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Our last common ancestor with the octopus existed more than 500 million years ago. So why is it that they seem to show such peculiar similarities with humans, while at the same time appearing so alien? Perhaps because despite their tentacles covered with suckers and their lack of bones, their eyes, brains and even their curiosity remind us our own thirst for knowledge.
In ethology, the study of behaviour, we explore this intelligence, which we classify as individual “cognitive abilities”. These are the mechanisms through which information from the environment is perceived, processed, transformed, remembered and used to take decisions and act.