“What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice?” – David Van Essen, 2003 Octopuses possess a rich behavioral repertoire1 and the largest nervous systems among invertebrates2. Alongside squids and cuttlefish, octopuses are believed to have evolutionarily separated from humans more than 700 million years ago3. Given that long divergence, we should be a very different species. And we are… in some ways. Octopuses have striking morphological features such as camera-like eyes, an incredibly adaptive coloration system, and eight arms with more suckers than we have fingers or thumbs1 ..read more