Aliens of the Deep

ALIENS OF THE DEEP

ALIENS OF THE DEEP

T

hey’re the real aliens of the deep, creatures so bizarre and so removed from what we know that they may as well be from another planet.

Here’s a colour-blind animal that can change its own colour, tastes with its arms and shape-shifts to fit in with the plants and corals of the ocean floor. It has a beak like a parrot, anaesthetising venom and a barbed tongue that can be used to drill holes.

When threatened, it will squirt ink at its enemy. When starving after months of protecting its young it will eat its own arms for sustenance, and when trapped, even a specimen weighing over 200 kilograms will squeeze its boneless body through a hole smaller than a 50p coin.

The octopus is undeniably one of Mother

Nature’s more abstract creations.

So when Queenie, Scarborough Sea Life Centre’s resident Giant Pacific Octopus, turns her horizontal eye slits to me, I can’t help but feel like I’m being stared down by a captain of the alien invasion.

She puts her arms up to the glass and shuffles along into the glow of her tank’s spotlight, seeming to wave at the gaggle of school children staring at her with wide eyes.

At just one year old, she has a span of around three metres – at least twice the height of most members of her audience.

Queenie is without a doubt the majestic star of the show, but as she reaches toward the glass, I can’t help but wonder – was she playing up to the crowd?

To most, this would seem

ALIENS OF THE DEEP PHOTOS: HANNAH FROST

like an absurd question. Surely, she couldn’t be putting on a performance.

After all,, octopuses are widely accepted as being just invertebrates, sharing a family with brainless molluscs like clams, and not even credited with the same level of intelligence as insects.

But those who work with these aliens-on-earth would claim the opposite, going as far as to say that they’re not only intelligent, but show real personalities. Researchers are convinced that they have emotions, intelligence, and individual personalities just like humans – despite the fact that our ancestral lineage diverged between 500 and 700 million years ago.

Amy Gibb, who works with Scarborough’s octopuses, agrees that there’s more to the octopus’ mind than we give them credit for. The octopuses that live at the Sea Life Centre have very different traits.

Queenie, the Giant Pacific, is friendly and reaches up to staff to play, whereas Squirt, the Common Octopus, got her name because of her more mischievous nature.

“Queenie’s actually really gentle. As big as she is, she comes up, she’s very inquisitive. She puts her tentacles up and puts her suckers all around you, and you can gently pull her off and mess around with her,” says Gibb.

“But with Squirt, it’s more important for two people to be with her. She lives up to her name basically – she’ll be at the top of the tank, feelers everywhere, trying to get out, and squirting water everywhere. Queenie’s very happy in her tank, but Squirt, she’s very active. We do keep an eye on Squirt in particular.”

It’s startlingly clear that Squirt is the more curious of the two. As I bring my face to the glass of her tank, she floats across to do the same, pressing her mantle against it to peer at me.

Other times, she hangs from the ceiling of her tank, calmly watching the relative chaos below as dozens of grubby-fingered schoolchildren tap on glass.

For anyone who owns a dog – an animal with an intelligence level likened to that of an octopus – it comes as no surprise that animals have individual personalities. It was a controversial find in the 1980s, however, for octopusstudying team Dr Jennifer Mather and Dr Roland Anderson.

Squirt, a female Common Octopus, is the most mischievous of Scarborough Sea Life Centre’s three octopuses

Mather, a comparative psychologist, and Anderson, a biologist, discovered that octopuses were the first ever invertebrate to display distinct personality traits, in consistent patterns.

For example, when confronted with threats or food stimuli, individual octopuses would react differently. One of the study octopuses, named Lucretia McEvil by volunteers at the Seattle Aquarium, which was home to the study, would even dismantle her tank and try to pull volunteers into it.

In the wild, many divers have had their masks or gloves removed by lightfingered octopuses. One diver, who was recording footage at the time, even had his camera stolen by an octopus, which darted away with as soon as it was free of the diver’s hands.

The finding of individual personalities was backed up by further research by other scientists, but the “p” word remains controversial. David Sinn, a graduate student at Portland State University, carried out a more in-depth

study, but avoided the word altogether, instead dubbing the displays of behaviour “temperamental traits”.

“The overall picture that we are gaining from our continued studies is that octopuses possess a startling array and complexity of behaviours, and that these behaviours are indicators of a very different life from other marine organisms,” Sinn says of his reasons behind the research.

In addition to Mather and Anderson’s found traits of Activity, Reactivity and Avoidance, Sinn studied traits he named Activity Engagement, Arousal/ Readiness, and Aggression. He was able to see these traits in varying levels in broods of octopuses that were just three weeks old.

As time went on, and the octopuses in his study learnt more, learnt behaviours took over. As the majority of cephalopods live less than a year, the changes came rapidly.

From weeks three to six, the subjects became less aggressive and more alert.

From six to nine, personalities become

ALIENCS OF THE DEEP

MONSTERS OF THE DEEP

Despite it providing 98 per cent of the world’s liveable environments and being home to 80 per cent of Earth’s life, we know less about our planet’s sea floor than we do about the surface of Mars.

Having explored less than 5 per cent of its seemingly neverending depths, we’re also missing out on finding nature’s more alien creations. Despite the fact that 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, it could take another millennium for humans to discover of all the species that call the ocean home. And with estimates of 2.2 million marine species, it’s no surprise it will take so long.

The monsters of the deep live in conditions we can hardly imagine. These are creatures that live in the cold and the dark, at high pressure and with little oxygen. There are many who have evolved to make their own light through chemical reactions; others, such as the colossal squid, with eyes as big as footballs; and yet more have transparent bodies.

Some of these creatures are simply giants. The colossal squid, named only 9 years ago, is twice the length of a London bus and has a body the same diameter as a truck tyre.

Human: 1.7m

Giant Oceanic Manta Ray: 7.6m

Giant manta rays, meanwhile, have “wing” spans up to 4 times the size of an average human, and have been compared to huge flying saucers by the divers that swim with them.

Like the world’s biggest shark, the whale shark, despite their size and weight - over 1,300 kilograms - manta rays are entirely harmless.

more stable.

Shockingly, it seemed that octopuses go through the equivalent of the terrible twos and those awkward teenage years, and learn behaviour as they go along – just like humans.

The whale family, however, dwarfs them all. Even sperm whales, only the 4th biggest whale, weigh in at 57,000 kilograms.

And there may be even bigger animals out there, just waiting to be discovered - who knows what we might find.

London bus: 8.4 m

Colossal squid: 14 m

Octopuses behaving badly It’s not just behavioural traits that an octopus can learn: there’s evidence to suggest that, when interacting with the outside world, octopuses can identify the humans they come into contact with regularly, like Amy Gibb and her colleagues.

Even in the late 1950s, scientists were starting to sit up and take notice of octopus intelligence. Oxford biologist N.S. Sutherland put the theory to the test, by showing octopuses two rectangles (one vertical, one horizontal) and rewarding them for touching one but not the other. It wasn’t long before the octopuses learnt that the

Giant oarfish: 17m

Sperm whale: 20.5m

ALIENS OF THE DEEP

LEGEND OF THE SEA As an object of wonder for hundreds of years - in the third century AD, Roman natural historian Claudius Aelianus wrote, “Mischief and craft are plainly seen to be the characteristics of this creature” - it’s no surprise that there are plenty of octopus myths circulating. Do you know your arms from your tentacles, or your octopus from your devil fish?

THE PLURAL OF ‘OCTOPUS’ IS ‘OCTOPI’: FALSE

Although it’s a common misconception, the correct English term for more than one octopus is “octopuses”. The term “octopi” comes from the incorrect assumption that “octopus” is Latin - in fact, it has its roots in Greek.

SOME SPECIES OF OCTOPUS CAN KILL HUMANS: TRUE

There are three types of Blue-Ringed octopuses which carry venom which is highly poisonous to humans. The octopuses, which show their blue rings when threatened, carry enough venom to kill 26 humans, despite only being up to 8 inches in size.

HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO, SAILORS CALLED OCTOPUSES ‘DEVIL FISH’: TRUE

Back in the days when sailors thought octopuses and squid would wrap themselves around ships and pull them under, they named the creatures “devil fish”, inspired by the red colour they turn when angered.

OCTOPUSES HAVE EIGHT TENTACLES: FALSE

Most people will say the octopus has eight tentacles.

However, according to Jim Cosgrove, a marine biologist with 35 years’ experience, they are actually arms. Tentacles are slightly different in that they only have suckers on the very end, to allow animals to catch food.

OCTOPUSES HAVE THREE HEARTS: TRUE

PHOTOS: HANNAH FROST

To cope with low oxygen levels in their blood, octopuses have three hearts, in order to maintain high blood pressure. Two of these hearts are dedicated to pumping blood through the gills, while the third circulates blood through the rest of the octopus’ body.

Octopuses also have blue blood, due to hemocyanin, the copper-containing protein that binds oxygen.

ALTHOUGH THEY HAVE EXCELLENT VISION, OCTOPUSES ARE COLOURBLIND: TRUE

Despite the fact that it’s not yet been proven in all species of octopus - there are around 300 in total - in the science world it is widely accepted that most are colour-blind.

horizontal one was the best one to select.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Anderson – who has said in interviews that he’s one of only a tiny minority of people who care for octopuses – performed an experiment to find out if they could recognise individual humans.

As it turned out, they could.

The study saw eight octopuses exposed to two different people, dressed identically. One person always fed the octopuses; the other always touched them with a PVC stick wrapped with Astroturf.

Within a week, the octopuses knew who was who, moving towards their feeder and away from the irritator, with some even squirting water at him.

These experiments are just two of many that have shown that octopuses have the capacity to learn – but they don’t always go so smoothly.

Alexa Warburton was thwarted by octopuses behaving badly during her senior thesis project at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. “Octopuses are curious creatures and with curious creatures there are escapes, refusals to move, and siphoning of water directly at you when trying to net them,” says Warburton, “ They will suction to the maze bottom and it’s near impossible to dislodge them without stressing them out and yourself! A fiddler crab made it from the third floor to the second floor of the science building. We will never know how that happened!”

Working with the Californian TwoSpot (octopus bimaculoides), Alexa studied their behaviour in a T-maze, providing visual cues and positive and negative reinforcement. If they chose the correct path, they’d be rewarded with a dark chamber and a terracotta pot to hide in.

If they went the wrong way, they’d find a closed chamber door and stick waiting to prod them.

It should have been simple enough – but the octopuses had other ideas.

Before the experiments even started, they seemed out to cause trouble, finding their way out of their individual compartments to eat each other, despite the students’ efforts to put secure dividers in the tanks. Just as lethal was the very real possibility of the octopuses escaping to mate – after reproducing, octopuses go senile, in a period called

ALIENS OF THE DEEP “senescence”, and eventually die.

When it came to doing the experiments, some octopuses squeezed into corners and wouldn’t be pried out; others used the nets they were caught in as trampolines. They all, it seemed to Warburton, had different personalities.

“I will say that these creatures are not all the same. I did observe “personalities”. Some octopuses would shrink to the back of the tank hiding in their terracotta pots at the arrival of any human in the lab. Others would become excited, bobbing to the surface and reaching his/her tentacles out of the water almost begging for breakfast of fiddler crabs,” says Warburton.

In the end, the study showed that the octopuses could learn which corridor would lead to the darkened chamber.

But for Warburton, the experiments revealed much more than just the ability to learn.

“They are a wizard of the sea, as they can camouflage like no other animal I’ve seen. Some days I’d catch them observing me as I prepared water tests, and cleaned tanks. They were very curious animals always upending the dividers between the individual octopuses sections or re-excavating their tank to make a den to their liking.

You know there’s intelligence there.

It’s just that we have to put ourselves in the octopuses’ tentacles and try to understand it.

“They are the most marvellous animal I have ever worked with.”

Although Warburton was able to get excellent results in a laboratory environment, yet more intriguing discoveries have been made from watching octopuses in more natural settings.

Underwater footage of the Veined Octopus (amphioctopus marginatus), filmed off the coasts of off the coasts of Northern Sulawesi and Bali in Indonesia, revealed the creatures carrying half coconut shells to use them as shelters at a later date.

Without the shelter provided by the coconut shells, the octopuses – described by Dr Mark Norman, from Melbourne’s Museum Victoria, as “pure rump steak” – are vulnerable to predators on the soft, muddy floor of Indonesia’s surrounding ocean.

The octopuses scuttled away with the coconut shells by stacking them, and

then wrapping their upper arms around them. By stiffening their eight arms, the octopuses were able to almost run, giving them the eerie appearance of a high-speed underwater spider.

Other octopuses have also been seen to collect rocks to stack outside their dens to protect against predators. In other instances, they’ve used their water-jetting abilities to clean dens, move rocks, and drive off other fish.

This use of tools, previously thought to be the reserve of humans, was also observed by Mather and Anderson.

Faced with a variety of food-orientated challenges in the wild, thanks to their diet of shellfish, the Giant Pacific Octopuses Mather and Anderson observed switched their approaches to eating depending on the dish. They’d smash mussels, pry open clams and drill through the harder shells of other clams with their radulae, a tongue-like organ covered in barbs – making them, at times, more resourceful than some humans.

An underwater playground An octopus’ life, though, is far from all work and no play. Staff looking after Queenie and Squirt make sure they’re mentally stimulated every day – a quick look around Squirt’s tank will reveal scattered Lego bricks , whereas Queenie is known for playing with – and fiercely protecting – a ball. Those working in Queenie’s tank have even played catch with her, and watched her rolling the ball along her arms.

“When we throw in the ball, she’ll fetch it, like a dog. She’ll put her tentacles up and then run away so you can pull her back. She’s gentle enough that she’ll come up and play with you,” says Gibb.

Surely, there’s no disputing that she’s

playing, just like a toddler would?

However, the idea of octopuses playing was first explored only 13 years ago, again by Mather and Anderson, although amateur aquarists had long suspected it.

The act of play can be defined as a repeated, seemingly useless activity which intelligent animals use to explore their environments and learn new skills.

Until birds and turtles had exhibited play behaviour, it was even thought to be restricted to mammals.

But Mather and Anderson’s observations in 1999 flipped that on its head. When given pill bottles of varying colours and textures, the Giant Pacific Octopuses (octopus dofleini) at Seattle Aquarium had different reactions, although all started off testing if the bottles were edible.

Throughout the ten trials the octopuses went through, however, their behaviour changed: some of the octopuses seemed to be using the bottles as toys.

One of the Giant Pacifics used her siphon to shoot jets of water at the bottle, sending it to the other end of her tank, before the water’s flow returned it to her. Although doing this once might not have been so remarkable, she repeated the action 20 times. By the 18th time, Anderson was on

The octopuses at Scarborough Sea Life Centre recieve their food inside contraptions such as this Mr Poatato Head, which they must dismantle to get to the crabs inside

ALIENS OF THE DEEP PHOTOS: HANNAH FROST

the phone to Mather to tell her his extraordinary news: the octopus was bouncing the ball.

Reporting his find, Anderson said, “This fits all the criteria for play behaviour. Only intelligent animals play.”

Through studies at Seattle Aquarium, Anderson and Andrea Leontiou have also discovered that the type of object the octopus is given as a toy makes a big difference.

One male and one female Giant Pacific Octopus were each given three different types of plastic children’s toy, over nine trial periods.

The toys – a ball, a cow shape, and a pair of pliers – held the octopuses’ attention for varying lengths of time.

Although some toys were dropped after just two seconds, if became clear to Anderson and Leontiou that complex toys were needed to keep the octopuses’ attention.

Despite doubts from some scientists, since the discovery, aquarists who care for octopuses increasingly believe that it’s not only possible for octopuses to play, but a necessary part of the enrichment of their environments.

“But even if the play times are brief, they [toys] still should be given to octopuses for added enrichment, enrichment that is clearly called for in keeping intelligent animals such as octopuses,” say Anderson and Leontiou.

At Scarborough Sea Life Centre, Queenie and Squirt are regularly given toys and food-related challenges, their play behaviour a marked difference to their usual antics.

“The octopuses are stimulated by giving them toys such as Lego. We’ll put them in as a whole to give them the chance to break them up,” says Gibb, “Or when we’re feeding them, we’ll put the food, like crabs, in little baskets or in twist contraptions so they have to work out with their tentacles how to get to the food, which keeps them mentally stimulated.”

When Queenie’s handlers drop a frame made of screw-together piping sections into her tank, she immediately scuttles toward it, enveloping the contraption in her skin while her arms work at the puzzle away from prying eyes.

Mere minutes later, Queenie shifts to one side – and we catch a glimpse of a

Eyes as advanced as the human eye allow the octopus to observe its surroundings in high defi

section of piping, freed from its frame.

Her handlers look on, open mouthed.

“You’re joking! I don’t know how she did that. It was screwed really tight,” says Gibb. Queenie’s red, pimply skin becomes smooth and flushes peachy orange as she contentedly dines on crab, her arms writhing across pieces of grey piping, blissfully unaware of the ruckus she’s caused outside her tank.

The creature with nine brains Although they’re without a doubt amazing creatures, the question remains as to how – and why – they’re so intelligent.

Octopuses, just like humans, simply have large brains – the largest brain of any invertebrate, in fact. Another way to measure intelligence is by counting neurons, of which octopuses have about 500 million, compared to a human’s 100 billion.

Also like a mammal, the octopus is

capable of transferring information from one side of its brain to the other, and has specialised lobes for functions such as learning and sight. But what truly sets the octopus apart is the fact that around 300 million of these neurons aren’t part of its brain. They’re in its arms.

Having bundles of neurons, called ganglia, allows each arm to move independently, and quickly, right down to its individual suckers and even skin colour.

However, research has shown that this means the arm can act independently when it’s cut off from the octopus’ body, moving on its own and even trying to put food where the octopus’ mouth should be.

But why are octopuses so intelligent?

When it comes to long-lived animals like chimps, the reasoning behind intelligence is clear: their extended childhoods and parental instruction enable them to learn.

As octopuses are solitary creatures,

ALIENS OF THE DEEP

finition, while sensitive suckers taste and feel the world around them

and live no longer than four years, the need for their intelligence is far from clear. Intelligence also varies between species, particularly those which live at differing ocean depths.

Anderson’s Giant Pacific Octopuses, which live close to the surface, are more intelligent than deep-sea species, which, one of his colleagues has declared, are “dumb as a doorknob”.

For this octopus, a solitary life and dealing with tidal changes means a better memory is needed to make exploration, feeding, and escaping predators possible.

Mather believes that the octopus was forced to become intelligent by its loss of a shell, 200 million years back in evolution’s history. With its newfound freedom came a need for a new skill set, particularly when it came to hunting prey, and protecting itself from predators.

Octopuses, like humans, shelter in dens, coming out only to hunt down

dinner, before returning to their crevices. With their large brains, tool use, and a place to call home – not to mention their eyes, which work like a cross between a human eye and a camera – it’s starting to seem like octopuses aren’t so alien after all.

Masters of disguise The octopus’ cleverest trick, however, doesn’t even require it to learn, or ‘think’. Despite being colour-blind, octopuses are able to change their skin colour, pattern, and texture to allow them to blend in with their environments.

Professor Roger Hanlon, senior scientist at the Marine Biology Laboratory, Massachusetts, USA, has been studying colour change in cephalopods – including octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid – for decades, but, 25 academic journal articles later, he is still mystified by the creatures’

magnificent abilities.

“Everyone knows what camouflage is and how it works. And many people think chameleons are the masters of colour change. Wrong on both counts,” says Hanlon, “No land animal has such an advanced system.”

Hanlon’s video of an octopus coming out of and going back into camouflage went viral on the internet – and for him, provided a personal “Eureka!” moment.

The video, which was broadcast as part of Science Friday, on America’s National Public Radio website, shows a Common Octopus – the same species as Scarborough’s Squirt – emerge out of what looked like a an algae-covered rock, only to turn bright white in what is generally thought to be a show of fear.

The change in colouration and pattern was rapid: the octopus went from fully camouflaged to white in just 2.02 seconds. The octopus then shot ink at Hanlon, before swimming away – but for him, the momentous

ALIENS OF THE DEEP Hanlon’s footage shows an octopus which has camouflaged into algae...

PHOTOS: ROGER HANLON

...before changing its colour and texture to a startling white

occasion had already happened.

“I was startled by the blanching and inking but kept my cool and followed the animal, although I was very excited and would have yelled “Eureka!”, except that I was swimming so hard to follow the octopus that I had no extra air to do so,” says Hanlon, “However, 15 minutes later, when the dive ended, I surface and screamed “Yahoo!” and the dive boat thought I might be in distress.”

Octopuses use camouflage and colour change not only to evade predators, but also to show emotions, such as the fear Hanlon’s octopus exhibited.

Turning red and making their skin bumpier is often a sign of an angry octopus, whereas a content creature might display a more muted colour, like Queenie’s peachy palette.

Although land animals, such as chameleons, are able change their colours, the speed of the octopus’ change, and large repertoire of patterns, makes it far more versatile – a foraging octopus may change its colouring up to 170 times per hour.

The true wonder of the trick is that they do it without even being able to visually discern colours.

Hanlon’s studies have shown that in basic terms, cephalopods will display variations of three types of pattern: uniform patterns, of just one colour; mottled patterns; and disruptive patterns, which are designed to make the animal’s outline difficult to see.

They’re able to do this due to having two different layers within their skin, changing with fast neuromuscular control. The top of the skin features three layers of chromatophores, cells of pigment showing yellow, red and brown – long wavelength colours.

Each cell of pigment is actively controlled by the brain, whereas many of the reflecting cells (iridophores) beneath, which deal with short wavelength colours like blue and green, are passive.

By controlling these cells to change their size – they can expand up to 15 times their diameter – it is possible to control the dominant colour, and patterning. These colours are laid over a white base, made of leucophores, which allow high contrast patterns.

Of course, a large part of the octopus’ hiding trick is in mimicking 3D texture, to allow the creature to blend in with

environments such as coral reefs and algae.

The octopus also creates protrusions by raising and lowering bumps in their skin, known as papillae, in response to visual cues. Most famously, divers have observed raised papillae over the eyes of agitated Giant Pacific Octopuses, which give them the appearance of being horned.

“Because light and dimensionality are being manipulated in similar fashion, the subtle ways in which edges, shadows, outlines, patterns, colours, contrast and papillae are used by animals for camouflage or communication also seem to have much in common with art, photography, landscape, architecture and related fields,” says Hanlon.

Octopus, mother of 100,000 Works of art and marvels of the oceans they may be, but an octopus’ majesty is short lived.

In the wild, Queenie and Squirt’s lives would be cut short by motherhood.

When sexually mature, octopuses mate by the male inserting packets of sperm (spermatophores) into the female’s mantle cavity, using a specialised arm called a hectocotylus.

After mating, the females would retire to their dens to decorate them with garlands of tear-shaped eggs. Squirt, a Common Octopus, would lay 100,000 to 500,000 eggs; Queenie, the Giant Pacific Octopus, around 60,000.

For months, both mothers would tend to their young, forgoing food in order to clean the eggs, and blow soft jets of water over them to keep them oxygenated.

Shortly after the eggs hatched, the mothers would die, leaving their young to float to the water’s surface to fend for themselves.

As it is, Queenie and Squirt will remain at Scarborough Sea Life Centre to wave at schoolchildren, and puzzle out new contraptions in peace.

As I take one last glance at Queenie and Squirt, writhing in their tanks and drifting through the water to look at their guests, I can’t help but think: if this is the alien invasion, it’s one I would probably welcome with open tentacles.

Hannah Frost