We humans are happy with ourselves when we can do things like shoot a basketball or eat neatly with our non-dominant hand. At that, an octopus would just laugh, according to new research.
A study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports aimed to answer one question: How flexible are octopus arms? To put this to the test, the team obtained video footage of wild octopus in different habitats, ranging from sandy bottomed areas to coral reefs, across sites in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Spain. They were looking for specific behaviors, arm actions, and arm deformations.
After observing nearly 4,000 arm movements, the team found that all eight arms are capable of the 12 arm actions they were studying, though upper arms were more likely to do them than rear arms. There wasn’t an observed difference between right and left, though.
The findings add on to information we have about the arms of the octopus, which are already interesting enough as it is. Each arm has around 100 suckers with sensory organs that help guide the octopus’ behavior and help them crawl, stand, walk, move and search for items, and even parachute attack.
Roger Hanlon, Marine Biological Laboratory Senior Scientist and study co-author, explains, “Each sucker is a chemo-tactile genius, the equivalent of the human nose, lips and tongue all wrapped into one.”
While the findings show just how flexible and coordinated an octopus is, there are more applications for this research. The team says that knowledge of octopus movement could help design soft robotic appendages used for things like search and rescue efforts when someone is caught in rubble after a disaster.
Hanlon says, “How do you deliver a drug or a phone or water to someone who’s down there? You need some snaky little arm with high flexibility that can not only get down there, but can do something useful when it arrives.”
You can check out some of the team’s octopus movement video below.
