My octopus friend?
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Anyone who's ever hung out with an animal has probably spent some time wondering about a pretty basic question.

What are they actually thinking? I just am inherently absolutely fascinated by that question of, like, what is it like to be another species, a different creature? Ferris Jaber is a science journalist who writes about all sorts of animal intelligence and behavior. How orangutans teach each other how to use tools, how prairie dogs might even have their own language, how elephants can actually have their own epiphanies.

So he was pretty familiar with impressive animals. And then he saw a documentary about an octopus.

When I first watched My Octopus Teacher, I was really mesmerized. If you haven't seen it, the film is a documentary shot by this diver, Craig Foster. Craig goes into the ocean every day for a year, and in the process, he seems to develop a real relationship with an octopus. I didn't know it was possible to connect that way with an octopus, especially a wild octopus. It's like a...

and a human friend waving and saying, "Hi, I'm excited to see you." The octopus actually seems to reach out towards Craig. And I could feel it from one minute to the next. "Okay, I trust you. I trust you, human. And now you can come into my octopus world." But to Ferris, this connection seemed to contradict a lot of what he already knew about octopuses.

I'd heard so much about octopuses over the years, how intelligent they are. They're capable of opening jars and making use of litter. Their incredible abilities to camouflage themselves. And now watch the 3D texture of the skin change to really create this beautiful 3D camouflage. And use tools and all kinds of cool things like that. Look at the coordination of the arms. That's amazing.

Amazing. Using its suckers to hold the two halves of the coconut husk together. She brings us around with her as a sort of home. But I also knew that they had long been thought of as very solitary creatures.

So the fact that this octopus was interacting so closely with a person over such a long period of time, you know, kind of seemed to go against a lot of the received wisdom about octopuses. All of this was so mind-blowing to Ferris because octopuses are invertebrates. Our last common ancestor was something like 500 million years ago.

So for an intelligent animal, octopuses are about as different from us as possible. And most of that intelligence is distributed through eight semi-autonomous, incredibly flexible, incredibly sensitive tongue arms that are constantly tasting and touching your world. So, Ivy, how much more different can you get from our way of being?

Connecting with an octopus could allow us to transcend the limits of what it means to be human. It's like interstellar travel, you know, while staying here on this planet. You know, it's like the closest we can come to that kind of alien contact moment. So after watching the movie, Ferris started investigating the research on octopuses and humans for Hakai magazine.

He wanted to know if the science backed up this incredible relationship. How do we know that the octopus sees us as a friend versus something else? You know, what does this tell us about the ability of different species to connect with each other? I'm Noam Hassenfeld, and this week on Unexplainable, we take a closer look at this relationship. Octopuses and humans are about as different from each other as two intelligent species can be. Is it possible that we can be friends?

So, Ferris, before we really get going here, let's just talk about the elephant in the room. Octopi or octopuses? Octopuses is considered the most correct modern pluralization. Okay, okay, great. So let's start with some basic octopus info. What are they normally like?

The vast majority of octopus species, as far as we can tell, are genuinely quite solitary creatures. A lot of octopuses are nocturnal, so a lot of times they'll be hiding as best they can during the day and they'll come out to feed at night. And they might be hiding in any sort of crevices they can find, or they might actually be using shells or rocks or something to conceal themselves.

Because an octopus is incredibly flexible and intelligent and supple, but it's also extremely vulnerable if it's just out in the open. It's literally just a squishy bag. You know, it has no hard parts whatsoever apart from its beak.

So if it is caught by something, it is extremely defenseless and vulnerable if it's actually, you know, caught in the mouth of a predator. So it's like rule number one for being an octopus, mainly stay away from stuff. Yeah, you have to be elusive. You have to be evasive. You have to know how to hide yourself. And that's what they spend a lot of their time doing. So we got this friendly octopus in my octopus teacher. And then we've got this idea that most octopuses basically like to keep to themselves, which

do they ever like to hang out with other octopuses? There is a growing body of research literature demonstrating that some octopus species are genuinely more social than was previously believed. And there's a few really interesting examples.

There are octopuses known as the greater and lesser Pacific striped octopuses. And some of these will mate beak to beak and they will share dens when they are mating. And that's very unusual for octopuses. Usually...

to adult octopuses if they meet, they mate, and then they part ways and that's it. But off the coast of Australia, there's a couple of really interesting sites that have become known as Atlantis and Octopolis. Octopolis? Yes, Octopolis and Atlantis. So, you know, metropolis and a lost city of octopuses.

And a particular type of octopus known as the Galloomy octopus will gather at these sites, numbering around about a dozen octopuses or so at a time. And they all make dens in the same place. I had to hear more about these underwater octopus cities where octopuses seem to be socializing in the wild. So I called one of the scientists that Ferris spoke to. My name is David Shiel. I'm a professor of marine biology at Alaska Pacific University.

And I study octopuses. David also used to think of octopuses as solitary. I worked with octopuses for about 15 years, having never seen two individuals interact. And so, you know, first dive into Octopolis, drop down below the water, and there's 10 or 12 octopuses interacting constantly. It was jaw-dropping.

— About 50 feet below the surface, David sees thousands of these pastel scallop shells stretching across the ocean floor. — It's a bed of shells and the algae's not growing there. You know, maybe the size of an average suburban living room. — The shells are kind of resting on each other and overlapping, which allows octopuses to dig small, protective dens for themselves. — Your attention is immediately drawn to the octopuses coming and going.

looking at everything that's going on from the dens. As for how it got there, David thinks Octopolis originally formed around some kind of man-made object. We cannot any longer recognize the man-made object. It's half buried in the silt, and it forms a potential den for an octopus in what otherwise probably was a stilted bottom with no shelter.

This den is located by a lot of scallops, so the octopus would have had both food and shelter in one place. And when octopuses eat, they bring their food back to the den, they eat their food, and they discard the shells.

And so a pile of scallop shells began to build up around this human-made object. Then another octopus could come by and dig into this shell bed, making this sort of protective den for itself. And so that created this positive feedback.

Second octopus, more shells, more shells, room for another octopus. And so it sort of expanded the site. And the octopuses there just go about their daily lives? The octopuses usually ignore the divers that are down there. Not always, but usually because they're very focused on one another.

So, Ferris, what do the octopuses do all day at Octopolis and Octolentis? Are they, like, hanging out together? Yeah, you know, they interact with each other. They'll kind of poke each other, you know, kind of investigate each other. They will mate. They will fight. They are little temporary octopus communities that are forming.

And that is extremely unusual. That's never been observed in the wild before scientists discovered these sites. So if octopuses are supposed to be all about hiding and staying away from each other, how do you explain what's going on at Octopolis or Atlantis or between Craig and the octopus and my octopus teacher?

I think it's pretty clear that a lot of octopus species have this sort of latent capacity for social interaction when presented with the right circumstances. Clearly, they're not as social as most social mammals that we are more familiar with. But I think that a lot of octopuses have a genuine latent capacity for social interaction today.

And perhaps that's part of what Craig Foster elicited by spending so much time around this particular wild octopus. Like, ordinarily, that octopus would never have done this, would never have formed a relationship with a human or another species in this way. But he changed its circumstances and allowed this sort of latent behavior to come to the surface. So if octopuses can get along with each other, at least to a certain extent here, can they get along with people?

The diver, Matthew Lawrence, who initially discovered one of these sites, he told me that they interacted with him when he dove down and found them. He says that one of them, you know, seemed to kind of take him by the arm and almost want to lead him around to the site, kind of to show him around. So they have interacted with humans as well.

And there are all sorts of people that have octopuses as pets and interact with them too, right? Yeah, there's a small passionate community of hobbyists who keep octopuses in home aquariums, which is a very challenging thing to do. And they feel very strongly that these social connections, the bonds they form with octopuses are part of the reason that they love taking care of octopuses so much and having them in their living room and in their homes.

David, the marine biologist who studies Octopolis and Atlantis, he actually took part in a documentary for the BBC called Octopus in My House, where he set up a tank in his living room for an octopus named Heidi. What kind of connection is possible with an animal that has three hearts and blue blood running through its veins? I asked David what it was like to have an octopus around all the time at home. My daughter helped me take care of Heidi for just about a year. And, uh...

I asked her, do you think you had a relationship with Heidi? She was 17 at the time. And she said, absolutely. She had no doubt that she did.

David's daughter described that relationship in the movie. Some of the things that she would do remind me of what, like, dogs would do. You know, she comes over to the wall of the tank and just kind of like, all excited to see you. And Heidi wasn't the only octopus in David's social circle. I asked my students sometimes who helped me take care of octopuses in the aquarium that I managed, I asked them the same question: "Does that octopus know you?"

And they always feel like, "I know these octopuses and they know me." Do you think that feeling is more about the octopus or more about us? Certainly we want to believe that the animals in our lives know us, right? But why would that be surprising? The animals in our lives know all kinds of things. Why couldn't they know us? And if they do, why wouldn't they have opinions about us? Have attitudes towards us, take a stance about us.

If octopuses do have opinions about us, what could they be? Could these relationships actually be friendships to them? After the break, the case against friendship. Support for Unexplainable comes from Greenlight. People with kids tell me time moves a lot faster. Before you know it, your kid is all grown up, they've got their own credit card, and they have no idea how to use it. But you can help. If you want your kids to get some financial literacy early on,

You might want to try Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card and money app that's made for families. Parents can send money to their kids, they can keep an eye on kids' spending and saving, and kids and teens can build money confidence and lifelong financial literacy skills.

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You even said we could have been friends. Unexplainable, we're back. We've been trying to answer the question of whether octopuses can truly be friends with humans. And we've specifically been focusing on this documentary, My Octopus Teacher. The movie seems to show an octopus developing a friendship with a human diver.

But not everyone sees it that way. I don't know that octopuses can ever have friendships in the sense that we have friendships. Jennifer Mather is a psychology professor who studied octopuses for decades. And she actually served as a consultant on My Octopus Teacher. I think it's entirely possible that the interaction between the octopus and Craig was somehow rather rewarding to the octopus.

But we can never prove that animals have specific emotions. You can't tell, because you can't ask. Still, we do have general ideas about their behavior. It's not antisocial. It's much closer to asocial, not social. A truly asocial animal simply doesn't care about the rest of the species. It might be close, it might be far away, it'll depend on the landscape.

not the other octopuses. And examples like Octopolis and Atlantis could happen with other seemingly asocial animals. See, what's interesting enough about this is if you look at any animal species that seems not to be social and you crowd it, then it will react to other members of the species.

Plus, it's not clear that the octopuses in these places are really that friendly with each other. If you look at what the animals were doing in Octopolis, they weren't cuddling up to one another. In fact, I think something like 70% of their interactions consisted of them kind of sticking an arm out towards another octopus, but not actually making contact. So you don't change them into a social animal by crowding them.

They have ways of doing the best they can with a bad situation. So Octopolis and Octlantis may not be the irrefutable evidence they seem to be in favor of octopuses being inherently social.

And Ferris Jaber, the writer looking into this question, he says there's a sense in which the octopuses there are in a sort of captivity. They are captive in Octoland as an octopolis in the sense that there's a resource which is holding them captive there. They're kind of forced in a way to be there. So that is a very unusual circumstance for an octopus to be in. We know from, you know,

decades, centuries of research on animals that especially highly intelligent animals just behave very differently when they are in captive situations. And we see again and again that captive octopuses seem to constantly be seeking out interaction with their human caretakers. They seem to want to play, to interact physically.

So maybe for most wild octopuses, these types of circumstances never present themselves. But that capability is perhaps still there in most octopus species. I feel like a lot of octopus caretakers naturally feel like they are bonding with their octopus and their octopus is playing with them and then they want this. But another way to interpret it is that the octopus is extremely bored and frustrated. It is just searching for anything that is stimulating.

And if this does only come out in captivity, or if this is just the octopus being bored, is it fair to call these kinds of interactions friendships?

In my octopus teacher, it feels like this is presented as a friendship. Like it's this unambiguously good thing for both Craig Foster, the diver, and the octopus. Yeah, that's where it gets really interesting and complicated. And I'm not sure that science as it stands right now can really help us solve that problem, answer that question, because what we're really asking is what does it feel like for the octopus in those situations, right? How do we know that the octopus sees us as a friend, right?

Yeah.

And making her more comfortable with him made her less alert to other dangers and threats and kind of failed to protect the octopus from the shark attack that eventually killed the octopus. And some people have said, is it my octopus teacher or is it my octopus stalker? You know, I mean, how is the octopus really experiencing this constant intrusive entity in its environment? Yeah.

So it's certainly possible that what seems like friendship to us might not be friendship to the octopus. Yeah. For me, a friendship by definition cannot be unilateral. It has to go both ways. If it's unilateral, it's not a friendship. It's something else. So I think to answer the question, you know, did Craig and the octopus have a genuine friendship, we would really have to know...

how the octopus felt about it. You know, like what is the... The octopus has to answer that question too. Does that mean that we can't truly be friends with any animal? Well, I mean, there are important differences. Like, I'm much more confident that my Britney Spaniel, Jack...

sees me as a member of his family group and feels things for me that are similar to what I feel for him. Because not only are dogs highly intelligent social mammals like we are, but we've literally been co-evolving with each other for something like 40,000 years. So there's a huge shared history there, a repertoire of mutual emotion and behavior and intelligence that we can draw on.

But then with octopuses, does that mean that we might just never be able to truly know if we're connecting? That there's this gulf between us that we might just never be able to cross?

You know, there's an essential inescapable problem for us, which is that we can never truly liberate ourselves from our human bubble. So we can never 100% bridge that gap between us and other species. At the same time, though, there's also a danger of objectifying other species and creatures too much. And I feel like that is...

to me, the greater danger, and I feel like what's been going on for way too long, you know, what we're seeing in my octopus teacher or the stories we get from octopus caretakers, something really interesting is going on here and it's important and it matters and it should be taken seriously. Like if you genuinely accept that an octopus or any other creature is sentient, that it has a conscious experience of the world, just like we do, and that it has enough intelligence to make choices about

That means you need to take the possibility of a friendship between that creature and something else seriously. You cannot just dismiss that out of hand. We might never know if we can be friends with octopuses. But if we want to take them seriously, maybe friendship is just too human a word.

Psychologist Jennifer Mather says to truly understand octopuses, we need to try to break out of the way we see ourselves. It's humbling in a way because they are different and we must see them as different. We tend to think of the whole world in terms of us and in relation to us. But to understand other animal species, we have to try to understand them as themselves, not as animals.

shadowy versions of us. The Octopus really demands that. This episode was produced by Mandy Nguyen and Noam Hassenfeld. It was edited by Catherine Wells with help from Meredith Hoddinot and Brian Resnick. We had mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala, music from Noam, and fact-checking from me, Richard Zima. The rest of the Unexplainable team includes Bird Pinkerton and Tori Dominguez.

You can find Ferris Jaber's full octopus article at hackiemagazine.com. And if you want to read some of Ferris' other wonderful writing, including the wild articles mentioned at the top of the show, you can find it all at ferrisjaber.wordpress.com. As always, if you want to get in touch, you can email us at unexplainable at vox.com. And if you feel like leaving us a nice review or a rating wherever you listen, we'd all really appreciate it.

Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll see you next Wednesday.