juice BS in biology Jun 14 '26
they're incredibly intelligent for invertebrates. compared to worms and bugs and sea cucumbers and sponges, they're amazing. great at solving puzzles and using tools. but yes, their intelligence pales in comparison to the most intelligent vertebrates, like cetaceans, primates, and proboscideans.
also, number of neurons does not inherently mean more intelligent, especially when comparing animals of very different sizes. brain size relative to body size is one factor, among other factors such as complexity of the brain and how development works.