Octopus Playtime | Octopus In My House | BBC Earth

my octopus is showing impressive color changes of her own observing what we're doing we've seen how closely the octopus we have here at the house is watching our eyes you look at them and you feel like they're looking back that's not an illusion they are looking back and so when you have an animal that's that attentive to another animal's eyes that is very suggestive of high level of awareness of the world [Music] well scientists do find questions about octopus intelligence particularly intriguing at the seattle aquarium they did some experiments giving different objects to octopuses and recorded what happened [Music] in one of the most telling experiments the researchers put a pill bottle in the tank with just enough air in it to float there was no food or anything to be gained here but still a few octopuses found reason to be interested nothing happened at first but after the fourth time the octopus would uh would bounce take the pill bottle and uh blow it out into a stream of water that was circulating around the tank there it goes and the uh the water would bring the pill bottle back to the octopus again and it would start the whole thing over again and do it again and again blowing the pill bottle into the water until it came back and then blowing it back into the water again a bit like bouncing a ball the conclusion from this experiment was simple it fit all the criteria for play play of course is something that intelligent animals do and laurel spends many hours playing with heidi now now she's now you say hello to me octopuses have up to 240 suckers on their arms each has sensitive chemical receptors heidi can touch and taste laurel at the same time she's just she just lightly checked it out she doesn't want me to leave octopus also have estrogen like humans do is it possible that heidi can be detecting the estrogen on laurel's skin does heidi maybe taste the difference between males and females heidi her arm is now up my sleeve that's fun heidi you're you're being maybe a naughty she's lifting herself almost all the way out of the tank right now come here come here oh now i'm wet the idea of laurel having any kind of relationship with a mollusk is extraordinary when you think about it this is an animal that has 600 million years of distance from us that's almost as deep as any divide can be between two animals with three hearts no bones a beak with a venomous bite and a gut that runs through its brain to one point of view the octopus is completely alien as science fiction movies have long demonstrated humans spend a lot of imagination dreaming up what it might be like to meet an alien [Music] the filmmakers imagine what it might be like to encounter a species that changes the way we think about the universe [Music] [Music] you

Channel: BBC Earth

Views: 2,706,692

Keywords: bbc documentary, bbc, bbcearth, bbc earth, octopus, octopus playtime, octopus play, octopus in my house documentary, octopus living in my house, natural world octopus in my house, octopus playing with human

Id: mnZ9wF-Bv1w

Length: 5min 21sec (321 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/l80magpie]

The tentacles at 5:20...

One way I've thought of explaining my approach to vegetarianism is that I don't eat things that play. I've watched calves cavort in a field, looking like they're playing. Seen video of birds teasing cats and other animals. And of course octopuses play, too. Even fish have been observed to exhibit actions that look like play.

[u/Whitey3752]

There are like 3-5 more episodes of this which are absolutely fascinating. I just finished most of them i think.

[u/Agreeable_Flower7257]

I never knew that they could taste estrogen? I suppose it was a question but still that’s kind of cool!