Modern humans, by comparison, have only existed for 200,000 years and in that time, have taken over the planet (and badly damaged it in the process).Ī blue-ringed octopus, a highly venomous species found in tide pools and coral reefs. There are about 300 different species of octopus, which have been around for at least 300 million years. But could they take over the world if they kept evolving? Why they evolve so slowlyĬompared to other species, octopuses actually evolve really, really slowly. So yes, octopuses have big brains and are crazy-smart. They never see their parents and have to learn everything on their own. They hatch from eggs fully formed and ready to go. The giant Pacific octopus might live up to five years, but most live for just a year and some as little as six months. Unlike us though, octopuses don’t live for very long. And that’s assuming they haven’t already escaped from their aquarium home and are crawling around the lab. For example, scientists can struggle to get an octopus to solve a maze, because they often climb out and crawl over the top to reach their food reward. Testing octopus intelligence can be a problem, because the animals frequently outsmart scientists. The coolest thing about them is their intelligence, which evolved completely independently from our own. Yep, octopuses are like souped-up snails who lost their shells and grew a rather large brain. They use this colour-shifting power to camouflage and, interestingly, as a strange visual language to talk to other octopuses.Ī little known fact is they actually belong to a category of animals (phylum) called Mollusca, which is largely made up of snails. So if they simply started evolving a smarter brain, what stops all this from happening? Why has this not happened already? Why have so few creatures evolved an intelligent brain?Īs Michael points out, octopuses are famous for their alien-like abilities, from regrowing damaged arms to changing their skin colour and texture. In orbit, they could manoeuvre much more easily and fit in smaller spaces. If and when they eradicate humans, they would be better suited to space travel. They have abilities similar to what we would call superpowers: they can fit into any hole that fits their beak, they can camouflage, they can regenerate their lost limbs and more. If they continue to get smarter, octopuses would be much more suited as conquerors of Earth because they could live nearly anywhere. If the faster part of human evolution is over, and squids and octopuses continue to evolve, could there be an apocalypse where the cephalopods take over the world?
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