The Deep Sea Thinkers

Often it is believed that sea animals carry zero intellectual and low cognitive complexity. However, scientists have proven that cephalopods, a large class of active predatory molluscs comprising octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish, support a large nervous system.

As per the biologists, the multifarious behavior of cephalopods makes them comparable to the vertebrates rather than to other invertebrates. However, when it comes to octopus, there is little dissimilarity between octopus brains and vertebrate brains.

Despite various similarities in terms of features, including forms of short and long-term memory, versions of sleep, octopus brains and vertebrate brains have no common anatomy.

As per various studies, when transformation occurred few cephalopods evolved large nervous systems, including large brains and huge nervous system. The studies suggested that a common (Octopus vulgaris) has about 500 million neurons in its body.

The octopus is in the similar range as various mammals, close to the range of dogs. Additionally, cephalopods have much larger nervous systems than all other invertebrates.

Source: www.molluscs.at

By: Priyanka Negi