Zoology
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Thinking like an octopus
I f you were an octopus, would you view the world from eight different points of view? Nine? The answer may depend on how many brains an octopus has, or, to say it another way, whether the robust bunches of neurons in its coiling, writhing, incredibly handy arms bestow on each of them something akin to a brain. Is an octopus a creature ruled by a single consciousness centered in its large brain, or, by dint of its nerve-infused legs, a collaborative, cooperative, but distributed mind? The idea of a distributed mind among animals is not new, according to Peter Godfrey-Smith , who focuses his efforts on the philosophy of science. Experiments indicate that when a bird learns a skill using only a single eye, and is later tested while being forced to use the other eye, the learning does not transfer well.
Animals that sit atop the food chain rarely go unnoticed, especially ones with retractable claws, sharp carnivorous dentition, large eye sockets and lightning quick reflexes. Madagascar's top predator — the fossa — might be the exception. Chances are you've never heard of the fossa, a cougar-like creature that looks and acts like a large cat but is more closely related to the mongoose. The animal is so mysterious that some leading wildlife researchers have never heard of it. That was the case for Mia-Lana Lührs, a wildlife researcher who now specializes in studying the fossa, before she stumbled upon the creature while working in a zoo.
World's least known top predator is half-cat, half-mongoose
In nature, it is quite rare to encounter octopi with extra tentacles (or "arms," for the purists), but a pair of aquariums in Japan's Mie prefecture have some extraordinary specimens on hand. The permanent display at the Shima Marineland Aquarium in the town of Shima includes a 96-tentacled Common Octopus ( Octopus vulgaris ) that weighed 3.3 kilograms (about 7 lbs) and measured 90 centimeters (3 ft) long when it was captured in nearby Matoya Bay in December 1998. Before dying 5 months later, the creature laid eggs, making it the first known extra-tentacled octopus to do so in captivity.
Monster octopi with scores of extra tentacles
Bees Solve Complex Problems Faster Than Supercomputers
In a new study, researchers report that bumblebees were able to figure out the most efficient routes among several computer-controlled "flowers," quickly solving a complex problem that even stumps supercomputers. We already know bees are pretty good at facial recognition, and researchers have shown they can also be effective air-quality monitors. Bumblebees can solve the classic "traveling salesman" problem, which keeps supercomputers busy for days. They learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they find the flowers in a different order, according to a new British study. The traveling salesman problem is a problem in computer science; it involves finding the shortest possible route between cities, visiting each city only once.