Animals & nature · 2025
Which arms do octopuses bring in to help when exploring objects they cannot see?
The nearest neighboring arm was the most frequent individual choice, but more distant arms combined were used more often. In a behavioral experiment with 14 Octopus bimaculoides exploring hidden objects, the nearest neighboring arm accounted for 44% of recorded arm additions, compared with 56% for more distant arms combined. This was a tendency in this task, not a fixed rule.
Details
Researchers used the octopuses’ natural food-searching behavior to study how they brought additional arms into a task. Each animal explored an opaque rock dome containing one of five items, keeping the item hidden from view. Across 117 trials, the team video-recorded 2,327 arm actions and 394 coordinated instances of bringing additional arms into use.
The nearest neighboring arm was the most frequent individual choice, though it did not account for a majority of additions. The most common sequences were an initial arm followed by a nearest neighbor and then another nearest neighbor, or an initial arm followed by a nearest neighbor and then an arm two positions over.
The octopuses used all eight arms with similar frequency and most often engaged three, four, or five arms at once. Together, these observations show flexible arm coordination in this hidden-object task. Similar use frequencies do not establish that every arm performs equally well at every task, and the experiment does not establish how coordination works in other settings.
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