How smart is that octopus in the jar? According to some, it’s an invertebrate genius--"probably the closest we'll get to meeting an intelligent alien," according to CUNY philosophy professor Peter Godfrey-Smith. The question came up recently at Sierra regarding Amphioctopus marginatus, the coconut octopus. It gets that moniker from its habit of carrying around a coconut shell into which it can duck when threatened. Whether this makes it smart or not depends on intentionality. Does it just carry around the coconut shell in the way that, say, a hermit crab carries around a shell? Or is the coconut shell a tool? 

“For a lot of us the jury is still out,” says Richard Ross, a biologist and octopus specialist at the California Academy of Sciences. When there are a bunch of ambush predators living in the sandy ocean bottoms where you live, he says, “carrying a shell with you is definitely a defense.” If the shell is intentionally carried around as a shield, the behavior would look intelligent; if it’s just instinctual, somewhat less so. 

So what about the octopus in the jar? Ross says that he has trained an octopus at the Academy to open one to get at food, but the guy shown below just wants to escape. “Is opening a screw lid jar intelligent, or just an extension of its ability to open bivalves?” he asks. It may not be evidence of smarts, but it ain't dumb.